It Is Situated At The
Foot Of The Nan-Shan Range, At A Height Of 3700 Feet Above The Sea, And
Occupies An Area Of About 200 Square Miles, The Whole Of Which Is Thickly
Inhabited By Chinese.
Sha-chau is interesting as the meeting-place of
three expeditions started independently from Russia, India, and China.
Just
Two months before Prjevalsky reached this town, it was visited by
Count Szechenyi [April, 1879], and eighteen months afterwards Pundit A-k,
whose report of it agrees fairly well with that of our traveller, also
stayed here. Both Prejevalsky and Szechenyi remark on some curious caves
in a valley near Sha-chau containing Buddhistic clay idols.[1] These caves
were in Marco Polo's time the resort of numerous worshippers, and are said
to date back to the Han Dynasty." (Prejevalsky's Journeys ... by E.
Delmar Morgan, Proc. R. G. S. IX. 1887, pp. 217-218.) - H. C.]
(Ritter, II. 205; Neumann, p. 616; Cathay, 269, 274; Erdmann, 155;
Erman, II. 267; Mag. Asiat. II. 213.)
NOTE 2. - By Idolaters, Polo here means Buddhists, as generally. We do
not know whether the Buddhism here was a recent introduction from Tibet,
or a relic of the old Buddhism of Khotan and other Central Asian kingdoms,
but most probably it was the former, and the "peculiar language" ascribed
to them may have been, as Neumann supposes, Tibetan. This language in
modern Mongolia answers to the Latin of the Mass Book, indeed with a
curious exactness, for in both cases the holy tongue is not that of the
original propagators of the respective religions, but that of the
hierarchy which has assumed their government.
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