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CHAPTER 1)
BOWER MANUSCRIPT
to" the Ming.oï or “just outside the subterranean city” (No, i), the other three stâpas at Kone Shahr and Sarai Tam being about 13 to 2} miles distant from the Ming-oï.
Having determined what in all probability is the true find-place of the Bower Manuscript, we may now attempt to determine the exact time when it was discovered by the native treasure-seekers of Kuchar. For guidance we have the following data, supplied by Captain Bower in the report of his travels in the Geographical Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, Vol. V (1895), pp. 252 ff., and illustrated by the annexed Sketch Map. At Kuchar, Captain Bower tells us, he halted several days, and wbile staying there, he received, as related in Extract No. iii, the visits of a Turki who gave him the manuscript and guided him to its find-place, the stúpa close to the main group of caves of the Ming-oï of Qum Turâ. He started on this expedition about midnight of the day on which the manuscript was brought to him (Nos. i, iii). He reached the Ming-oï at day-break (say, about 5 a, M., Nos, ii, iii) of the following day. Here he spent some hours in examining the stâpa of the nanuscript, and some of the adjacent caves of the Ming-oż, of the appearance of which the icco npanying photographs, (Figs. 3 and 4), supplied by the kindness of M, Pelliot and Dr. von Le Coq, give us some idea. Having done so, Lieutenant Bower went on to Faizâbâd, where he spent the night. The next day, i, e., the second day after lcaving Kuchar, he marched down the banks of a canal to Charshamba Bazar, shooting on the way wild ducks that were on the canal,
On the same day, or the day after, he reached Shâhyâr. On the 6th of March he left Shâhyâr on his return journey to Kashgar, which he reached on the 1st of April. These are the only two definite dates mentioned by Captain Bower in the recital of this part of his tour.
He does not say how long he stayed in Shâhyâr, but as it was his second visit to the place, and as nothing that might have caused a longer detention is mentioned, it may be concluded that the 6th of March was the day after his arrival in Shahyâr from his visit to the Ming-oi of Qum Turâ. On the basis of this count, it was the 2nd or 3rd of March, on which Lieutenant Bower received the manuscript, and on the midnight of which he started on his visit to the Ming-oï. Now Lieutenant Bower states (see No. ii) that the Turki, who brought the manuscript to him told him that he had dug it out "a few days previously,” and that he "showed him where a hole had been recently excavated." It follows, therefore, that the discovery of the Bower Manuscript must have occurred a few days previous to the 2nd or 3rd of March, that is, on some day of the month of February of the year 1890.
Having passed in review the evidence for what is probably the true find-place of the Bower Manuscript, and for the exact time of its discovery, we may now proceed to sketch
