Nor Is It Necessary To
Emphasize The Industrial Pre-Eminence Which Khotan Still Enjoys In A
Variety Of Manufactures Through The Technical Skill And Inherited Training
Of The Bulk Of Its Population."
Sir Aurel Stein further remarks (Ancient Khotan, I., p. 183):
"When
Marco Polo visited Khotan on his way to China, between the years 1271 and
1275, the people of the oasis were flourishing, as the Venetian's
previously quoted account shows. His description of the territories
further east, Pein, Cherchen, and Lop, which he passed through before
crossing 'the Great Desert' to Sha-chou, leaves no doubt that the route
from Khotan into Kan-su was in his time a regular caravan road. Marco Polo
found the people of Khotan 'all worshippers of Mahommet' and the territory
subject to the 'Great Kaan', i.e. Kublai, whom by that time almost the
whole of the Middle Kingdom acknowledged as emperor. While the
neighbouring Yarkand owed allegiance to Kaidu, the ruler of the Chagatai
dominion, Khotan had thus once more renewed its old historical connexion
with China."
XXVI., p. 190.
"A note of Yule's on p. 190 of Vol. I. describes Johnson's report on the
people of Khoten (1865) as having 'a slightly Tartar cast of countenance.'
The Toba History makes the same remark 1300 years earlier: 'From
Kao-ch'ang (Turfan) westwards the people of the various countries have deep
eyes and high noses; the features in only this one country (Khoten) are not
very Hu (Persian, etc.), but rather like Chinese.' I published a
tolerably complete digest of Lob Nor and Khoten early history from Chinese
sources, in the Anglo-Russian Society's Journal for Jan.
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