Indian Antiquary Vol 50

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

Page 20

16
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[JAN., 1921
subjective trustworthiness of his records, and as we have to use these so often when dealing with questions of ancient geography in Central Asia or India, the following notes on Hsuan-tsang's desert itinerary may find an appropriate place here.
Before, however, we attempt to trace the pious traveller's steps, it will bo well to indicate briefly certain main topographical facts concerning his starting point, the oasis of An-hsi, and as regards the ground which the present high-road thence to Hami traverses, In chapters xv. and xxvii. of my Serindia ' I have had occasion fully to discuss the broad geographical features which have obliged the Chinese from the earliest expansion of their power westwards, in the last quarter of the second century B.C., down to the present day, to follow the north foot of the snowy Nan-shan as their main line of progress towards Central Asia. There alone can be found a succession of relatively well-watered fertile tracts, stretching from Liang-chou past Kan-chou to Su-chou, such as could serve as a secure base for trade and military movements across the great deserts intervening between Kan-su and Chinese Turkestan. Beyond Su-chou, wbere the mediaval Great Wall of the Empire ends, this line thins out westwards into a series of small oases, comprising the present Yü-mênhsien, An-hsi, and Tun-huang. These are situated in the wide but for the most part utterly barren valley in which the lower course of the Su-lo Ho descends to its terminal basin in the desert east of the ancient Lop Sea bed. Map I. attached to my Ruins of Desert Cathay,' and first published in the Geographical Journal for March 1911 to illustrate the explorations of my second journey, will help to make clear these essential features.
As long as Chinese trade and military enterprise towards the Tarim Besin could continue the move westwards in a straight line along that earliest route which led through the clay and salt wilderness of the dried-up Lop Sea to the ruined Lou-lan settlements, and which I succeeded in tracking right through by my Lop Desert explorations of 1914-15, Tunhuang, the last oasis within the ancient Chinese border of Han times, remained the startingpoint and eastern bridgehead as it were for the great desert crossing. But when after the third century A.D. Lou-lan was abandoned to the desert, and this difficult but most direct route became impossible for traffic through total want of water, such intercourse with Central Asia as survived the downfall of Chinese political control over the “Western Regions" was bound to be diverted almost wholly to the routes crossing the Pei-shan "Gobi” to Hami.
Of these routes the one starting from the An-hsi oesis and leading in a nearly straight line north-westwards to the cultivable area of Hami at the southern foot of the Karlik-tagh must certainly have been at all times relatively the easiest and the most frequented. It follows the line on which the distance over absolute desert ground to be covered by travellers from or to China proper is the shortest. It crosses the stony desert of the Pei-shan in eleven marches which our survey showed to aggregate to a total marching distance of about 218 miles. Hami, owing to the irrigation facilities assured by its vicinity to the snow's of the Kerlik-tagh, has all through historical times been a place noted for its agricultural produce and a natural emporium for whatever traffic passed across the desert south-eastwards. An-hsi has not yet recovered from all the destruction caused by the great Tungan rebellion of the sixties of the last century. But even thus, scanty as its resources now are, they suffice to allow trade caravans and other travel parties to revictual locally. In earlier
2 Cf. for the line of this ancient Lou-Jan route" A third journey of exploration in Central Asia, 191316. in Geographical Journal, 1916, 48, pp. 124-129; also 'Serindia,' ebap. xiv., for a review of the Chinese historical notices bearing upon it.