Indian Antiquary Vol 62

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 106

94
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[ May, 1933
With its open ground and excellent grazing, the great Alai valley seems as if intended by nature to serve as a very convenient channel for traffic from east to west, such as the tradere bringing silk from the Târîm basin needed. Another important advantage was that, what with the cultivation at one time carried on above Daraut-kurghån in the west and still at present to be found at Irkesh-tam to the cast of the Taun-murun saddle, the distance on the Alai route over which shelter was not to be found scarcely exceeded 70 miles, or three casy marches on such ground.
The route remains open for eight or nine months in the year for laden animals, including camels. Even in the months of December to February when snow is deep, it would be practicable in the same way as is the trade route from Irkesh-tam across the Terek pass (12,700 feet above sea-level), provided there were enough traffic to tread a track through the snow. But such traffic between Kashgar and the Oxus region as was once served by this ancient silk route' no longer exists. The trade of the Târîm basin from Kashgar now proceeds towards Farghana, reaching the Russian railway at Andijân across the Terek pass, while what trade in sheep and cattle there comes up Kara-tegin from the hill tracts towards the Oxus is diverted at Daraut-kurghân towards. Marghilan and the railway. However during the months of May and early June, when the melting snow closes the Terek pass, the eastern end of the Alai secs some of the Kashgar trade to Farghana making its way across the Taun-murun to the easier Taldik pass over the Alai.
At Irkesh-tam, the present Russian frontier and Customs station, 35 we may safely locate the station at Mount Iinaus whence traders start on their journey to Séra,' as suggested long ago by Baron Richthofen. It is here that the Alai route is joined by another, much frequented in modern times and probably in antiquity also, which leads from fertile Fargbâna across the Terek pass to Kashgar. This location of the traders' station' at Irkesh-tam is strongly supported by Ptolemy's statements elsewhere, which place it due cast of the Stone Tower and at the north-eastern limits of the territory of the 'nomadic Sakai,' the Iranian predecessors of the present Kirghiz.
At the period to which the information recorded by Maës refers, direct Chinese control is not likely to have extended beyond the watershed between the Târîm basin and the Oxus. Thus Irkesh-tam, where some cultivation is possible at an elevation of about 8550 feet, would have offered a very convenient position for one of those frontier control stations which the Chinese administration has always been accustomed to maintain on the borders and which is still maintained here at present.
There is abundant evidence in Chinese and other early records that Kashgar was all through historical times the chief trade emporium on the most frequented road connecting Western Turkistán with China. But there those agents of Maös, the Macedonian trader, found themselves still very far away from the Metropolis of Sêra,' the Chinese capital of Han times, which then stood at Lo-yang in the province of Honan. In the light of my experience of caravan traffic in these regions of Asia the estimate of seven months' journey to the Sêra capital from the Stone Tower, which Maēs' plucky agents reported and which Ptolemy (I. xi. 4) doubted, could scarcely be thought much exaggerated.
85 Cr. Stoin Sand buried Ruins of Khotan, p. 495.