The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c12.22

c12.22

If, this first mark noted, we return to our starting-point, we may follow the same family group on the march over the sandy roads of Central Asia. It was hardly doubtful that, in order to reach China, they must have pursued the same routes which the Chinese pilgrims had taken in order to reach India. Of this probability recent discoveries have made a certainty. The original of the frontispiece marks at Turfan precisely the route followed on the outward journey by Fa-hian and Hiuan-tsang, the northern route which, footing the chain of the Celestial Mountains, rounds the great desert basin of the Tarim. As to the southern route, which deployed along the northern slope of the Kuen-lun mountains the chaplet of the oases visited by Sung Yun on the outward journey and by Hiuan-tsang on his return,