Identifier: ruinsofdesertcat01stei (find matches)
Title: Ruins of desert Cathay : personal narrative of explorations in Central Asia and westernmost China
Year: 1912 (1910s)
Authors: Stein, Aurel, Sir, 1862-1943 Archaeological Survey of India
Subjects:
Publisher: London : Macmillan
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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h that it must be of Han times.But my devoted helpmate, modest in spite of his learning,confessed that palaeography had not been his special fieldof study, and would commit himself only to the cautiousstatement that the characters looked decidedly older thanthose used under the Sung dynasty in the tenth to thetwelfth centuries a.d. Often I chaffed my excellent literatus thereafter aboutthe learned restraint he had shown on that occasion, andhow my own antiquarian * bold shot was destined to proveright! Though Chiang quite correctly read the shortinscription, there was nothing in its contents to give achronological clue. It simply stated that the object towhich the little wooden label had been attached was * theclothes bag of one called Lu Ting-shih. This and theother small relics had turned up within a few square feet,and clearly showed that the ground along the wall, in spiteof its desert character, must have been occupied at points.But at the time it was less easy to form a definite
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153- RUIN OF ANCIENT WATCH-TOWER T. III., NEAR WESTERN END OF TUN-HUANG LIMES.The spot where the first discovery of an early Chinese record on wood was made is marked by the two men in foreground.

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