THE VANISHING TROVE:
Reviled Heroes; Revered Thieves
By Ray H. Greenblatt
Read at the Meeting of
The Chicago Literary Club
on Monday, October 2, 2000
Copyright 2000 Ray H. Greenblatt
In an isolated corner of the world sometimes called Chinese
Turkestan and at other times
Chinese Central Asia lies a vast desert: the Takla Makan. Renowned for death and desolation, the Takla
Makan has summers with daily
temperatures reaching 130 degrees fahrenheit, winters with
nightly temperatures well below zero and
almost no rain. Its pyramid-shaped dunes are dangerous, rising
in some instances to 1,000 feet in
height. Terrifying storms, called kara-burans (or black
hurricanes) scour the sands.
Throughout history, travellers have sought to skirt the
Takla Makan, proceeding from oasis to
oasis along its perimeter. Even so, many have lost their way in
sandstorms or died of thirst. Entire
caravans have disappeared without a trace. The words "Takla
Makan," in Turkic, mean "go in and
you won't come out."
Chinese Turkestan is surrounded on three sides by high
mountain ranges: to the west toward
Afghanistan and Tajikistan by the Pamir; to the south toward
Kashmir and Tibet by the Karakoram
and Kun Lun; and to the north toward Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan and
the northwest tip of China by the
Tien Shan. On the fourth side--the east--are two formidable if
somewhat less inhospitable Chinese
deserts: the Gobi and Lop Nor. Until roads were constructed
during the past half century, these
mountain ranges and deserts served as barriers insulating Chinese
Turkestan from all but the most
intrepid intruders.
Adventuresome British travellers seeking to enter Chinese
Turkestan usually approached it
from Kashmir over the Karakoram passes which in places reach an
elevation of 19,000 feet. As late
as 1950, one traveller wrote:
Never once until we reached the plains were we out of sight
of skeletons. The continuous
line of bones and bodies acted as a gruesome guide whenever
we were uncertain of the
route.
The passes across the four mountain ranges are virtually
impenetrable for much of the year.
The stories are legion of travellers attacked by bandits, hanging
from icy ledges or falling to their
deaths.
The trade route we now know as the Silk Road crossed China,
skirting the Takla Makan in
the west. The easternmost point of the Silk Road was China's
ancient capital, Chang-an, known
today as Xian, a city which as early as 742 A.D. had a population
of approximately two million.
From Chang-an the Silk Road proceeded in a northwesterly
direction to Dunhuang, a Gobi Desert
city of which we shall hear more. From Dunhuang it branched off
into the two alternative routes that
skirted the Takla Makan. The northern arm skirted the northern
perimeter of the desert just south of
the Tien Shan. The southern arm skirted its southern perimeter
just north of the Kun Lun and
Karakoram. The two arms merged just west of the Takla Makan in
the city of Kashgar near the
western boundary of China. From Kashgar, the Silk Road headed
west over the passes of the
towering Pamir into what is now post-Soviet Central Asia. It
continued through the fabled city
kingdoms of Khokand, Samarkand, Bukhara and Merv, through Persia
and Mesopotamia to the
Mediterranean Coast. From there ships carried Silk Road
merchandise to Rome and Egypt. An
important feeder route left the southern arm before it reached
Kashgar, proceeded south over the
Karakoram passes through what are now Kashmir and Pakistan to
Bombay and other market towns
along India's western coast.
With few exceptions (Marco Polo being the most famous)
merchants rarely made the trip
from one end of the Silk Road to the other. Most bartered,
bought and sold merchandise at sites not
so remote from their homes as to pose undue risk of the unknown.
They then returned to their
homes with merchandise to be sold locally. From beginnings as
primitive outposts where merchants,
pilgrims and other travellers took on water, food and other
provisions and arranged for fresh camels
or yaks, many of the oases along the Silk Road's northern and
southern arms evolved into flourishing
market cities graced with an opulent high culture.
Silk and other articles of commerce were not the only items
of major consequence which
passed along the Silk Road. Buddhism--which had its origins in
India in the sixth century B.C.--also
travelled this route to China, as did Nestorian Christianity and
Manicheism. Buddhism taught
forbearance from worldly striving and compassion for all living
things. Along with Buddhist
theology came a profusion of Buddhist religious art.
Silk Road Buddhist art was different from most Indian
Buddhist art of the time. For one
thing, there were along the Silk Road paintings and sculptures
depicting the Buddha in human form.
Indians believed that because the Buddha's exemplary life had
enabled him to achieve nirvana,
thereby liberating him from the cycle of birth and rebirth, he
did not exist corporeally and should be
depicted if at all only by an abstraction such as a footprint.
Moreover, in Silk Road Buddhist art, the
Buddha was clothed in a sort of toga and had the wavy hair and
straight nose associated with
classical Greek art as well as the elongated ear lobes
characteristic of Indian art. These seeming
anomalies are probably explained by the likelihood that Buddhism
and its art had come to China
from a part of India conquered by Alexander the Great in the
third century B.C., the Kingdom of
Gandhara.
The Silk Road and its high Buddhist civilization remained in
full flower until the Tang
Dynasty began to decline in the ninth century. They then went
into gradual decline until they faded
out several centuries later. Ultimately, many of the bustling
oasis cities disappeared completely
along with their monasteries and art. In those that survived,
Buddhist culture and art disappeared.
There were three principal reasons for these changes: a reduced
water supply; the arrival of Islam;
and the decline and fall of the Tang Dynasty.
The oasis cities and the agriculture which sustained them
were entirely dependent for water
on streams cascading down from the surrounding mountain ranges.
These streams were fed by
melting mountain glaciers, vestiges of the ice age. Ingenious
subterranean, gravity-based irrigation
systems brought the stream water to the fields, permitting
agriculture to flourish. Over time,
however, the glaciers shrank. As the flow of water diminished,
irrigation grew difficult. Without
effective irrigation, agriculture dropped off and the population
drifted away. As the elaborate
irrigation systems fell into disuse, the ever-voracious Takla
Makan swallowed the dwindling
cities.
Also, beginning in the 10th century Moslem warriors from
Arabia began to appear. Fierce
fighters, they made converts with the sword. By the 14th century
virtually the entire population of
Chinese Turkestan had converted to Islam. This supplanting of
Buddhism by Islam changed
radically the culture and art. Not only did Islam forbid the
portrayal of the human form in painting
and sculpture but Moslem iconoclasts actively destroyed or
disfigured offending Buddhist paintings
and statues.
The years of the Tang Dynasty (618 to 907 A.D.) had been a
golden age not only for China
but also for its principal trade route. China was open and
receptive to foreign goods and foreign
ideas. As the Tang Dynasty lapsed into decline, however, and
eventually fell, China became
increasingly inward looking and isolated. Finally, under the
Ming Dynasty, which ruled from 1368
to 1644, China shut herself off completely from the West and the
Silk Road was
abandoned.
As the foregoing events unfolded, Chinese Turkestan's Silk
Road Buddhist civilization
vanished. Even in those hearty oasis cities that survived, a new
religion with radically different art
and culture had replaced Buddhism.
Chinese Turkestan's Buddhist civilization slept
unrediscovered for centuries. Finally, in the
second half of the 19th century there were stirrings. For a long
time rumors had been circulating
that rich treasures in gold and other valuables lay under the
Takla Makan sands among the ruins of
ancient cities. Folklore had it that these ancient cities had
been destroyed without warning in
punishment for the wickedness of their inhabitants. Mirza
Haidar, a 16th century Moslem historian,
passed down a much-told tale of the abrupt end of one such city,
Kalak. There, the story goes, the
muezzin, while calling the faithful to prayer in the midst of a
storm, observed sand raining down
with such force that it was covering over the entire city except
for the mosque and the minaret on
which he stood. Looking down, the muezzin saw the sand rising
rapidly. Terrified, he finished his
prayers, jumped down the few feet now separating him from the
rising sand and, joined by the
mullah, ran for his life, leaving their fellows trapped in the
mosque to suffer the wrath of God for
their transgressions.
Fanciful tales of sudden destruction of wealthy cities
encouraged speculation that buried under
the sands were lavish treasures hastily abandoned when the
inhabitants fled or met an untimely end.
However, prevailing folklore had it that anyone who tried to
retrieve these treasures from their
resting places would die a violent death or otherwise suffer at
the hands of demon desert gods. In
the 16th century, a tyranical Amir of Kashgar used slave labor to
conduct a treasure hunt in the
ancient city kingdom of Khotan. Years later--to the surprise of
noone--he was beheaded in his
sleep.
Starting in the second half of the 19th century both Britain
and Russia began to take an
interest in Chinese Turkestan. British policymakers in London
and Calcutta viewed with alarm
Russia's expansion into Central Asia, fearing that it might be
prelude to a Russian advance across
Chinese Turkestan to take India. Britain and Russia kept
watchful eyes on each other. Each
maintained a consular office in Kashgar near China's western
boundary and sent exploratory missions
and traveller-spies into Takla Makan oasis cities. As a
by-product of these clandestine activities, one
British agent passed on reports that after sandstorms some of the
ancient houses of the buried city of
Khotan were left uncovered and local inhabitants often succeeded
in digging out various objects that
had been buried there. Buddhist figurines, ancient tea bricks,
coins and other antiquities began to
appear.
Finally, in 1889, near Kucha on the northern arm of the old
Silk Road, a major event
occurred. Some natives searching for hidden treasure tunnelled
into a dome-like tower. When their
eyes adjusted to the dark, they found themselves in a large room
stacked with old manuscripts.
Guarding one end were a cow and other large animals, all
mummified. When touched, the animals
turned to dust. Although disappointed that they had not found
gold, the treasure hunters carried the
manuscripts in a basket to the home of a local magistrate. There
they were examined by Gulan
Qadir, a wealthy Moslem. Qadir, although unable to read the
manuscripts, purchased several of
them.
In the region at the time was Lieutenant Hamilton Bower, an
English intelligence officer in
the Indian army. Bower heard of the manuscripts in Qadir's
possession and purchased one. He
forwarded the manuscript, which consisted of 51 birch-bark
leaves, to The Society of Bengal in
Calcutta. Although at first deemed unintelligible, it was
eventually deciphered by an eminent
orientalist, Dr. Augustus Hoernle. Written in Sanskrit in the
Brahmi alphabet very likely by Indian
Buddhist monks, the manuscript dealt mainly with medicene and
necromancy and probably dated
from the fifth century A.D. It was one of the oldest writings
known in 1895. It survived solely by
reason of the extreme dryness of the desert climate where it was
found, the same reason the Dead
Sea Scrolls have survived.
Eventually the other manuscripts that Gulan Qadir had
purchased also found their way to
Hoernle, but they passed through various different hands and
travelled diverse, and in some cases
highly circuitous, routes along the way. One set of manuscripts
took seven years to reach Hoernle
and crossed the Karakoram three times in the process.
News of the Bower find triggered a race for manuscripts.
George McCartney, the British
Consul in Kashgar, on instructions from Calcutta, and Nicolai
Petrovsky, the Russian Consul in
Kashgar, apparently on his own initiative and probably with the
aim of thwarting McCartney, each
let it be known that he stood ready to purchase manuscripts
recovered from the buried cities of the
Takla Makan. Manuscripts from several regions began to show up.
Some were written in unknown
languages but in recognized scripts. In time, most of these were
deciphered, a process that led to the
discovery of previously unknown extinct languages. However,
several groups of manuscripts from
the Khotan region were even in scripts which were unknown. Hard
as they tried the scholars could
not decipher any of these. Manuscripts in this category that
McCartney purchased for the British he
acquired from a villager named Islam Akhun. Whenever he
purchased a manuscript, McCartney
would ask the seller to describe the site where it had been found
and would keep a detailed record of
the answer. Hoernle, in an article written for a scholarly
magazine, meticulously described all of the
manuscripts that had come to him in the nine years following
publication of the Bower manuscript--
and their provenance. In that article, he discussed the
possibility that the mysterious group of
manuscripts purchased from Akhun might be forgeries; scholars at
the British Museum had also
raised that suspicion. After thoroughly reviewing and weighing
the evidence, however, Hoernle
rejected this hypothesis. There matters stood until, as we shall
see, another scholar took the situation
in hand.
The first major explorer on the scene was Sven Hedin, a
Swede. Hedin, a man of great
physical courage and stamina, is described by historian David
Gilmour as "a ruthless and sinister
figure whose principal hero (until he met Hitler) was the last
German Kaiser." Hedin was a bullhead
as well. In December, 1894, ignoring warnings that the Pamir
were virtually impassable in winter,
Hedin chose that route for his first crossing into Chinese
Turkestan. In the pass through the
mountains the temperature fell to minus 37 degrees, freezing the
mercury in his thermometer and
causing him temporarily to lose his sight. He had to be led
blindfolded on the descent down the
mountains into Kashgar. It was weeks before he
recovered.
Hedin's first expedition into the Takla Makan was a
disaster. Fifteen days into the expedition
Hedin learned that there was only a two-day supply of water. His
men had failed at the last well to
carry out his order to fill the tanks carried by the camels with
the 10-day supply that would clearly
have lasted them until they reached the Khotan River. The guide
assured Hedin that they would
reach the Khotan in two days. Hedin was skeptical, but,
headstrong as usual, decided to press on.
Matters went from bad to worse. Before the ordeal was over, two
of his men and seven of eight
camels were dead. Hedin and the other two survivors came
precariously close to losing their lives as
well. One of several lessons learned by Hedin and those who
followed was to schedule Takla
Makan expeditions for winter rather than summer. It had been so
hot that Hedin and his men had
had to travel by night and dig themselves into the sand by
day.
Seven months later, in December, 1895, Hedin set out from
Kashgar on a second expedition
headed for Khotan. Skirting the western and southern perimeter
of the Takla Makan, he and his men
arrived in 21 days. Nearby at the site of ancient Yotkan he
managed to find or purchase more than
500 artefacts that had been washed out of the red soil the
previous summer when the melting of
mountain snows had caused the land below to flood. Included
among the pieces he brought back
were terra cotta images of Buddha and a copper cross.
More importantly, he learned from natives that in the desert
northeast of Khotan were the
ruins of an important buried city that they called Takla Makan.
With native guides, Hedin set off.
After 10 days of travel under conditions of extreme cold, he
began to see wooden posts and sections
of wall until finally on one of the walls Hedin noticed stucco
figures of Buddha and Boddhisattvas.
Although he did not know what city he had found, he did know that
he had discovered remains of
Chinese Turkestan's high Buddhist civilization. Perhaps
surprisingly, Hedin stayed only long enough
for a brief dig and then returned to Khotan to work on his maps.
In his autobiography, My Life
as an Explorer, Hedin explains:
The scientific research I willingly left to the specialists.
In a few years they too would be
sinking their spades into the loose sand. For me it was
sufficient to have made the im-
portant discovery and to have won in the heart of the desert
a new field for archaeology.
Hedin's last exploration in Chinese Turkestan also ended in
a dramatic discovery. During the
winter of 1900, in a dig at a site in the Lop Nor Desert at the
eastern end of the Takla Makan where
during the preceding winter one of his men had stumbled upon some
magnificent carvings, Hedin
and his men found ancient wood and paper manuscripts, many of
which dated from the third century.
The manuscripts identified the city as Lou-Lan, a garrison town
founded to guard and defend China's
ancient western frontier and the Silk Road. The city had fallen
to barbarians in the beginning of the
fourth century and had probably been abandoned to the desert
shortly after that.
The next major westerner to come upon the scene was the
Hungarian-born Aurel Stein, later
to become a naturalized British citizen and a knight of the
realm. Stein learned from Hedin. He
scheduled his expeditions for winter rather than summer (wise to
be sure, but eventually frostbite
would claim the toes on Stein's right foot.) Stein relied
heavily on Hedin's published writings and
superb maps. Setting out from his adopted home in Kashmir on May
31, 1900, Stein and his party
made the eight-week trek over the Karakoram into Chinese
Turkestan, proceeding to Kashgar. There
he spent the summer as a guest at McCartney's home, while
Petrovsky, ever playing at the Great
Game that fed off the mutual suspicion and hostility between
Russia and Britain, tried to persuade
local Chinese officials that Stein, although travelling on a
Chinese passport, was really a British spy
trying to pass himself off as an archaeologist.
With the arrival of autumn, Stein and his party left Kashgar
for the Takla Makan, setting off
along the southern arm of the old Silk Road for Khotan. Stein
was skeptical of Hoernle's
conclusions regarding the authenticity of the mysterious
manuscripts purchased from Islam Akhun.
Akhun had told McCartney that he found the manuscripts among the
ruins of an ancient cemetery 10
miles long in the desert between Guma and Khotan. Stein would be
passing through this area and
intended to check out Akhun's story. On arrival in Guma, he was
not surprised to discover that there
were no ruins of a large cemetery at the site identified by Akhun
and that none of the villagers was
aware of ancient manuscripts having been found at any cemetery in
the area. Clearly Akhun had lied,
but that did not necessarily mean that the manuscripts he sold
were forgeries. It was possible that
Akhun had stumbled upon an ancient library full of manuscripts
and was trying to conceal its
whereabouts. Upon arriving in Khotan, Stein arranged to have
small parties of local treasure seekers
scour the area for ancient writings and other antiquities while
he attended to some surveying. Upon
his return to Khotan a month later, the treasure seekers were
awaiting him with their finds. Islam
Akhun was not among them. Indeed, Akhun had suddenly left town.
The treasure seeker whose finds
most interested Stein was an old villager named Turdi, who
offered Stein pieces of fresco bearing
Indian Brahmi letters, an ancient paper bearing Central Asian
cursive Brahmi writing and fragments
of Buddhist stucco reliefs. Turdi informed Stein that he had
found these antiquities among desert
ruins at a Takla Makan site called Dandan-uilik about 10 days'
march to the northeast of Khotan.
Stein prepared to start his archaelogical expedition
there.
The expedition was spectacularly successful. Three weeks of
digging at Dandan-uilik
uncovered the ruins of a building containing an entire library of
Buddhist manuscripts written in
Sanskrit. Among the ruins of another building were documents
written in Chinese which revealed
that Dandan-uilik's original name had been Li-sieh and the dates
on which indicated that it had been
abandoned around the end of the eighth century. Here also Stein
found some fine paintings on wood
reflecting Indian, Persian and Chinese influences. A key
discovery were the remains of a Buddhist
temple containing numerous frescoes, hanging paintings executed
on cloth and stucco reliefs. Stein
photographed and labelled these to record where they had been
found. He and his men then sawed
the frescoes and stucco reliefs out of the wall and packed them
with care for transport to the British
Museum along with the manuscripts and hanging paintings. In all,
Stein excavated 14 buildings at
Dandan-uilik. He and his men used ancient timber from the town's
buried orchards as fuel for the
fires that kept them from freezing to death at night.
After Dandan-uilik, Stein and his men found their way to
Niya. Here they exhumed some
excellently preserved wooden tablets. These tablets, written in
an ancient Indian Prakit language,
were in a script used in northwest India in the centuries around
the beginning of the Common Era.
Some bore clay seals with portraits of Pallas Athene and other
Greek deities executed in classical
western style. In an ancient rubbish heap, Stein dug up wood
manuscripts bearing Chinese
characters. These manuscripts and numerous coins dating from the
third century A.D. led Stein to
conclude that the town had been abandoned at about that
time.
Continuing east across the desert, Stein found near Endere
the ruins of a Buddhist temple
containing sacred Tibetan Buddhist manuscripts that were at the
time the oldest known Tibetan
writing. At Rawak, he found strewn on the ground near an imposing
stupa a number of colossal
figures that had apparently been found and discarded by treasure
seekers. Stein and his men dug up
91 more colossal statues, each representing Buddha or a
Boddhisattva. Because of their size and
condition, none of the huge statues could be removed; so Stein
photographed them and had them
reburied. It was his intention to arrange someday for the statues
to be displayed in a future museum
of the Khotan Region. Stein would return to Rawak five years
later only to find that treasure seekers
had dug up and smashed all the statues in their search for hidden
treasure.
Returning to Khotan before departing for London with his
treasure trove of history and art,
Stein managed to confront Islam Akhun. Akhun initially took the
position that, in selling manuscripts
to McCartney, he had acted only as agent for other villagers who
had provided him with the
manuscripts. When Stein read him statements he had made to
McCartney to the effect that he had
been present at the sites when the manuscripts were found, Akhun
reluctantly confessed that he and
his partner, who had been selling manuscripts to Petrovsky, had
forged the manuscripts. Initially,
they had tried to imitate the cursive Brahmi found in genuine
manuscripts, but that took a lot of
time. With sales booming, they gained confidence, and each
started to invent his own "script
characters." Moreover, to satisfy the rising demand, they started
to use block printing for their
forgeries. They purchased paper locally, stained it yellow or
brown and then hung it over a smoky
fire for "proper aging." Akhun's eyes bulged when Stein showed
him glossy photographs of Akhun's
handiwork printed in a magazine.
The reports of Stein's discoveries on the southern arm of
the old Silk Road caused a sensation
in the archaeological and art worlds. Rival European orientalists
sprang into action. German
expeditions led by staff of the Berlin Ethnological Museum
focussed on the region around Turfan on
the northern arm of the old Silk Road. In 1898 a Russian, Dmitri
Klementz, returning from this
region with frescoes and manuscripts, reported having also seen
more than 130 Buddhist cave
temples, some containing well-preserved paintings. The Germans
seemed assured of a rich harvest of
treasures in the Turfan Region. The first German expedition,
begun in 1902 and led by Albert
Grunwedel, lasted one year and returned with a haul of 46 cases
of Buddhist frescoes, manuscripts
and sculptures. Although a success, this result was dwarfed by
the following three German
expeditions which were led, except for a brief interval, by
Albert von Le Coq.
Initially a temporary replacement for Grunwedel who had
taken ill, von Le Coq was a warm,
engaging man who once risked his own life to save that of a
travel companion he hardly knew by
crossing the Karakoram for medical assistance three times in 14
days--the last in a blinding
snowstorm-- well after the passes had begun to ice over for
winter. Von Le Coq set out from Berlin
in September, 1904, with Theodore Bartus, the Museum's handyman.
On November 18, they reached
Karakhoja, a ruined city to the east of Turfan and the ancient
Uighar capital. They learned that local
farmers had demolished many ancient buildings in search of
frescoes whose pigments, the farmers
believed, made good fertilizer. However, they found a fresco of
an imposing male figure with a halo,
surrounded by male and female acolytes. Scholars are virtually
certain that the figure is Manes, who
in the third century founded the Manichean faith. The fresco is
believed to be the first painting of
Manes ever found. The Manichean faith, mystically centered on the
forces of light and darkness,
good and evil, was anathema to Christians, Moslems and
Zoroastrians. Manes was crucified as a
heretic after an unfortunate debate with Zoroastrian priests. The
ruins at Karakhoja reveal a
flourishing eighth century Manichean community. Since virtually
no traces of Manichean religion, art
or culture remain elsewhere in the world, the manuscripts,
frescoes, hanging cloth paintings and
textiles taken by von Le Coq from Karakhoja provide scholars with
a rare source for learning about
this now-extinct ascetic faith and its mystic artist-founder.
Unfortunately, a peasant--mindful of the
sin of heresy--dumped the better part of Karakhoja's Manichean
library into the river. Outside the
walls of the old city, the Germans were startled to find the
remains of a small Nestorian Christian
church. The Nestorian sect denied that Christ could be at the
same time both human and
divine.
From Karakhoja von Le Coq and Bartus travelled to the great
monastery complex at Bezeklik.
It is here that von Le Coq earned his infamous reputation among
the Chinese as a shallow plunderer.
The Bezeklik complex consists of more than100 temples carved into
the rock. The Buddhist monks
who built it took pains to exploit natural features that would
conceal it from the view of passers-by.
To enter the monastery one had to climb a winding pathway leading
along a cliff top and then go
down a steep stairway to the monastery. Between the monastery and
the only spot from which a
passer-by might see it was a wall obstructing it from
view.
Finding that the caves at the south end of the complex
contained murals ruined by smoke
from goatherd fires, von Le Coq focused his attention on the
caves at the north end. These were
filled with sand which, covering the walls, protected them from
smoke. Von Le Coq entered one of
the largest and, as he climbed atop the sand along one of the
walls, set off a small avalanche. This
revealed the walls on both sides. On these walls, according to
von Le Coq, were "splendid paintings
as fresh as if the artist had only just finished them." He called
in Bartus to share his
excitement.
Removing enormous quantities of sand, they uncovered six
huge frescoes of Buddhist monks,
three on each side of the entrance. They went on to uncover
frescoes with Indian figures in yellow
robes with their names written in Central Asian Brahmi script.
Others in violet robes were from
Eastern Asia, their names written in Uighar or Chinese
characters. There were giant frescoes of
Buddhas of different periods. Some showed men and women of
different nationalities offering gifts
to the Buddha, including Indian princes, Brahmans, Persians and a
red-haired, blue-eyed European.
There were frescoes of grotesque Indian gods, demons,
human-headed birds and other exotic
figures.
Von Le Coq and Bartes sawed most of them out of the wall,
packed them with infinite care
sandwich style and caused them to be transported to Berlin where
they would take up an entire room
of the Ethnological Museum. (The Germans' later finds would fill
an additional 13
rooms.)
Von Le Coq planned to proceed from Bezeklik to Dunhuang,
site of The Caves of the
Thousand Buddhas. At this juncture, however, he received a
telegram advising that Grunwedel was
on his way and von Le Coq and Bartus were to meet him in Kashgar.
The journey to Dunhuang
would have to be postponed.
Stein would be the first to The Caves of the Thousand
Buddhas. These rock temples and
chapels--at one time more than 1,000 in number--were hewn out of
the face of a cliff and stretch for
more than a mile. Because this cave complex was located near
Dunhuang, China's Silk Road
gateway to the west, it was a famous sanctuary for prayer and
thanksgiving. Merchants, pilgrims
and other travellers about to leave Dunhuang for the perilous
trip west through the Takla Makan or
safely returned from the trip east through the desert, came to
these caves to pray for safe passage or
give thanks. The caves, called by writer Mildred Cable "a great
art gallery in the desert," are
bursting with frescoes, sculptures and hanging paintings on cloth
or wood, many of which were
commissioned by Silk Road merchants in gratitude for their
survival and commercial
success.
Stein arrived in Dunhuang in March, 1907. He had just found
in the frozen Lop Desert a line
of ancient watch towers which he believed--correctly--to be a
2,000 year old extension of the Great
Wall. Unlike Bezeklik, Karakhoja and the buried cities near
Khotan, The Caves of the Thousand
Buddhas were still sacred sites. There would be no sawing out or
removal of art from these caves.
However, soon after his arrival in Dunhuang, it was reported to
Stein that a Taoist priest, Wang
Yuan-lu, the self-appointed guardian of the caves, had
accidentally stumbled upon a huge library of
ancient manuscripts walled up in one of the caves. Stein and
Chiang, his Chinese assistant,
immediately travelled the 12 miles to the caves only to find that
Abbot Wang, as the priest was
known, had set out on a begging pilgrimmage and would not return
for several weeks. They were
able to confirm, however, that Wang had found a walled-up hoard
of ancient manuscripts, that they
were still in the cave where they had been found and that the
manuscript cave had been fitted out
with a door to which only Wang had the key.
During the interval until Wang's return Stein dug again in
the desert, this time locating the
original site of China's Jade Gate through which all incoming and
outgoing Silk Road traffic had
passed. Returning to the caves, Stein began a series of
encounters with Wang ending in a transaction
for which Chinese scholars charge Stein with theft by trickery
and compare him unfavorably to Lord
Elgin who removed priceless Parthenon sculptures to England.
Initially, Stein found Wang guarded
and suspicious. Learning that Wang was devoting his life and
worldly goods to remodelling one of
the ancient Buddhist caves, Stein tried to break the ice by
asking to tour that cave and pretending to
admire Wang's renovation although he considered it an utterly
repugnant desecration. Stein later
learned that Wang shared Stein's reverence for Hsuan-tsang, the
great Chinese traveller-pilgrim of the
seventh century who wrote about his journey along the southern
arm of the Silk Road through the
Takla Makan on his way home from India to China. Stein told Wang
that Stein had been travelling
the identical route that Hsuan-tsang had taken on that great
journey 13 centuries earlier. Wang was
so moved that he took Stein to view some paintings he had
commissioned depicting Hsuan-tsang's
life. One showed Hsuan-tsang, loaded with sacred Buddhist
manuscripts, stranded on a river bank in
a storm, with a turtle swimming over to carry the manuscripts to
safety. Stein hoped that the
symbolism of this painting would not be lost on Wang and left
Chiang with the priest to see if he
could persuade him to at least lend Stein some of the
manuscripts. Wang loaned two. After working
with them over night, Chiang came to Stein in amazement,
reporting that they were Chinese
translations of Buddhist sutras bearing colophons stating that
they had been translated by Hsuan-
tsang from originals he had brought back from India. It was not
hard for Stein to persuade the
superstitious Wang that it was Hsuan-tsang who had caused these
sacred texts to be delivered to
Stein so that Stein could return them to India from where they
had been taken. Wang responded by
removing the wall concealing the other manuscripts. Stein was
astonished to see that there were more
than 500 cubic feet of them. There were manuscripts in Chinese,
Sanskrit, Sogdian, Tibetan, Runic-
Turki and other languages. Without objection from Wang, Stein and
Chiang removed some of the
manuscripts to Stein's tent each night for further review.
Eventually Wang agreed to allow
manuscripts in certain categories to be taken to England in
exchange for a "substantial" donation to
his temple. The amount donated was 130 English pounds.
Because there were so many manuscripts --the vast majority
in Chinese-- and because
Chinese was not one of his languages, Stein did not know what
many of his manuscripts were or
what they said. One turned out to be the earliest known printed
book, an edition of The
Diamond Sutra, printed in the year 868. It is on exhibit in
the British Museum next to a book
printed much later, the Gutenberg Bible. One of the Dunhuang
library manuscripts contained a form
letter of apology for a guest who has over-imbibed. It was
translated as follows:
Yesterday, having drunk too much, I was so intoxicated as to
pass all bounds; but none of the rude and coarse language I used
was uttered in a conscious state. The next morning, after hearing
others speak on the subject, I realized what had happened,
whereupon I was overwhelmed with confusion and ready to sink into
the ground with shame.
The letter goes on to say that the writer will appear in person
to make a proper apology. The same
manuscript has a suggested form for the host's reply. It was
translated thus:
Yesterday, Sir, while in your cups, you so far overstepped
the observances of polite
society as to forfeit the name of gentleman, and made me
wish to have nothing more to
do with you. But since you now express your shame and regret
for what has occurred, I
would suggest that we meet for a friendly talk.
The next westerner on the scene, the French archaeologist
Paul Pelliot, also struck a deal with
Abbot Wang to purchase manuscripts from the Dunhuang library.
Unlike Stein, Pelliot was fluent in
Chinese; so he was able to be more selective in the manuscripts
he chose for purchase.
The last of the great westerners to appear was Langdon
Warner of Harvard's Fogg Museum.
Warner, who was an art historian as well as an archaeologist,
arrived at The Caves of the Thousand
Buddhas in 1923 after a fierce ordeal in the desert's icy winter.
In 1921, 13 years after Pelliot's visit,
there had been an unfortunate development. Four hundred White
Russian soldiers had escaped from
the Bolsheviks into China and been interned by the Chinese
authorities at Dunhuang. They were
quartered in The Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, which, in the
troops' boredom and ignorance, they
had extensively defaced. In a letter to his wife, Warner wrote:
. . . [A]cross some of these lovely faces are scribbled the
numbers of a Russian regiment,
and from the mouth of a Buddha where he sits to deliver the
Lotus Law flows some Slav
obscenity.
There had been such severe damage that photographs by Stein
and Pelliot's photographer
were now the sole surviving evidence of many of the paintings.
Again to his wife, Warner wrote:
My job is to break my neck to preserve anything and
everything I can from this quick
ruin. It has been stable enough for centuries, but the end
is in sight now. . . . As for the
morals of such vandalism, I would strip the place bare
without a flicker. Who knows
when Chinese troops may be quartered here as the Russians
were? And how long before
the Mohameddan rebellion that everyone expects?
Warner had with him a chemical for removing wall paintings
that had been developed in
Italy. He had intended to test it by removing a few fragments for
lab analysis; but now he had a
larger goal. To his surprise, Abbot Wang did not object to his
removing frescoes so long as there
was a "handsome present." Wang was less cooperative regarding
sculptures but finally allowed
Warner to take a three-foot kneeling saint from the Tang
Dynasty.
Because the winter temperatures had dropped below zero,
Warner had trouble removing
frescoes. The chemical solution froze before it could penetrate
the plaster; and the glue-soaked gauze
onto which Warner intended to peel off the paintings set hard
before the transfer could be made.
However, Warner was eventually able to proceed. He took 12
paintings of modest size, leaving the
earliest and finest in place.
Two years later, in May, 1925, Warner returned to China,
intending to spend eight months in
Dunhuang. On May 31, however, a British policeman in the treaty
port of Shanghai shot and killed
11 rioting Chinese students. A wave of hostility to foreigners
swept China. Warner had to cancel his
expedition. The authorities made it clear that the Chinese no
longer needed foreigners to explore
their own country.
But this came too late. Priceless manuscripts, works of art
and artefacts from Chinese
Turkestan's high Buddhist civilization are spread among 30
institutions in 12 countries throughout
the world. Berlin's Ethnological Museum was destroyed by allied
bombing in the Second World War.
Although 60 per cent of its extensive collection from
Chinese Turkestan had been moved to
safety, 28 of the largest paintings--almost all from
Bezeklik--had been cemented to the museum walls
in iron frames and could not be removed. They were destroyed in
the bombing. At the British
Museum, little of the Chinese Turkestan collection is ever
exhibited. It appears to have lost out to
other antiquities in the competition for limited floor space.
Nowhere is there any mention of
Stein.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hopkirk, Peter, Foreign Devils on the Silk Road
(1980).
Hopkirk, Peter, The Great Game (1990).
Mirsky, Jeanette, Sir Aurel Stein-Archaeological Explorer
(1977).
Whitfield, Roderick, and Farrer, Anne, Caves of the Thousand
Buddhas-Chinese Art from the
Silk Route.
Meyer, Karl E., and Brysac, Shareen Blair, Tournament of
Shadows-The Great Game and
the Race for Empire in Central Asia. (1999)