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CHAPTER 1]
BOWER MANUSCRIPT
"A more perfect hermetical seating than the mound formed it would be impossible to imagine as the outside had a slight coating of a baked clayey nature.... ..........and the documents had been buried right in the centre of it. The statement that they were dug out of the ruins of the underground city is a total misconception of the facts. 19 ... ... ... I think I saw about Kuchar five or six of these mound like
Fig. 2. erections. This (Fig. 2) will give you a rough idea of the erection. The asterisk indicates the place where the documents were found."
(iii) Again three years later, in 1895, Captain Bower repeated his account of the acquisition of the manuscript in a paper contributed by him to the Geographical Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, in which he described his trip to Sketch of the ruined Stậpa at Qumtura. Turkestan. That account, in Vol. V., pp. 254 ff., was as follows:
"At Kuchar, where I halted for several days, a Turki who had been in India, used to come and sit with me in my room in the serai. One day in coversation, he told me about an ancient city he knew of, built underground in the desert. I thought at first that he meant one of the ordinary buried cities of the Gobi desert; but he insisted that it was something quite different, and explained that it was underground by the wish of the people that made it, not by reason of a sandstorm. He told me also that he and one of his friends had gone there and dug for buried treasure, but had found nothing but a book. I asked to see it; and going &way, he returned in about an hour, bringing some sheets of birch bark covered with writing in a Sanskritic character and held together by two boards. I bought them from him; and it was fortunate that I did so, as they have since excited a considerable amount of interest in the learned world ... ... ... When I asked him to take me to this interesting place, he demurred a good deal, on the ground that the people would kill him, If he took an European there; but at last he consented on condition that we went at night, so as not to be seen. This I readily agreed to do; and starting at midnight, we marched steadily forward in westerly direction. When daylight broke, we had left cultivation far behind, and were on the shoulders of a range of low gravelly hills, and away to the south a narrow strip of green with houses at intervals marked the course of a canal. Keeping on, we came to the curious old erection from under which the manuscript had been unearthed. Similar erections are found in different parts of Chinese Turkestan ... ... ... ... They are solid, and built of sun-dried bricks and wooden beams now crumbling away. In shape they roughly resemble & gigantic cottage loaf, about 50 feet high.
Close by, on the banks of a river, were the remains of the ancient underground city of Ming-oï to which the guide had promised to take me... ... ... ... ... High upon the face of the cliffs overlooking the water, the marks of what have been habitations are to be seen worn away in such a manner as to show sections.... ... ... ... ... I entered one of the tunnels. It was shaped as under ... ... ... ... ..."
Here follows the section through the Ming-07 (Fig. 1), and its explanation, exactly as given in No, i (p. iv).
With the help of the Topographical Plan and View of the Ming-oï of Qum Turâ (see Frontis-piece, Nos. II and III), which I owe to the kindness of Professor Griinwedel, the description of Lieutenant Bower's march will be readily understood. He approached the Ming-oï from the east, from Kuchar. (See the Sketch Map of the Oasis of Kuchar.) At day-break he was above the point marked A on the Plan, looking "away to the south" on the double canal with its narrow strip of green cultivated land, and the houses belonging to the large village of Faizâbâd, "Keeping on" he came to the ruined Stûpa of the manuscript
19 This apparently refers to the remarks of Bühler in his paper on the discovery of the Bower Manuscript in the Vienna Oriental Journal, Vol. V. (1891), pp. 103 and 302.
20 AS fact, there are four ruined Stapas near Qum Tura, one at Qosh Tura, and one at Qutluq Urda (letter from Sir Aurel Stein, 3rd Dec. 1909)-all six on, or near, the line of Lieut. Bower's march to the Ming-oi of Qum Tura. See the Sketch Map. Of the four Stapas near Qum Turd two are at D, one at A, and one at C, of the Topographical Plan,
