page_title: Rudolf Hoernlé
section_title: Victim of forgery
hierarchical_section_title: Rudolf Hoernlé / Work / Victim of forgery
caption_attribution_description: English: A forgery produced by woodblock printing by Islam Akhun and sold to George Macartney in Kashgar.
context_page_description: Augustus Frederic Rudolf Hoernlé CIE, also referred to as Rudolf Hoernle or A. F. Rudolf Hoernle, was an Indologist and philologist. He is famous for his studies on the Bower Manuscript, Weber Manuscript and other discoveries in northwestern China and Central Asia particularly in collaboration with Aurel Stein. Born in India to a Protestant missionary family from Germany, he completed his education in Switzerland, and studied Sanskrit in the United Kingdom. He returned to India, taught at leading universities there, and in the early 1890s published a series of seminal papers on ancient manuscripts, writing scripts and cultural exchange between India, China and Central Asia. His collection after 1895 became a victim of forgery by Islam Akhun and colleagues in Central Asia, a forgery revealed to him in 1899. He retired from the Indian office in 1899 and settled in Oxford, where he continued to work through the 1910s on archaeological discoveries in Central Asia and India. This is now referred to as the "Hoernle collection" at the British Library.
context_section_description: As his breakthrough studies gained fame, various governments including the British government sought and offered handsome rewards for ancient manuscripts. This led to major forgeries, and Hoernlé was deceived by some. Hoernle was concerned about potential for forgery, as some of the fragmentary manuscripts he received appeared to contain Central Asian scripts but made no sense in any language. Hoernle tended to assume good faith and spent time analyzing, making sense of them. In past, his patience with the unknown languages ultimately led to the discovery of Khotanese and Tocharian languages.
  The first forged manuscript came from Islam Akhun, purchased by George Macartney and sent to Hoernle in 1895. Thereafter several more Akhun manuscripts followed. According to Peter Hopkirk, Backlund stationed in Central Asia wrote to Hoernle, informing him of his suspicions about Akhun's forgery, and reasons to doubt purchases from Akhun. However, Hoernle found reasons to dismiss Backlund's concerns and continue his analysis of manuscripts sold by Akhun, stating "if these are copies freshly produced, then they are copies of ancient manuscripts" just like reprints of old books.
  In a preliminary report in 1897, Hoernle wrote about the new manuscripts he had received from Khotan, the following:
  ...[they are] written in characters which are either quite unknown to me, or with which I am too imperfectly acquainted to attempt a ready reading in the scanty leisure that my regular official duties allow me ... My hope is that among those of my fellow-labourers who have made the languages of Central Asia their speciality, there maybe some who may be able to recognize and identify the characters and language of these curious documents.
  Thereafter, he published A Collection of Antiquities from Central Asia: Part 1 on them. The truth about the forged manuscripts by Islam Akhun was confirmed during a site visit to Khotan by the explorer and long term collaborator Sir Aurel Stein and revealed to Hoernle. Stein found many manuscript fragments similar to the Bower and Weber manuscripts in different parts of Central Asia but found nothing remotely similar to those sold by Islam Akhun and ultimately delivered through Macartney to Hoernle since 1895. Stein visited Akhun in person, wasn't able to verify any of the sites Akhun had previously claimed to be the source of his elaborate manuscripts. Akhun first tried to offer alternative explanations, but his workers and he ultimately confessed to the fraud. Stein saw the forgery operations and discovered that Hoernle's good faith was wrong. Akhun and his workers never had any ancient manuscripts they were making copies from. Stein reported his findings to Hoernlé, who was deeply dismayed by the forgeries and his error, and upset. He considered acquiring and destroying Part 1 of his report. It had already been widely distributed after being published as a special number of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and Stein had already disclosed the forgery that formed that collection. Hoernle went ahead and published Part 2, glossing over his personal errors in Part 1, according to Peter Hopkirk. Hoernle did include a note for the benefit of all scholars, stating: 
  "... Dr Stein has obtained definitive proof that all blockprints and all the manuscripts in unknown characters procured from Khotan since 1895 are modern fabrications of Islam Akhun and a few others working with him".
  Hoernlé retired after publishing his 1899 report, his reputation survived this revelation, and his obituaries in 1918 tactfully omitted the incident, according to Kirk.
caption: An elaborately forged manuscript produced by Islam Akhun.
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