Foreign Devils on the Silk Road

by Peter Hopkirk

  It was now Stein’s turn to suffer misfortune. While mapping a glacier high in the Kun Lun mountains at a temperature of minus sixteen degrees Fahrenheit he became suddenly aware that his feet had lost all sensation. Soon this turned to severe pain, and he realised that he was suffering from frostbite. His medical manual advised rubbing snow on the afflicted area as an emergency treatment. He knew that if this failed to restore the circulation then gangrene would set in and surgery would be required. The snow treatment worked on the left foot, but not the right. Realising that his life was now threatened, Stein immediately abandoned his surveying work and set hurriedly off for Ladakh by yak, camel and finally on an improvised litter slung between two ponies. After days of agonising travel through the mountains he reached Leh where a Moravian missionary doctor amputated the toes of his right foot. The spectre which haunted him now was over his future. The pain was not so much a problem, for his stoicism was legendary. But had the operation saved his foot, or were his days as an explorer over? After many anxious weeks, during which his wounds at first refused to heal, Stein learned to his immense relief that the operation had been just in time.

  The cost, in pain and anxiety, had been great, but it was perhaps not too high a price to pay for the triumphant homecoming which now awaited him. The King invested him with a C.I.E. (raised to a knighthood two years later), the Royal Geographical Society awarded him its Gold Medal, both Oxford and Cambridge conferred honorary degrees on him, while Germany (doubtless unaware of his strictures on von Le Coq’s methods) hailed his achievements with a large cash prize. In Budapest he was lionised as a son who had made good. To add to his pleasure, Chiang, whose shrewd handling of the Abbot Wang had done so much to secure for Stein the Tun-huang library, received the reward he wanted, the Chinese secretaryship to the British consulate in Kashgar.

  Even now Stein’s work was not over. He had to find suitably qualified scholars to work on the thousands of manuscripts and books, written in half a dozen languages, which he had either excavated or purchased from Wang, as well as restorers to disentangle and clean the several hundred temple banners and other T’ang paintings from the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas. Before long some eighteen international experts – including Hoernle, Chavannes and Lionel Giles – were at work translating and appraising the literary treasures of Tun-huang. On top of that he had to help select and prepare some of the star items from his collection for a special exhibition of it to be held at the British Museum; assist in the division of spoils between his sponsors in Bloomsbury and those in Calcutta; and finally start work on Ruins of Desert Cathay, his two-volume account of the expedition.

  Despite the wealth of other art treasures which Stein removed from China during three expeditions (the third of which was still to come), it is with the secret library at Tun-huang that his name will always be linked. For this there are two principal reasons. The first obviously is because of its spectacular nature – the discovery has been compared to that of the Dead Sea Scrolls, also found in a cave. The second arises from the controversial circumstances in which Stein acquired the library, exposing him – like Lord Elgin – to everlasting criticism. It is perhaps for this reason that the British Museum seems to be at such pains to obliterate his memory. Unlike its other archaeological heroes, such as Layard and Rassam, whose contributions are proudly acknowledged, the visitor will look in vain for a portrait – or even a mention – of Stein in the Central Asian gallery where a pitifully small selection of his finds are currently displayed.

  Regardless of the rights and wrongs of Stein’s acquisition of the Tun-huang manuscripts, it is worth a brief look at some of the highlights of this great library. The most famous item to emerge from that cluttered chamber is undoubtedly the Diamond Sutra. Its fame has nothing to do with its text, for there are innumerable copies of it about (including more than five hundred, complete or incomplete, in Stein’s Tun-huang haul alone). However, this one also happens to be the earliest known printed book, produced well over a thousand years ago from blocks. In a contemporary Chinese work on the history of printing, published in 1961 by the National Library of Peking, it is described thus: ‘The Diamond Sutra, printed in the year 868 … is the world’s earliest printed book, made of seven strips of paper joined together with an illustration on the first sheet which is cut with great skill.’ The writer adds: ‘This famous scroll was stolen over fifty years ago by the Englishman Ssu-t’an-yin [Stein] which causes people to gnash their teeth in bitter hatred.’ It is currently on display in the British Museum, only a few paces from the West’s most famous book, the Gutenberg Bible. The Tun-huang scroll, some sixteen feet long, bears an exact date – May 11, 868 – as well as the name of the man who commissioned and distributed it. This makes him not, as is sometimes claimed, the world’s earliest known printer, but the earliest known publisher.

  The bulk of the manuscripts found in Wang’s secret cache were in Chinese – some seven thousand complete and a further six thousand fragments. Half a century was to pass before these (and then only the complete ones) had been catalogued. In his monograph, Six Centuries at Tunhuang, Dr Lionel Giles, who carried out this titanic task, calculates that in all he had to wade through between ten and twenty miles of closely written rolls of text. Because Stein could not read Chinese, and Chiang was ignorant of Buddhist literature, very many of the texts they carried away duplicated one another. For example, there were more than a thousand copies, or fragments, of the Lotus Sutra, many of them admittedly fine examples of early calligraphy. Despite this, the manuscripts included not only long-lost texts and variant versions of surviving ones, but also many totally new works in languages known and unknown to Western scholars.

  Among the many curiosities to emerge from this vast archive is a thousand-year-old ‘model’ letter of apology in Chinese designed for inebriated guests to send to their hosts. Dr Giles translates it thus: ‘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 realised what had happened, whereupon I was overwhelmed with confusion and ready to sink into the ground with shame …’ The letter adds that the writer will soon come to apologise in person for his ‘transgression’. A suitable reply for the outraged host is suggested, which Giles translates 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 again for a friendly talk …’ (Giles also came upon what appears to be an invitation to a football – literally ‘strike-ball’ – match.)

  Another well-known British orientalist, Arthur Waley, has incorporated some twenty-six Chinese ballads and stories from the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas into an anthology, Ballads and Stories from Tun-huang. While apparently happy to make use of Stein’s manuscripts, he expresses strong disapproval of the method of their acquisition, referring to the affair as ‘the sacking of the Tun-huang library’. He sets out to explain why the Chinese feel so bitter about the way the manuscripts were removed to Europe by Stein ‘acting on behalf of the British Museum and the Government of India’. He goes on: ‘I think the best way to understand their feelings on the subject is to imagine how we should feel if a Chinese archaeologist were to come to England, discover a cache of medieval mss at a ruined monastery, bribe the custodian to part with them, and carry them off to Peking.’ He ignores, however, the question of what eventually might have happened to the cache had it remained in the hands of Wang – ‘that precious old humbug’.

  But the Tun-huang story was not yet over. Stein’s blandishments to Wang would not be, by any means, the last that the priest had to wrestle with. Hot on the Englishman’s heels came the formidable Frenchman Pelliot.

  13. Pelliot – the Gentle Art of Making Enemies

  * * *

&nb
sp; Despite their colonial toe-hold on the continent (in Hanoi they even had an archaeological institute) the French were late in joining in the Central Asian treasure hunt, although they were not the last to try their luck. By the time Pelliot reached Chinese Turkestan in August 1906, the British, Swedes, Germans and Japanese had all been there at least once, the Beresovskys were nearing the end of their stay, and Stein was already back for more. The belated arrival of the French on the Silk Road is perhaps explained by their discovery, not long before, of a once-rich civilisation in the jungles of Indo-China – including the magnificent ruins at Angkor – which had been keeping their own orientalists busy. But whatever the reason for their dilatoriness, they were now determined to get their share. ‘If France was to do nothing,’ the distinguished French orientalist Sylvain Levi exhorted his fellow savants, ‘we would be betraying our glorious tradition.’ A powerful committee was set up, headed by Emile Senart, another leading oriental scholar and member of the French Academy, and backed by the Minister of Public Instruction. This had the support of no fewer than nine leading bodies devoted to scientific, geographical or cultural studies. It was decided to dispatch a three-man expedition to Chinese Turkestan as soon as possible. Chosen to lead this was a brilliant young sinologist of twenty-seven named Paul Pelliot, a former pupil of Levi’s now on the staff of Hanoi’s celebrated (but later to be embroiled in controversy) Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient. His companions were Dr Louis Vaillant, an army medical officer and old friend of his, who would be responsible for mapping, collecting natural history specimens and other scientific work, and Charles Nouette, who was the expedition’s photographer.

  In addition to Pelliot’s linguistic genius – he was at home in some thirteen languages – as a very young man he had won the Legion of Honour during the siege of the foreign legations in Peking in the summer of 1900. Trapped there at the age of twenty-one by the Boxer uprising while searching for Chinese books for the Ecole library, he was involved in two exploits which won him both praise and criticism. One was his daring capture, with the aid of two sailors, of a huge Boxer war standard, an act which greatly enraged the enemy. In his siege diary, published subsequently, there is a photograph of him proudly holding his trophy. The other exploit occurred during a temporary ceasefire when he climbed over the barricade announcing that he was going to have tea with the rebels. For several hours his fate was discussed, and his bravado condemned, by the besieged Europeans. But eventually, after being seen to take leave of the enemy with great displays of cordiality, he returned laden with gifts of fruit. He had told them, he said, that the Europeans’ morale was extremely high, but that they lacked fresh fruit.

  Pelliot’s diary, much of it scribbled under fire, reveals a courageous but hot-headed young man always in the thick of the fray. He is fiercely critical of many of the senior diplomats, hinting at their cowardice and incompetence. It is not surprising, therefore, that some of them found him bumptious. (Even Stein, who greatly admired him as a scholar, described him some years later as ‘a bit too self-centred’.) One French officer, on the other hand, wrote: ‘Pelliot, the youngest of the volunteers, is adored by everybody, and, because of his youth and courage, we forgive him for getting carried away at times.’ Whether one liked him or was irritated by him, it seems that it was hard to ignore him. On his return to Hanoi, and still only twenty-two, he was made Professor of Chinese at the Ecole. At the same time he began to review – often very critically – the works of other sinologists in learned journals and in the Ecole’s own bulletin. ‘The gentle art of making enemies …’ he once called this. Here perhaps are clues as to why, some nine years later, he would find himself victim of a vicious and concerted campaign in France when he returned in triumph from his Central Asian expedition.

  Their preparations now complete, Pelliot and his two companions left Paris on June 17, 1906, travelling by rail via Moscow to Tashkent where they were held up for two months awaiting the arrival of their heavy baggage. Pelliot had used the time to polish up his Russian and also, as we have seen, to study Turki (or Eastern Turkish, as some scholars then called it). Thanks to his amazing gift for languages and prodigious memory, he was soon able to converse easily in the latter. It was this near-unbelievable power of recall that later was to mislead Pelliot’s detractors into challenging some of his claims. The expedition finally reached Kashgar on the last day of August. There they stayed at the Russian consulate-general as guests of Petrovsky’s successor, making diplomatic and other official calls on those mandarins whose goodwill and help they would require. This caused something of a stir, for few western travellers who passed through Kashgar (and certainly none of Pelliot’s rivals) spoke Chinese. Dr Vaillant recalled long afterwards ‘how amazed these high officials were to hear Pelliot speaking fluent and elegant Chinese, quoting from their classics and reading with ease the sentences written on the long scrolls which, in China, adorn all reception rooms’. Above all, they were impressed by his familiarity with what the doctor calls ‘the refined ceremonial practised by a civilisation so proudly aware of its longevity …’. Although all this sounds suspiciously like the young hero of the barricades showing off once again to the natives, it was – as Vaillant points out – soon to pay dividends. For a start they had decided to take with them a yurt (the circular tent of Central Asia) and Pelliot asked the Prefect of Kashgar to try to obtain one for them. ‘When we mentioned this to the Russian consul,’ Vaillant recounts, ‘he laughed at our pretensions.’ He assured the three Frenchmen: ‘They are unobtainable and even if you did find one it would take you six months to get it.’ A week later, to the Russian’s astonishment, the yurt was delivered, whereupon – Vaillant adds – ‘Pelliot immediately got us used to erecting it and living in it in the consulate yard.’

  Their plan was to travel eastwards to Kucha where they proposed to excavate at some length. This would take them past Tumchuq, where Hedin had reported seeing some ruins which he had dismissed as Moslem and not old enough, therefore, to be of interest. After six weeks of preparation at Kashgar, the three Frenchmen set out on the first leg of their journey. A few marches short of Tumchuq an amusing incident occurred when they halted for lunch at the small sub-prefecture of Faizabad. After paying their respects to the sub-prefect, and apologising for being unable to receive a return call from him, they returned to the inn for a hurried meal before moving on. Vaillant picks up the tale: ‘But scarcely had we regained our camp than we heard the three shots from the cannon which meant that the mandarin had left his yamen.’ Moments later Ting, their servant, shouted: ‘Here is the mandarin!’ The Frenchmen were aghast. Vaillant writes: ‘We had nothing prepared for a visit. Pelliot greeted him with profuse apologies and invited him into the reception room. After the customary courtesies we sat down and tried not to show our anxiety. We then saw cups of tea arriving and plates laden with slices of melon and cakes.’ When the meal was over, the mandarin turned to Pelliot with a smile and said: ‘Really, you Europeans certainly know how to travel. I am full of admiration for the way you are able to organise such a reception in the middle of a journey. I am deeply honoured by your delicacy.’ When he had gone, Pelliot immediately began to congratulate Ting on having coped so well. ‘I did nothing,’ he replied. ‘Servants from the yamen brought everything.…’

  The ruins at Tumchuq, far from being Moslem, proved to be those of an early Buddhist monastic city which had flourished until at least the year 800. It was mere chance which led Pelliot to discover this during their brief halt there. Idly prodding the ground with his riding crop, to his astonishment he turned up a figurine which was unmistakably Graeco-Buddhist. Although all their baggage, including their winter clothing, was already on its way to Kucha, Pelliot felt that they had no choice but to stay and excavate further. Six weeks later, numbed with cold but laden with painted sculptures and other finds, they hastened on to Kucha – and the comfort of their fur coats. They had been disappointed to learn that not only the Germans but also (as we shall see) the Rus
sians and Japanese had preceded them to this archaeologically rich area. In the event they found plenty to do in the temples which their rivals had overlooked. Most important to Pelliot was their discovery of a large hoard of Buddhist documents, including many in unknown languages. Some of these proved later to be in the lost language of Kuchean, and were subsequently deciphered by Sylvain Levi.

  After eight fruitful months in Kucha, the French expedition moved on to Urumchi to replenish their stores before making the desert crossing to Tun-huang. At this point their plan was merely to photograph and study the wall-paintings and sculptures in the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, for word of Stein’s great discovery six months earlier had not reached them.