the ruined sites nearby in a report of his trip, did not consider them important
enough to photograph. It was not until theWnding of ancient documents in
the area that the site became a main focus of attention. This discovery
happened in 1889, when a British captain based in Kashgar, a certain Bower,
bought a Buddhist manuscript in Khotan. The manuscript had been written in
Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, which supplied the material for
debates concerning Indo-European languages and Aryan races (Chapter 8).
The experts’ interest in this discovery drew the attention of the consuls at
Kashgar, who were in the midst of their particular ‘Great Game’ (see above),
the Russian consul Nikolai Petrovsky (1837–1908) (Wood 2004: 167–9) and
his British rival George Macartney. This event supplied a proWtable source of
income for a local, Islam Akhun, who was able to forge numerous Sino-Indian
manuscripts on birch bark and sell them as ancient Khotanese manuscripts,
many of which ended up in the British Museum and the Hermitage (Baumer
2000; Hopkirk 1980). Other manuscripts were bought by the French carto-
grapher Jules Dutreuil de Rhins (1846–94) and the Orientalist Fernand Gre-
nard (b. 1866) in an expedition undertaken in 1890–3 (Hopkirk 1980: 47–8).
The most important explorers in Khotan were the Swede Sven Hedin
(1865–1952) and the Hungarian-born Aurel Stein, though a British subject
by the time of his travels (Meyer & Brysac 1999: chs. 13–15). Hedin had
started to journey in Asia in 1885, exploring and mapping large, but mainly
unknown areas in Xinjiang, Tibet, and northwest China (map 2). While
crossing the Taklamakan desert, he was constantly on the lookout for arch-
aeological sites and remains. He believed these could provide a timescale for
changes in the natural environment, a subject in which he was interested.
Hedin arrived in Khotan in 1896, learning from the locals about deserted
cities whose decorated house beams still protruded from the sand. Within a
few months he had examined several sites and undertaken excavations in
Khotan and Niya,Wnding carvings, paintings, documents, and other items
preserved by the desert sand. Hedin’s most important discoveries were made
in 1895, when he visited Tumshuk (Tum’uk), later excavated by Pelliot, and in
1896, when he discovered two important sites on the southern Silk Road, deep
into the desert: Dandan Uiliq and Karadong (Ha ̊kan Wahlquist, pers. comm.
2.1.2005). In his expedition of 1899 he also discovered Loulan (Wood 2004:
169–79, 195).
It was not until 1900 that Aurel Stein was able to reach Khotan. Stein had
inherited a tradition developed in Hungary from the time of Alexander
Csoma de Ko ̈ro ̈s, who had begun his travels in 1820 in the search for clues
to Hungary’s own national origin and eventually became the founder of
Tibetology (Mirsky 1977; www nd-f). Stein had been acquainted with Bower’s
manuscript for years and also knew about the texts with ‘unknown characters’
Latin America, China, and Japan 193