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CHAPTER I]
BOWER MANUSCRIPT
vii
He gave one to Munshi Ahmad Din, who in his turn presented his acquisition to Mr. Weber, Moravian Missionary. Hence the origin of the Weber Manuscripts. The other manuscript in Dildâhr Khan's possession was taken by him to India, and left with a friend of his in Aligarh, a certain Faiz Mu'ammed Khan. Dildar Khân brought it back to Turkestan last year (1895), and presented it to me."
(vii) From the preceding quotation it is seen that the “ intermediary," from whom Mr. Weber received his manuscripts, was Munshi Ahmad Din, and that the “Afghan merchant," who sent ther, through the intermediary, to Mr. Weber, was Dildar Khân of Yarkand. This man, however, was not the writer of the Urdû letter to which Mr. Weber (in No. 1) refers. That letter must have been one written to Dildar Khân by his elder brother, Ghulam Qadir Khân, who sent the manuscripts, a portion of which found its way to Mr. Weber, through Munshi Ahmad Din. This appears from an account, which was procured for me by Sir George Macartney from Dildar Khân himself in January 1898. That account was written in Urdu and may be tranted as follows20 :
“I heard from my brother Ghulam Qadir Kbin that there was a dome-like tower near Kuchar at the foot of a mountain. Some people said that the treasure in it; it must be searched out. Accordingly, some people, making a hole in the tower, be to excavate it, when inside they found it to be a house containing a compartment (ghar khinadar), and in it a cow and two foxes standing. On touching them with the hand the cow and foxes fell to the ground as if they were dust. In that place those two booksas were found enclosed in wooden boards. Also there is in that place a wall made as if of stone (diwar sang ke mwoa fiq), and upon it something is written in characters not known. It is said that a few years ago an English gentleman” went there, and having visited the place, came away. Nothing more is known,"
Plainly this account is identical with that given by Mr. Weber (see No. iv). as interpreted to him from an Urdû letter. It shows that the letter was written by Ghulam Qadir Khân, an Afghan merchant resident in Kuchar, to his brother Dildâr Khân, n merchant residing in Yarkand. It was this letter, in the possession of Dildar Khân, on which the latter based the account, above-quoted, which he gave to Sir George Macartney for transmission to me. The importance of these facts lies in this that we see that the earliest statement concerning the locality and the circumstances of the find of the Weber Manuscripts and Macartney Manuscripts was made immediately after the discovery, in 1891, by a native informant in a letter written for the information, not of any European enquirer, but of his own brother. Native informants, in their dealings with Europeans, are, no doubt, not reliable ; but in the circumstances of the present case,-a native merchant dealing with anothlative merchant, his own brother, with common interests, there seems to be no good reason to distrust the substantial accuracy of the account of the discovery.
(viii) A little later in he same year, in November 1898, another more detailed account, in Urdû, of the discovery and dispersion of the Weber and Macartney Manuscripts was procured for me by Captain (now Lieut-Colonel) S. H. Godfrey, c. I. E., from Munshi Ahmad Din. In all probability it was based on information supplied to the Munshi by Dildar Khân. The main points in it are the following30 :
28 See my Report on the British Collection of Central Asian Antiquities, Part I, Introd., p. xi.
27 In my Report (see preceding note) this phrase is translated "spacious," but the literal, and more correct, translation is as in the text above. As to the term "house," see ante, Nole 22. See also below, P. ix, M. Berezovski's account.
15 Or rather "bundles of manuscripts." See below No. X. " This is a confused reference to Lieutenant Bower, who went to Gum Turk, but not to Qutluq Urda.
3) See my Report on the British Collection of Central Asian Antiquities, Part I, Introd., PP. x and xi. There explanatory statements of my own are interspersed. See also Proceedings, ASB., 1898, pp. 63, 64.
