Paul Pelliot died of cancer in 1945, just two years after Stein, acknowledged not merely as France’s foremost Chinese scholar but by all western sinologists as their master. ‘Without him,’ a French colleague wrote, ‘sinology is left like an orphan.’ That same year witnessed another death. Sir George Macartney, who was trapped by the war at his retirement home in German-occupied Jersey, died that May at the age of seventy-eight, just a few days after the German surrender.
Wang, the wily old Abbot of Tun-huang, had died long before, in 1931, and is buried close to his beloved caves. He ended his days an embittered man, aggrieved because he had been robbed of the money promised (and indeed sent to him) by the Government in compensation for the remaining Tun-huang manuscripts which belatedly it had had removed to Peking. Like so many of those manuscripts on their long journey eastwards, the money, in its turn, had been siphoned off en route, leaving nothing for Wang’s restoration work. Perhaps Wang got the last laugh – if only from beyond the grave. During the 1940s, yet another cache of manuscripts which he had cunningly concealed from the authorities (with an eye no doubt for a rainy day) was discovered in the caves by Chinese archaeologists. When Irene Vincent, an American art historian, visited Tun-huang in 1948 she heard rumours of manuscripts and paintings still ‘cached away’ in houses in the area, while as recently as 1977 a Swedish oriental bookseller was able to offer several Tun-huang manuscripts in his catalogue.
Today Wang’s self-appointed guardianship of the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas has been taken over by the Chinese authorities, who have reinforced the crumbling cliff-face, treated the peeling frescoes, and discovered even earlier ones beneath many of them. Honour, it could be argued, has finally been satisfied. The funds which the authorities promised the old abbot for the restoration of his shrines have at last arrived. Tun-huang is saved.
There is little more to add. Sven Hedin, the man who began it all, outlived everyone who followed him except for Langdon Warner, who was some sixteen years his junior. A lonely and forgotten figure, the great Swedish explorer died in Stockholm in 1952 at the age of eighty-seven, surrounded by the mementoes of a long and remarkable life. Within three more years Warner, the last to enter the race and the only one who really lost it, was also dead.
Today the American would hardly recognise his ‘long old road’. Monasteries and caravanserais have given way to communes and tractor plants. Modern highways link the oasis towns. A new road carries motor traffic over the Karakoram. Very occasionally from the heart of Marco Polo’s demon-infested Desert of Lop is heard the distant thunder of a nuclear test. Even the Taklamakan, once the swallower of entire caravans and most dreaded of all deserts, has lost its terrors. Aircraft and satellites flush out its remaining secrets. Land reclamation schemes eat away at its edges. Chini-Bagh, so long the home of the Macartneys, has come down in the world. Today it is used as a hostel for long-distance lorry drivers, though its bathroom still has its British taps – and a lavatory called ‘Victory’. But the end of that era, so rich in memories, came in the summer of 1979. For that was when the first party of British tourists stepped down from their coach at the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, blinking in the fierce sunlight. The last shred of mystery and romance had finally gone from the Silk Road.
Bibliography of Principal Sources
* * *
Many books and articles have been written about Chinese Central Asia. They embrace travel, archaeology, art, linguistics, politics and history. The following list, although far from exhaustive, includes those works which I have found particularly valuable in researching and writing this book. Obituaries and articles in contemporary journals have largely been excluded. All titles are, or were, published in London except where otherwise indicated.
SVEN HEDIN
Through Asia. 2 vols. Methuen 1898.
Central Asia and Tibet. 2 vols. Hurst and Blackett 1903.
My Life as an Explorer. Cassell 1926.
History of the Expedition in Asia, 1927–35. Parts 1–3. Stockholm 1943–4.
SIR AUREL STEIN
Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan. Fisher Unwin 1903.
Ruins of Desert Cathay. 2 vols. Macmillan 1912.
On Ancient Central Asian Tracks. Macmillan 1933.
Mirsky, Jeannette: Sir Aurel Stein. Archaeological Explorer. Chicago 1977.
ALBERT VON LE COQ
Buried Treasures of Chinese Turkestan. Allen and Unwin 1928.
Von Land und Leuten in Ostturkistan. Leipzig 1928.
Chotscho. Koniglich-Preussische Turfan-Expedition. Berlin 1913.
PAUL PELLIOT
Paul Pelliot. [Obituaries and memoirs by colleagues.] Société Asiatique, Paris 1946.
Une Bibliothèque médiévale retrouvée au Kan-sou. [Letter from Tun-huang.] Hanoi 1908.
Carnets de Pékin, 1899–1901. Hanoi 1904 (repr. Paris 1976).
Les Grottes de Touen-houang. 6 vols. Paris 1920–4.
Farjenal, Fernand. ‘Les Manuscrits de la mission Pelliot’. La Revue Indigène. Paris, December 1910.
OTANI MISSIONS
Sugiyama, Jiro. Central Asian Objects Brought back by the Otani Mission. Tokyo National Museum 1971.
Political and secret files of period. India Office Library.
THE RUSSIANS
Prejevalsky, Col. N. Mongolia. 2 vols. 1876. Trans, from Russian.
— From Kulja, Across the Tian Shan to Lob-nor. 1879. Trans.
Rayfield, Donald. The Dream of Lhasa. Life of Prejevalsky. 1976.
Morgan, E. Delmar. ‘Dr. Regel’s Expedition from Kuldja to Turfan in 1879–80’, Proceedings of the RGS, June 1881.
Klementz, Dmitri. Turfan und seine Altertumer in Nachrichten uber die von der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu St. Petersburg im Jahre 1898 ausgerustete Expedition nach Turfan. St Petersburg 1899.
LANGDON WARNER
The Long Old Road in China. Arrowsmith 1927.
Buddhist Wall-Paintings. Harvard 1938.
Bowie, Theodore (Ed.). Langdon Warner through his Letters. Bloomington, USA, 1966.
HISTORY, TRAVEL ETC.
Bell, Col. Mark, VC. ‘The Great Central Asian Trade Route from Peking to Kashgaria’, Proceedings of the RGS, 12, 1890.
Boulnois, L. The Silk Road. 1966.
Bower, Capt. H. ‘A Trip to Turkestan’, Geographical Journal, 5, 1895.
Cable, M. and French, F. The Gobi Desert. 1942.
Cobbold, Ralph P. Innermost Asia. 1900.
Dabbs, Jack A. History of the Discovery and Exploration of Chinese Turkestan. The Hague 1963.
Davidson, Basil. Turkestan Alive. 1957.
Dubbs, Homer, H. A Roman City in Ancient China. 1957.
Elias, N. and Ross, E. D. A History of the Moghuls of Central Asia. 1898.
Fairley, Jean. The Lion River. 1975.
Forsyth, Sir T. D. ‘On the Buried Cities in the Shifting Sands of the Great Desert of Gobi,’ Journal of the RGS, vol. 47, 1878.
Giles, H. A. The Travels of Fa-hsien. Cambridge 1923.
Giles, Lionel. Six Centuries at Tunhuang. 1944.
Hoernle, Dr A. R. ‘A Collection of Antiquities from Central Asia’, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Part 1, 1899; Part 2, 1901.
Johnson, W. H. ‘Report on his Journey to Ilchi, the Capital of Khotan, in Chinese Tartary’, Journal of the RGS, vol. 37, 1868.
Keay, John. When Men and Mountains Meet. 1977.
Mannerheim, C. G. Across Asia from West to East. 2 vols. Oosterhout 1969.
Montgomerie, Capt. T. G. ‘On the Geographical Position of Yarkund, and Some Other Places in Central Asia’, Journal of the RGS, vol. 36, 1867.
Morgan, Gerald. Ney Elias. 1971.
Nyman, Lars-Erik. Great Britain and Chinese, Russian and Japanese Interests in Sinkiang, 1918–1934. Stockholm 1977.
Polo, Marco. The Book of Ser Marco Polo. Translated and edited, with notes by Sir Henry Yule. 2 vols. 3rd edn 1903.
Saha, Dr Kshanika. Buddhism and Buddhist Literature in Central Asia. Calcutta 1970.
Schafer, Edward H. The Golden Peaches of Samarkand. A Study of T’ang Exotics. University of California 1963.
Schomberg, Col. R. C. F. Peaks and Plains of Central Asia. 1933.
Skrine, C. P. Chinese Central Asia. 1926.
Skrine, C. P. and Nightingale, P. Macartney at Kashgar. 1973.
Sykes, Ella and Sir Percy. Through Deserts and Oases of Central Asia. 1920.
Teichman, Sir Eric. Journey to Turkistan. 1937.
Vincent, Irene V. The Sacred Oasis. 1953.
Waley, Arthur. Ballads and Stories from Tun-huang. 1960.
Wu, Aitchen K. Turkistan Tumult. 1940.
Younghusband, Capt. Frank. The Heart of a Continent. 1896. Also 1937 edition, with new preface and epilogue.
Yu, Ying-shih. Trade and Expansion in Han China. University of California 1967.
ART HISTORY, ICONOGRAPHY
Bhattacharya, Chhaya. Art of Central Asia. [Wooden art objects from northern arm of Silk Road.] Delhi 1977.
Bussagli, Prof. Mario. Central Asian Painting. 1978.
De Silva, Anil. Chinese Landscape Painting in the Caves of Tun-huang. 1967.
Gray, Basil. Buddhist Cave Paintings at Tun-huang. 1959.
Talbot Rice, Tamara. Ancient Arts of Central Asia. 1963.
Waley, Arthur. A Catalogue of Paintings recovered from Tun-huang by Sir Aurel Stein. 1931.
Warner, Langdon: Buddhist Wall-Paintings: a Study of a Ninth-Century Grotto at Wan-fo-hsia near Tun-huang. Cambridge, Mass., 1938.
PETER HOPKIRK
Peter Hopkirk has travelled widely over many years in the regions where his six books are set – Central Asia, the Caucasus, China, India and Pakistan, Iran and Eastern Turkey. Before turning full-time author, he was an ITN reporter and newscaster for two years, the New York correspondent of the old Daily Express, and then worked for nearly twenty years on The Times; five as its chief reporter, and latterly as a Middle and Far East specialist. In the 1950s he edited the West African news magazine Drum, sister paper to its legendary South African namesake. Before entering Fleet Street he served as a subaltern in the King’s African Rifles – in the same battalion as Lance Corporal Idi Amin, later to emerge as the Ugandan tyrant. No stranger to misadventure, Hopkirk has twice been held in secret-police cells – in Cuba and the Middle East – and also been hijacked by Arab terrorists. His works have been translated into fourteen languages. In 1999 he was awarded the Sir Percy Sykes Memorial Medal for his writing and travels by the Royal Society for Asian Affairs.
Foreign Devils on the Silk Road Page 26