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)