The Rashīdī History 7.5.8

7.5.8

Here and there valuable records of the past may still be forthcoming from the submerged towns, like those obtained in 1874, by Sir D. Forsyth, who enumerates a figure of Buddha of the tenth century, a clay figure of the Hindu monkey-god Hanuman, and Hindu women's ornaments, all pointing to that close intercourse with India which we know, from other sources, to have existed in times before Muhammadanism prevailed and crushed it. He also obtained several Greek coins of great antiquity and interest. Among these is mentioned especially one of Antimachus, dating about 140 B.C., and another, of Menander, from about the year 126 B.C., while a third, an iron one of Hermaeus, might, it was thought, prove even older than either of these. But it is not necessarily among the ruins buried by the shifting sands, that relics of remote ages will be found. Very ancient remains are known already to exist at various points along the southern spurs of the Tian Shan, though nothing has yet been ascertained as to the age they belong to. It was near the town of Kuchar — the ancient Kuitze of the Chinese — that Captain Bower found the famous birch-bark manuscript, written in Sanskrit and dating from the fifth century, while he also points to ruins of cities which, though buried beneath the present level of the country, have no connection with the shifting sands. But it is time to turn from the land of the man to the man of the land.