No Man's Land
SIR AUREL STEIN here presents a much-condensed but im- pressive survey of his three Central Asian expeditions in and around Chinese Turkistan. Carried out in 1900-1901, 1906- 1908, and 1913-1916, they lasted altogether for seven years, and the distance covered on horseback and on foot totalled some 25,000 miles. They centred round that vast and largely desert tract of country, the Taklamakan, the borders of. which " for centuries served as a channel for that inter- change of the early civilizations of India, China and the Hellenized west of Asia which forms such a fascinating chapter in cultural history." The author's travels covered a region extending roughly from the Oxus in the west to the borders of Kansas, in China proPer, in the east, and bounded on the south by the Kun-lun, and on the north by the Tien Shan Ranges.
-Within this area settled life is possible only in small oases ; the plains and the mountains alike are almost everywhere devoid of water. To these 'desolate lands,- in the second century B.C., the- menace of Hun invasions forced the Chinese emperors to turn their eyes. After a series of campaigns their policy of expansion was crowned with success, and the road to the west through the Tarim basin lay open ; the silk trade began to travel along it in an unbroken flow. By 100 A.D. Chinese power in Central Asia had reached its climax.
Thereafter the Imperial prestige decayed owing to internal disorder, and the silk trade took to the sea route. For a time the Tarim basin was dominated by the White Huns, but this domination did not stem the eastward penetration of Buddhist doctrine and literary and artistic influences from Iran and India. The Western Turks displaced the White Huns, but by the seventh century another period of Chinese ascendency had set in, in spite of a growing Tibetan menace. The 400 years, however, following the collapse of the rang rule are an obscure passage in the history of the Tarim basin, and it was the Mongols—thanks to Chinghiz Khan—whom Marco Polo found in control of this region. Then, in the eighteenth century, China advanced her frontiers once again, and to-day she still holds nominal dominion over the half-obliterated tracks of what was once a great trade route.
It may be imagined, from this perfunctory summary, how many layers of various civilizations lie buried in the wind- eroded dunes which Sir Aurel Stein traversed. His finds threw fresh light on the history of the world. Pottery, paintings, documents in many tongues on wood, silk and paper, furniture, arms, images, dead men miraculously pre. served by She aridity of the atmosphere—the desert yielded riches of the first archaeological importance and in niany cases (as the excellent illustrations show) of high artistic merit. The deductions based on them are too far-reaching to be summarized here.
A full appreciation of this book demands no ordinary scholarship. But the lay reader will find much fascination in Sir Aurel Stein's modest account of his travels—how he crossed the Pamirs in the tracks of a Chinese expeditionary force of the eighth century ; how on many of his journeys into the desert water could only be obtained by loading the camels with blocks of and how even so the fuel to melt it was often hard to come by ; how the ground had been so jaggedly carved by the wind that it was necessary to re- sole " the camels by sewing ox-hide on to the live skin to protect their sores ; how in so rainless a place his own foot- prints, and even those of his terrier, were still clear-cut after seven years ; how he discovered a new border wall marking an ancient boundary of China ; how he visited Tun-huang, in Kansu, where are the cave shrines of the Thousand Buddhas. . . . But the reviewer can do no more than hint at the diverse excellences of a book which epitomizes the result of many years of study and adventure. The matter, if not perhaps the manner, of this work entitles it to the status of a classic. PETER. FLEMING.
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