Recent Discoveries in Chinese Turkestan

Abstract

DURING the last twelve years or so, the attention of scholars has been repeatedly arrested by remarkable discoveries of ancient Hindu manuscripts in Central Asia. In 1889, Lieutenant Bower found an ancient birch-bark manuscript in Kuchãr, in the northern portion of Chinese Turkestan. This “Bower Manuscript “was at once recognised as the oldest Indian manuscript extant. In 1891 and 1892, M. Petrovsky, Imperial Consul-General of Russia at Kashgar, and the Rev. F. Weber, missionary in Leh, Ladakh, made no less important finds of old manuscripts in the region of Kashgar. Again, in 1897, the French traveller M. Dutreuil de Rhins found, in the vicinity of Khotan, some leaves of a very ancient birch-bark manuscript, in which M. Senart recognised fragments of a Prakrit version of the well-known Buddhist text, the Dhammapada. Meanwhile Dr. Hoernle, then principal of the Calcutta Madrasah, to whom we are indebted for a splendid edition of the “Bower Manuscript,” had drawn the attention of the Government of India to the remarkable records of ancient Hindu civilisation to be found in Central Asia, and on his recommendation instructions were issued to the British officials in Kashgar and Ladakh concerning the acquisition of antiquities from Chinese Turkestan, and a “British Collection of Central-Asian Antiquities” was gradually formed at Calcutta.