File:Ruins of desert Cathay - personal narrative of explorations in Central Asia and westernmost China (1912) (14782814692).jpg

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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half feet, and bore on each side well-designed carvings in bold relievo. Monsters of the com-posite type, which Gandhara borrowed from the Westand which ancient Khotan art seems particularly to havecherished, with winged bodies, crocodiles heads, and thelegs of deer, filled the end panels. The panel in the centreshowed a vase holding branches with leaves and fiowerspendent, the whole arranged after the fashion of an Indo-Corinthian capital. To move this massive piece of carvedtimber as a whole would have been quite impracticable.So Lwas glad that my Sapper corporals skill permittedme to have the panels carefully separated along the beadornaments marking the divisions. Then the weight ofeach portion had to be reduced by hollowing out the corein order to make up loads which a pony could carry. Thesawing was effected so neatly that I felt sure that whenthis fine specimen of architectural carving was set upagain in the British Museum it would need skilled eyesto discover the joining. 292
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cH.xxv ARCHITECTURAL CARVINGS 293 The room at the south-west corner of the same housewas so deeply buried under a dune that it had preservedits walls and roofing practically intact. The smoke-begrimed plaster of the walls, the two outer ones of whichwere built of solid stamped clay, and the absence of anyopening except a narrow window below the ceiling showedthat it was an apartment specially affected as a warmcorner during the winter months. It was, perhaps, dueto the darkness which prevailed here that I found, lyingon the top of the fireplace, a collection of small but per-fectly preserved Kharoshthi records on wood, apparentlyin the main domestic accounts and memos (Fig. 97). Other-wise the room had been cleared completely. But the lastoccupier evidently forgot to look to the high mantelpiecewhich he had used as a shelf for petty papers. From this camp I also revisited the ruin containingthat precious rubbish heap (N. xv.) which I had clearedwith such rich rewards in 1901. My thoug

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