Indian Antiquary Vol 46

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 236

222
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[OCTOBER, 1917
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He then struck out for the point where the ancient Chinese route had entered the saltencrusted bed of the dried-up sea, and thence traced its shore-line to the south-west, until he reached, as Chainut-köl, the northern edge of the area, where the spring floods of the Tarim finally spread themselves out, to undergo rapid evaporation in lagoons and marshes. He arrived, as I had intended, just in time before the usual inundation could interfere with his progress. After a few days' rest, with water and grazing for the camels, he turned into the wind-eroded desert north, and traced more remains of the ancient settlement discovered a year before along the southernmost branch of the 'Dry River.' Finally, after crossing an area of formidable high dunes, he gained the foot of the outermost Kuruk-tagh. From this exceptionally difficult exploration, which had kept the party from contact with any human being for a month and a half, Afrazgul brought back, besides interesting archæological finds, an accurate plane-table survey and detailed diary records. It is impossible here to discuss the results. But, when considered with those which the previous year's surveys had yielded, they will, I feel confident, help to show the so-called Lop-nor problem in a new light.
We subsequently moved west to the point known as Ying-p'an, where the ancient bed of the Kuruk-darya is crossed by the Turfan-Lop track. I made use of a short halt there for exploring the interesting remains of a ruined fort and small temple site, found some miles beyond at the de bouchure of the dried-up stream of Shindi, and first noticed by Colonel Kozloff and Dr. Hedin. The finds we made here of fragmentary Kharoshthi records on wood and of Han coins were important as proving that the ruins belonged to a fortified station occupied during the early centuries of our era when the ancient Chinese high-road coming from Lou-lan passed here. The station was meant to guard an important point of the route where it must have been joined by the road leading up from Charchan and Charkhlik. That it held a Chinese garrison became evident from the remains we found on clearing some wellpreserved tombs in a scattered cemetery near by. There was definite evidence showing that the site abandoned for many centuries had been reoccupied for a while during Muhammadan and relatively recent times. Now the water needed for irrigation is wholly wanting.
Proceeding from Ying-p'an I first surveyed in the desert westwards the ancient bell, still marked by its rows of dead fallen trees, in which the waters of the Konche-darya had once passed into the 'Dry River' of Lou-lan. My subsequent journey to Korla, by a route leading through the desert north-westwards, and first followed by Dr. Hedin in 1896, enablecl me to explore the remains of an ancient line of watch-stations extending for over 100 miles along the foot of the Kuruk-tagh. These watch-towers, some of them remarkably massive and well preserved, showed the same characteristic features of construction with which my explorations along the ancient Chinese Limes of Kansu had made me so familiar. There can be little doubt, I think, that these towers date back to approximately the time (circ. 100 B.c.) when the Emperor Wu-ti had the route leading from Tun-huang towards Lou-lan protected by his wall and line of watch-stations. From the great height and intervening distances of the towers, as well as from other indications, it may be safely inferred that they were primarily intended for the communication of fire signals, such as are frequently mentioned in the early Chinese records I recovered from the Tun-huang Limes.
The need for such signalling arrangements must have been specially felt here, as it was mainly from the directions of Kara-shahr and Korla that the Hun raids must have proceeded, which we know from the Annals to have more than once threatened the Chinese hold upon Lou-lan and the security of their route to the Tarim Basin. With the gradual exten