The sun., 1903-12-13

they. lived and with .~laA& .QaAef- PA<ts.-2t
the interior of Asia they had been politi-
cally, socially or commercially CON
nected. There was now some hope that
light would he shed on this land which. 80
to speak, had been wiped of the face OF
the earth, and upon folk whom history
had forgotten, On his return to Europe.
DR.. Hedin put all the inscribed scraps OF
wood and paper before the leaned slno-
logue, Prof. Himly at Wiesbaden. His
preliminary scrutiny resulted in the fol-
lowing observations: -The data and other
indications Of date point to period between
the middle OF the third and the beginning
of the fourth century A. D. The build
ing where the discovery was made seems
TO have belonged to well-to-do Chinese
merchant who carried on sort OF livery
business, for he let out carriages and beasts
of burden on hire and undertook to de-
liver letters to Tun-huang (Sa-chowl.
People and goods were conveyed to thai
town by horses. carriages and horned
cattle. One document speaks OF mill
tary expedition. though without giving
date, Among the geographical names
we find the name OF the country In question
-Lou-lan. The inhabitants must have
carried on agriculture, for the documents
make frequent mention Of weights and
measures OF seed corn, and eome Of them
indicate different kinds Of seed corn. Very
possibly at the place where these pieces
of paper were eIcavated there formerly
stood a sort OF treasure house or species
of seed corn bank, where seed corn was
bought and stored or received as security
for debt.
These documents show one popularity;
they are written on both sides, a practice
which does not now obtain In China, either
with regard to writing or printing" Prof.
Hmly adds that ~to judge from the follow
ing sentence. the Governor, who had his
residence here, would seem to have adj
ministered not inconsiderable province:
Forty officials are to receive the army
at the frontier (or shore?). and the Farms
are numerous He seems also to have
had two native princes at his court. Most
Of the documents date from the years 284-
270 A. ID. In the year 2e5 A. D., the Chinese
Emperor Yuan I'll. OF the Wei dynasty,
died, and in the north the Tsin succeeded
to power under WI ii. who reigned till
the year 200 A. D."
DIR. Hedin directs attention to the state
sDsnt that agriculture was carried on in
greatest possible interest. How was it
possible? Not a single rivulet now flows
down from the Kurruk -tagh; not a drop
Of rain now falls from the sky. Yes, but
the climate may have altered, some one will
perhaps say. Not at all. In'the heart Of
vast cont inent, the climate does not un-
dergo even in the course Of fifteen or sixteen
centuries, such tremendous changes as that
l. H..
led of, either from the Tarim or the Kum-
daria, and from them again. irrigation
channels. such as are now formed all over
Eastern Turkestan. Seed-oorn banks. Of
the kind here indicated, are found at the
present day in every town In East Turkestan.
They are under the control Of the Chinese
authorities, and serve to secure an equal
distribution OF food among the native
inhabitants. It is true n only found four
towns, the largest of which consisted Of
nineteen houses; but the desert might quite
easily contain several others. The men,
ton Of armies forty officials and runner
ous farms suggests that ,Lou-lan. was
thickly inhab ited.7
In another chapter DR.. Hedin s,.nis up
what he has since learned from writings Of
two soholars conversapt with Chinese his
tory regarding the ancient conditions Of
Lou-lan. the country which he explored.
In 1902, Prof. Himly contributed an article
on the subject to Petermdnn's Aitteii-
ungen, and in March, 1908, Mr.. George
Mccartney, the Anglo-Indian resident at
Kashgar, had something to say about the
same topic in the Geographical Journal.
Prof. Himly informs us that the name
Lob -nur is not an invention Of the present
(TurkD inhabitants, for the word nur,
meaning a lake" is a Mongolian word.
Previously to the middle of the eighteenth
century, the boundary between the Khalkha
Mongols and the Kalmucks, or Western
Mongols. ran just here Lou-lan was the
name of country which, by reason of it's
situation between the great northern high
way and the great southern highway, from
China to central and western Asia, played,
in spite of its small size, very important
part in the wars between the Chinese EN-
perors of the Han dynasty and the Hiung-nu
Turks or Huns) in the second century be-
fore our era, acting as a kind of buffer
State between the two Powers. A famous
Chinese pilgrim. when on his way home
from India. touched this country in the year
GAS A. D., after crossing the desert from
Khotan. Even at that time the inhabitants
were being driven out OF the town and
their dwellings buried under the sand.
Indeed, several Of the cities north Of Khotan
were then in ruins. But the shifting sand
was not the only danger the people had to
fear; they we're also in peril from vast
aocumulations Of water.
MIR. George Macartney's paper is entitled
Notices, from Chinese Sources, on the
Ancient Kingdom Of Lou-lan. or Shen-
shen." He has found in the History of
the First Hans" written between B. c. 100
and A. D. 5O) the statement that China
began intercourse with the country known
as Lou-lan in the reign of the Emperor
Wu-ti (B. c. l40-sD, in whose time the
Western boundary of the Middle Kingdom
would seem to have extended no further
than Yanha barrier (possibly Tun-huang)
and the Yu gate (modern Chia-Yu-kuan')
The vast tract lying beyond this boundary
was designated by the Chinese biographers
of the epoch under the vague term Of West
ern Region, which they supposed to be
divided into thirty-six different kingdoms.