Journeys On The Silk Road Part 5

He rode in the Resident's carriage along the banks of Dal Lake, admiring the autumn colors and encircling mountains reflected in its calm waters. After a couple of weeks he began to hobble around on crutches. His injuries healed slowly, particularly the wound to his big toe, which reopened shortly before he left India. Despite the brave face Stein put on his injury, medical reports tell a different tale. The hardships of the expedition had caused "nervous overstrain, owing to his prolonged exertions and hardships; and of late owing to sleeplessness," according to Neve. Stein's health had been permanently damaged, in the opinion of another Indian-based doctor. He would need to rest aboard the ship to Europe to facilitate the healing, he was warned.

But before his departure, he wanted to ensure those who had served him so loyally were duly rewarded. As well as lobbying for Naik Ram Singh's pension, he sought recognition for his two surveyors, the rheumatic Ram Singh and his replacement, Lal Singh. For Chiang he arranged another watch-this time of gold-which was presented with much ceremony at an official dinner in Kashgar.

There was also his own future and that of his antiquities to consider. The two were intricately connected. Before he left India, he received news that the Viceroy, Lord Minto, who had taken an interest in his exploration, had granted him extended leave to work on his discoveries in England. Stein arranged to ship his ninety cases of ma.n.u.scripts, silks and murals from Bombay to London aboard the P&O steamer Oceana. Stein's treasures set sail on December 19, 1908. "May kindly divinities protect them on their way," he wrote as the cases embarked on their two-and-a-half-week sea voyage via the Suez Ca.n.a.l and Gibraltar.

But what to do with Dash? Over two and a half years, the little fox terrier had trotted through deserts and mountains-dodging the feet of camels, horses, and yaks-and ridden on Stein's saddle. At night he had jealously guarded Stein's camp bed and snoozed under his master's blankets. He had chased gazelles and hares, detected a tiger, and survived a mauling by savage dogs. Since leaving Dunhuang, Stein had resigned himself to leaving his canine companion behind in India, as he had with Dash I, in 1901.

Then Stein had a change of heart. He could not face parting with his plucky companion who had traveled so far with him. Dash the Great would join him in England. It meant a temporary separation, for the dog was not allowed to accompany Stein from Bombay. Instead, Dash was put aboard the steamer Circa.s.sia to Liverpool and quarantined for four months in London. Quite how the peripatetic Stein would care for him in England he didn't know. He parted from Dash in Bombay on Boxing Day 1908 and later that day set sail for Europe.

The Oceana, with Stein's antiquities aboard, berthed in London on January 9, 1909. Forwarding agents Thomas Cook advised the British Museum three days later that it would deliver the ninety cases. Meanwhile, Andrews, who had secured a part-time role to help catalogue the mountain of treasures, was quick to telegram Stein, holidaying in mainland Europe en route to Britain, with the happy news of the Oceana's safe arrival. It could easily have been otherwise. The Oceana sank en route to Bombay just three years later when it collided with the German bark Pisagua in the English Channel. The P&O ship was carrying a 750,000 cargo of gold and silver ingots when it went down, just a month before the t.i.tanic sank. Divers can still see the wreck of the Oceana off England's south coast today (although most of the ingots have been recovered).

After narrowly escaping incineration in the flames of civil unrest at Anxi, Stein's cargo of sacred relics-far more fragile than silver and gold ingots-had survived. Stein may well have had good reason to thank those kindly divinities.

Wherever this sutra is kept is a sacred site enshrining the presence of the Buddha or one of the Buddha's great disciples.

VERSE 12, THE DIAMOND SUTRA.

13.

Yesterday, Having Drunk Too Much . . .

In ancient China, the value of a domestic slave could be measured in silk. A petty official and his wife, having fallen on hard times in 991, relinquished their twenty-eight-year-old servant to settle a bill. She was worth three pieces of raw silk and two of spun. The deal was formalized on a single sheet of pale, coa.r.s.e paper and signed with the brush marks of the slave and her owners. Once the pact had been witnessed by two Buddhist monks, her future was decided.

The contract to sell the young slave was among the thousands of doc.u.ments sealed in the Library Cave. The material spans more than 600 years, and while not every ma.n.u.script is dated, many show not only the year of their creation, but also the month and day. Some fastidious scribes even recorded the time.

Although the cave was predominantly filled with religious texts, the secular doc.u.ments are particularly revealing. They give poignant, amusing and remarkable detail about life along the Silk Road over hundreds of years. The doc.u.ments range from ways to entertain the living (such as hints for playing the board game Go) to funeral speeches for the dead (including a eulogy for a donkey). Stein's haul contains a list of ten reasons why children should be grateful to their mother, not least because she has endured the agony of childbirth and the stinky tedium of toilet training. Another ma.n.u.script sets out the punishment for disrupting proceedings at a women's club: the rabble-rouser had to provide wine-syrup for an entire feast. This hardly seems the ideal way to prevent such brawls-especially for a club probably comprised of nuns. And lest an offender try to abandon her membership, the penalty for leaving the club was three strokes with a bamboo stick.

Among the more frivolous ma.n.u.scripts is a debate between Tea and Wine in which each beverage claims supremacy. Lionel Giles, who spent decades cataloguing Stein's collection, offered a translation in his book Six Centuries at Tunhuang. The debate begins with Tea introducing itself: "Chief of the hundred plants, flower of the myriad trees, esteemed for its buds that are picked, prized for its shoots that are culled, lauded as a famous shrub-its name is called Tea!" But Wine dismisses Tea's boasts as ridiculous. "From of old until now Wine has always ranked higher than Tea. What cannot Wine singly achieve? It will intoxicate a whole army; it is drunk by the sovereigns of the Earth, and is acclaimed by them as their G.o.d." Tea responds, Wine retorts. And the dispute continues as the two immodestly engage in self-promotion until Water finally intervenes, telling both Tea and Wine that their argument is pointless-without Water, neither could exist.

The cave also surrendered a series of model letters designed to resolve matters of etiquette. Some letters suggest a choice of words for offering condolences, others provide suggestions on inoffensive topics such as the weather. Among the trickier situations addressed is a pro forma apology for drunken behavior. Giles translates: "Yesterday, having drunk too much, I was so intoxicated as to pa.s.s all bounds; but none of the rude and coa.r.s.e language I used was uttered in a conscious state." The letter continues, explaining that the writer did not learn of his lack of decorum until others told him, at which point he wished "to sink into the earth for shame." The writer then promises to apologize in person, signing the letter: "Leaving much unsaid, I am yours respectfully."

If such letters are evidence of a pressing need, it must have been considerable, for another form letter offers the recommended reply: "Yesterday, Sir, while in your cups, you so far overstepped the observances of polite society as to forfeit the name of gentleman, and made me wish to have nothing more to do with you. But since you now express your shame and regret for what has occurred, I would suggest that we meet again for a friendly talk." Presumably not over a bottle of wine.

When sifting through the Library Cave ma.n.u.scripts, a moment of time, seemingly lost among the centuries, can return to life. Sometimes all that survives is a fragment. One such sc.r.a.p mentions Ming Sha-the Singing Sands-and confirms that the rumbling dunes were as entertaining for men and women in the tenth century as they were for Chiang and Stein in the twentieth century. Another telling fragment is a pledge signed by sixteen men who swear to care for the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas. "Even if Heaven and Earth collapse, this vow shall remain unshaken," the doc.u.ment says. Given the date of their promise-March 25, 970-it is unlikely any of the men lived to see the Library Cave sealed early in the next century, but they may have helped ama.s.s the doc.u.ments placed inside.

Other material about Dunhuang includes ancient topographical records with details that Stein verified from his own travels. One ma.n.u.script tells how a general drew his sword and stabbed a mountain to create a waterfall and quench the thirst of his men. Based on the precisely recorded distances in the ancient ma.n.u.script, Stein was convinced he knew the waterfall referred to. The same doc.u.ment also tells of a Dunhuang dragon that required regular sacrifices of local livestock. The dragon-Giles likened it to a local Loch Ness monster-was said to live in a spot known as the Spring of the Jade Maiden. Again, Stein matched the topographic details in the ma.n.u.script with his own surveys of the region and concluded he once camped beside the spring-fed lagoon considered to be the dragon's lair.

Most of the ma.n.u.scripts in the Library Cave were written in Chinese, but some were in Sanskrit and others in Tibetan, including what is believed to be the world's oldest known collection of Tibetan sutras. Others contained the angular characters of Runic Turki (an early Turkish script), Syriac (a branch of Aramaic) and the vertical writing of Uyghur. The cave even held a fragment in Hebrew acquired by Paul Pelliot-all evidence of Dunhuang's rich monastic libraries and the cosmopolitan nature of the oasis.

For Stein and Pelliot, the presence of each language exposed an aspect of the region's past. The abundance of Tibetan Buddhist doc.u.ments attested to Tibet's dominance two centuries before the cave was sealed. Others scrolls raised questions about the spread of religious beliefs, including Manichaeism. Once among the world's most widespread religions, Manichaeism became a rival to Buddhism and Christianity. "What had this neat, almost calligraphic ma.n.u.script to do in the Buddhist chapel?" Stein mused. The Library Cave held several Manichean doc.u.ments, including two hymns t.i.tled "In Praise of Jesus." A translation, published in 1943, includes numerous references to "Jesus the Buddha"-evidence of the Manichean belief that Jesus and Buddha were different incarnations of the same person.

The Library Cave also yielded a painted portrait on silk, rendered at half life-size but with some unexpected features. In Stein's five-volume Serindia, the male figure with a halo around his head was listed as a bodhisattva, but this face was like no other in the cave. The nose was decidedly Western, as were the mouth and lips. And there were other strange features: the saintly figure, with a cross on his headdress, had a red moustache and beard, and the painting's only surviving eye was blue. After Serindia was published in 1921, Stein wrote to his one-time rival Albert von Le Coq to say he thought the figure was a Buddhist image that "Nestorian Christians could safely address their prayers to." How the Christian image found its way into the cave remains as unanswered as Stein's musings about the Manichean doc.u.ments.

Overwhelmingly the material in the Library Cave was religious, and some dealt with life beyond the grave. An ill.u.s.trated copy of The Sutra of the Ten Kings, sixteen feet long, depicts the Chinese Buddhist version of Judgment Day, when the deceased pa.s.s through ten courts, and the kings of the underworld decide whether the dead will be reborn into a higher or lower realm. Colored paintings on the scroll depict a h.e.l.l where sinners carry wooden stocks fastened around their necks, whippings are commonplace and limbs are gouged with spears.

Another Library Cave ma.n.u.script offers even more graphic descriptions through the story of one of literature's most devoted sons, Maudgalyayana. After her death, Maudgalyayana's greedy, deceitful mother is sent to the underworld. The son approaches the Buddha for help and learns his mother is suffering in the Avici realm-the worst of h.e.l.l's eight levels. The young monk attempts a rescue. He arrives in a world as terrifying as anything Hieronymus Bosch imagined. A translation of the tale, by American professor Victor H. Mair, describes the horrific scene: Iron snakes belched fire, their scales bristling on all sides. Copper dogs breathed smoke, barking impetuously in every direction. Metal thorns descended chaotically from mid-air, piercing the chests of men. Awls and augers flew by every which way, gouging the backs of the women. Iron rakes flailed at their eyes, causing red blood to flow to the west. Copper pitchforks jabbed at their loins until white fat oozed to the east . . . There were more than several ten thousands of jailers and all were ox-headed and horse-faced.

When Maudgalyayana locates his mother, her agonies are abundant. "At every step, metal thorns out of s.p.a.ce entered her body; she clanked and clattered like the sound of five hundred broken-down chariots."

Through the Buddha's intervention she is released, only to be sent to the realm of the Hungry Ghosts where wants cannot be satiated. When she spots a stream of cool water, it transforms into pus. Her throat constricts until she is incapable of swallowing even a drop of moisture. Once more the Buddha tells Maudgalyayana how his mother can be saved, but her greed ensures she is reincarnated as a black dog that eats excrement from latrines before the diligent son finally helps her attain a human rebirth.

One of the richest themes to emerge from Abbot w.a.n.g's cave is science, although the scrolls that fall within this broad heading range from the practical to the perplexing. A first-aid manual, "Single Ingredient Empirical Remedies to Prepare for Emergencies," offered prescriptions for cholera, vomiting, gastric reflux, sores, ulcers, and more. In a preface, the unknown author wrote of his intention to have the medical manual's advice carved into rock so that its wisdom would be available for all.

It is possible that goal was achieved about 1,000 miles southeast of Dunhuang. In the Longmen Grottoes in Henan province is a cave with a stone stele engraved with 140 treatments known as the Longmen prescriptions. w.a.n.g Shumin, a Beijing scholar of traditional Chinese medicines, has pointed out that many similarities exist between the early first-aid manual written in ink on the Dunhuang scroll and the advice set in stone at the Longmen Grottoes.

Mere snippets remain of what was once part of a fifty-volume encyclopedia of medical knowledge. The Dunhuang copy survives as five sc.r.a.ps that discuss herbal uses for garlic, calabash (an edible gourd), various grains and fruits. The full text, compiled in 649, was so revered that the Tang dynasty's rulers distributed copies of the encyclopedia across the country, and it remained the definitive source of medical knowledge for 400 years. As China's first official medical handbook, it predates the earliest European counterpart, the Nuremberg Pharmacopoeia, by 800 years.

What const.i.tutes medicine among the Dunhuang texts sometimes extends to what would now be considered cosmetics and domestic products. One torn sc.r.a.p includes formulas for skin creams, a breath freshener, a fabric deodorizer, and even a hair tonic made from the leaves of a watermelon vine. Another medical ma.n.u.script attempts to divine the future based on where moles appear on the body. In auspicious locations, they predict that a woman will respect her husband and bear good sons. Elsewhere, they bode ill, such as one mole said to foretell that a wife will kill each of three husbands.

In the Dunhuang scrolls, medical science sometimes merges with the metaphysical. An intact text t.i.tled "Wondrous Instructions on the Skill of Quiescent Breathing" includes Daoist spells. Among these are an invocation to the crane spirit and "secret instructions conferring invisibility." A separate text promises to enable a person to fly. The levitation recipe is simple enough, but the ingredients could be hard to procure: the potion requires the seeds and root of a lotus plant that has been stored for a thousand years.

The dating of the Dunhuang ma.n.u.scripts is a mix of science and art. Some doc.u.ments contain elaborate colophons that pinpoint their creation. In other instances, scholars look for changes in how Chinese characters are written. One trusted method of determining a doc.u.ment's age involves checking whether certain characters appear at all. As each new dynasty came to power, some characters became taboo and were banned from use. This was done out of respect for an important person, typically the emperor, but the effect was to leave a means of dating doc.u.ments as leaders rose to power and fell from grace. Even the absence of a single stroke on a character can help date a ma.n.u.script.

China's preoccupation with doc.u.menting and dating events shows up elsewhere: in almanacs and calendars found in the Library Cave. Almanacs could only be printed with the emperor's approval, although the cave's treasures prove there was some bending of these rules. In the West, almanacs with their voluminous facts may seem like statements of the obvious, but China placed great importance on them. Their use in predicting cosmic events-eclipses, the alignment of planets and the like-was viewed as evidence of an emperor's perfection. If, through his diviners, the emperor could distinguish auspicious days from catastrophic days, it was proof of his divine ent.i.tlement to rule. But there was a downside to what was known as "heaven's mandate." Fail to predict the arrival of a celestial event such as a comet or even sun spots and the ma.s.ses didn't merely grumble. They felt ent.i.tled to rebel against a leader who they believed had been abandoned by the G.o.ds.

The Library Cave contained a handful of black-market almanacs, including a complete copy for the year 877. Produced nine years after the Diamond Sutra was printed, it shows entrepreneurs willingly muscled in on the emperor's monopoly, even though the punishment for printing or possessing banned doc.u.ments was harsh. Merely owning books on astronomy or prognostication could incur two years' forced labor. The rewards for printers, though, were abundant. For sellers, the books were in high demand but cheap to make, courtesy of the same woodblock-printing techniques that produced the Diamond Sutra. For buyers, an almanac could divine the opportune days for marriage or moving into a new house, even the best time to trim one's fingernails. In short, they provided the recipe for a better life.

The need for almanacs and calendars was acute, in part because China employed a complex method of calculating dates using the moon as well as the sun. Much as we now add a leap day to a modern calendar, the emperor occasionally added an entire month to reconcile solar and lunar time. While the superst.i.tious modern man can easily work out the next Friday the thirteenth, his counterpart in ancient China was helpless without consulting the works of the emperor's astronomers.

Of course, to make such predictions required great precision in reading the heavenly omens. Chief among those were the stars and planets, and here, too, the mountain of doc.u.ments inside the Library Cave contained vital material, including a seventh-century star chart. The 11-foot-wide chart is the oldest known map of the stars from any civilization. In China's world view, the heavens were part of the human realm, not distinct from it. The role of astronomers and astrologers was to monitor the celestial and terrestrial to ensure the two were in harmony.

The great Sinologist Joseph Needham is believed to be the first to recognize the significance of the Dunhuang star chart. In the late 1950s, he estimated the chart was created in 940. More recently, French scholars Jean-Marc Bonnet-Bidaud and Franoise Praderie, together with the British Library's Dr. Susan Whitfield, concluded it is centuries older. Chinese taboo characters were one factor, but the other involved a crudely drawn ill.u.s.tration on the far left of the scroll. The image depicts an archer, believed to be the G.o.d of lightning. Just as the fashion-conscious today can date a dress by its hemline or shoulder pads, the hats of ancient China can be a.s.sessed by the ear flaps. Those on the archer's hat are flat; later fashion saw men starch the flaps so they stuck out. The result of this detective work into language and millinery has been to push back the date of the star chart's creation to between 649 and 684.

Aside from the fact that it survived at all-the chart is the thickness of cigarette paper-the chart's accuracy and comprehensiveness are remarkable. Where Greek mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy catalogued 1,022 stars, Chinese astronomers recorded 1,339 stars. The celestial scroll begins with drawings and interpretations of clouds and vapors-one in the shape of a prancing wolf portends a son becoming a general or high official. It unrolls to reveal twelve panels showing the positions of the stars in black, white, and red, corresponding to three schools of Chinese astrology. The star chart is also notable for solving the challenge of how to render the three dimensions of a spherical world onto the two dimensions of paper. The West wrestled with the problem until the sixteenth century, when the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator produced the solution still used today.

A comparison of the ancient map and the charts of modern astronomers reveals that the Chinese rendered the sky with startling accuracy. But there is one significant omission: the North Star. As with the prohibition of certain Chinese characters, the polar star is absent because it symbolized the emperor.

Apart from ma.n.u.scripts on paper, the other great finds in the cave were splendid paintings on silk. At one point when Abbot w.a.n.g was fetching items from the Library Cave in 1907, Stein rescued some cloth w.a.n.g used to level the floor on which the Library Cave's scrolls were stacked. Today, that fabric is among the most prized pieces of Chinese silk embroidery in the British Museum. The eighth-century piece, "Shakyamuni preaching on the Vulture Peak," is nearly eight feet long and more than five feet wide. The British Museum considers the split-st.i.tch embroidery to be "one of the most magnificent of all the compositions found in the hidden library at Dunhuang." At its center is the Buddha, who stands on a lotus pedestal, flanked on each side by a crouching lion. From his indigo hair to each toenail on his bare feet, he has been rendered with exquisite Tang dynasty care. His right shoulder is bare and he preaches the Lotus Sutra. On each side he is accompanied by a bodhisattva and a disciple, and the cheek of the bodhisattva on the left is rendered in a whorl of tight st.i.tching.

Of China's four great inventions-paper, printing, gunpowder, and the compa.s.s-the first three feature in the Library Cave. Paper and printing are obvious, but gunpowder figures as well. A painted silk banner, obtained by Pelliot and now in the Musee Guimet in Paris, contains the world's earliest known depiction of firearms. The banner shows the Buddha Shakyamuni withstanding an a.s.sault by the demon Mara and his fellow tormentors who are trying to prevent the Buddha's enlightenment. As the Buddha sits impervious in lotus position, the demons deploy a fire-lance-an early flamethrower-and a hand grenade against their serene target.

Another textile, one that speaks of human yearning, is an altar valance with colored strips of silk that dangle like a row of men's ties. Stein noted small knotted ta.s.sels hung from some of the streamers-indicating they were offerings by devotees praying for children. Stencils, too, were tucked among the piled ma.n.u.scripts. Just as woodblock printing enabled ma.s.s production, stencils could render multiple images of the Buddha and hasten the acc.u.mulation of merit. Examples of stenciled art abound on the walls of the Mogao Caves.

Other uses of paper that emerged from the Library Cave include Buddhist paper flowers. Spanning four inches, the six hand-cut votive flowers probably once decorated the caves of Mogao. Glued to the walls, such flowers adorned the caves in lieu of real flowers that would have struggled in the extremes of the Taklamakan Desert. Stein even found a brush inside the Library Cave that was used to apply glue.

The Library Cave was a source of knowledge about ancient music, too, and Pelliot collected some of China's oldest surviving musical scores-works from the Tang dynasty (AD 618907). Some of the music is for the pipa, a pear-shaped stringed instrument that features in the murals of numerous grottoes. The music is still played today. In 1987, twenty-five of the Dunhuang songs were recorded by Beijing's Central Folk Orchestra and released on compact disc.

Study of the scrolls, silks, and other items in recent decades has resembled piecing together a global jigsaw puzzle as fragments held in different countries are matched up. Some material, even more minute than the scattered fragments, has occupied the attention of scholars. Debris from Stein's packing crates that once held Library Cave material-stored for a century in two jars-has been the object of recent investigations. "Stein dust," as the British Library calls it, has undergone chemical a.n.a.lysis for what it might reveal about conditions inside the Library Cave in 1907. But it is the preoccupations of people, rich and poor, that have proved most illuminating. Across the centuries, some aspects of the human condition are unchanging, whether they concern a fascination with the heavens, questions about an afterlife or just the search for the right words after a drunken night on the town.

14.

Stormy Debut After the excitement and freedom of the expedition, Stein, now in London with his cargo, faced a period of what he considered drudgery and servitude. His desert finds needed to be unpacked, sorted, listed, photographed, and published. The task was immense but necessary if scholars were to benefit from the discoveries, and he wanted that work undertaken while the collection was still together, before London and Calcutta divided the spoils.

Stein was relieved when his friend Fred Andrews, whose case Stein had been pushing, was able to work with him on the sorting. The pair previously worked together on the finds from Stein's first expedition, and the General-as Stein's friends dubbed him-knew Andrews was the ideal loyal lieutenant. An artist, teacher and, by 1909, head of Battersea Polytechnic's art school, Andrews was reliable and attentive to detail. While Stein was in the desert, Andrews had dutifully filled every request: for candles, a fountain pen, pince-nez, and far more. "I am afraid you will find that distance is no protection from me," Stein had once warned Andrews. The requests were undiminished by Stein's return to Europe, although now they turned more domestic as the explorer asked that his spats be mailed to him and his Khotan rugs be dry-cleaned.

Stein's antiquities were initially housed at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, then part of the British Museum. They were not destined to stay there long. Instead, s.p.a.ce was being made available at the British Museum in Bloomsbury. However, when Stein saw the rooms he had been allocated, he was furious. He and his antiquities-obtained at so high a human cost-were to be consigned to a bas.e.m.e.nt. The s.p.a.ce, previously used to store newspaper files, was dark and cramped. In short, it was a cave. The usually measured Stein protested bitterly.

"Neither during my official career in India nor in the course of my explorations have I been called upon to work in what without exaggeration may be designated a sort of cellar," he wrote.

In the course of my explorations I have been obliged to expose myself to a good deal of physical hardship and I believe that the strain incurred in the interest of my scientific tasks has not failed to affect my const.i.tution to a certain extent. But I may safely a.s.sert that I could face these hardships more willingly than daily imprisonment for prolonged hours in a confined room partially below ground and devoid of adequate light and air. I believe that after the sacrifices I have made in the interest of the scientific tasks entrusted to me by Government, I ought not in fairness be called upon to work in conditions which apart from direct physical discomfort would make my tasks during my Deputation here unnecessarily irksome and trying.

He toyed with shifting the collection elsewhere, even out of London. He considered the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. His plea to remain in the Natural History Museum was rejected, as was his attempt to relocate to its neighbor, the Victoria and Albert Museum. So seven months after arriving in London, the much-traveled collection was on the move again, across to Bloomsbury and into the British Museum's bas.e.m.e.nt. Andrews rea.s.sured Stein: "The cellar has been made as habitable as such a place can be, with large writing tables, armchairs, writing materials, mats, hand basins, soap & towels, dusters etc. The lock . . . has now been altered so that only our key and the master keys will open it."

Stein kept a tight rein on who could access the rooms. Although the scrolls and other finds were based at the British Museum, they were not yet part of its collection. This couldn't occur until his backers agreed on a division-and that would take many acrimonious years. In any case, Stein didn't spend a great deal of time in the bas.e.m.e.nt cave poring over his finds. With Andrews left to the grinding work of sorting, Stein traveled in Europe, lectured and, in 1910, accepted an offer of rooms at Oxford's Merton College, where Percy Allen was a research fellow. Stein was happy to do so. He disliked cities in general, London in particular, and the enclave of Bloomsbury most of all. His bay window at Merton College looked out on a meadow that was far different from his alpine vista at Mohand Marg, but his second-floor rooms provided the peace and solitude he needed to write an account of his expedition.

They also afforded him the companionship of Percy and Helen Allen, not to mention Dash, who would spend the rest of his life in their care. Dash's arrival in England had even been reported in the press. The little fox terrier had covered the 10,000 miles of the expedition mostly on foot, during which he survived on sc.r.a.ps from the camp larder, according to the Daily Mail. Dash was described as a useful watch-dog whose chief recreation was chasing wild donkeys and yaks and hunting hares. The report concluded on a patriotic note: "He has true British terrier blood in his veins, although India was his birthplace."

Stein lived amid Oxford's dreaming spires as though still camped in the desert. He kept his camp chair, which had accidentally been dropped on his perilous crossing of the Taklamakan Desert. Incredibly, a Chinese official recovered the seat and posted it to Macartney in Kashgar, who ensured it eventually reached Stein. No one could accuse Stein of living extravagantly. He inquired about getting a cheap wooden writing-table made similar to his folding camp table. He even retained his well-traveled Jaeger wool blanket-although he did have it cleaned of bloodstains from his amputation.

Once settled, he turned to writing an account of his second expedition, Ruins of Desert Cathay. At the same time, he kept a close eye on the progress of his collection in Bloomsbury and everyone a.s.sociated with it, right down to clerical a.s.sistants. He was impressed by a young Scottish woman, Florence Lorimer, a bright Oxford graduate who had been recommended by Helen Allen. Lorimer, then aged twenty-five and with a background in cla.s.sics, was capable, intelligent and seemed able to take on some of the cataloguing. Lorimer began work in October 1909, leaving behind Oxford's Bodleian Library, where she was one of its first female employees. This was the beginning of a thirteen-year a.s.sociation with Stein. It is a mark of how much Stein valued Lorimer that she soon acquired a nickname, for such monikers were confined to his inner circle. She was dubbed the Recording Angel.

With ma.n.u.scripts in so many languages, including Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, Uyghur, and Sogdian, Stein drew on the expertise of scholars across Europe. For the Chinese ma.n.u.scripts, he turned to his one-time rival Paul Pelliot. In September 1910, Stein proposed that the French scholar make an inventory of the Chinese ma.n.u.scripts. Pelliot, eager to see what Stein had acquired, agreed, and two crates containing more than four hundred ma.n.u.scripts were sent to him in Paris-a not uncommon practice at the time. It is probable the Diamond Sutra was among the precious scrolls sent across the English Channel. Stein seemed happy with Pelliot's initial progress, noting the Frenchman made many interesting discoveries among the Chinese ma.n.u.scripts.

A small private viewing of Stein's finds was held at the British Museum in 1910, and the first public exhibition was at London's Crystal Palace in 1911. The latter event was part of the Festival of Empire to mark the coronation of the new king, George V. The objects selected from Stein's material consisted mostly of silk paintings of Chinese and Tibetan deities but also included a ma.n.u.script wrapper, a fragment of damask, an embroidered miniature Buddha, and an embroidered cushion cover. Stein's disapproval of exuberant Tibetan Buddhist imagery was reflected in the small catalogue accompanying the exhibition. He noted with relief that none of the figures showed the "extravagant multiplication of limbs nor the other monstrosities in which the imagery of Tibetan Buddhism delights . . . there are found but very few figures which are of a form not altogether human; it is evidence of the sober sense and good taste of the Chinese donors, and of the monks under whose direction these votive pictures were prepared." The Times described the collection as of "epoch-making importance" for the study of Chinese religious art. But the Diamond Sutra-still to make its first public appearance-was not among the sixty-eight items displayed.

As work continued on the finds, Stein was busy in Oxford completing Ruins of Desert Cathay. The published "populist" account of his journey to Turkestan ran to two volumes, each a door-stopping 500 pages. Stein was reserved in his manner but prolix in his writing. He finished the huge work on July 5, 1911, and by the end of the year, with his three years of special leave almost over, he sailed again for India and planned another foray into Turkestan.

His book, published in 1912, contains the first brief description and photograph of the Diamond Sutra. He calls it simply a roll. With what pa.s.ses for scholarly exuberance, Stein wrote: "Greatly delighted was I when I found that an excellently preserved roll with a well-designed block-printed picture as frontispiece, had its text printed throughout." And the usually meticulous Stein gets its date wrong-twice. The scroll dates neither from 864 nor 860, as the text and a caption state, but 868. Such uncharacteristic errors suggest he was yet to grasp the printed scroll's full significance.

In June 1912, within months of returning to India, Stein received unexpected news at his alpine camp on Mohand Marg. He had been awarded a knighthood. He wrote to Allen: Late last night a heavy Dak bag arrived & to my utter astonishment brought a letter from the Viceroy's hand announcing the K.C.I.E. [Knight Commander of the Indian Empire], with a bundle of congratulatory telegrams from Simla. I scarcely believed my eyes, for how could I as a simple man of research foresee this more than generous recognition . . . It seems in some ways an overwhelming attention.

Later in the same letter, he sought Allen's advice on a tricky matter of protocol: would it be acceptable, he wondered, to call himself Sir Aurel, rather than, say, Sir Marc-his unused first name-or the more awkward Sir Marc Aurel? He was known as Sir Aurel Stein from then on. It is an indication of his acceptance by the establishment that, Hungarian-born and Jewish, Stein was accorded such a rare honor.

Stein was swamped with congratulations, the most amusing of which was penned by Allen on behalf of Dash II, who had just been replaced in Kashmir by a puppy, Dash III.

Many congratulations, dear Master. Am wearing my collar of achievement. If I had known this was coming, I should not have cried on the Wakhjir. Whip the young one & keep him in order. Bow wow. (Have a.s.sumed this t.i.tle) SIR DASH, K.C.I.E.

The other notable tribute came from Chiang, still employed in Kashgar by George Macartney as his secretary at Chini Bagh. Stein had been eager for news from his devoted a.s.sistant, to whom he sent a copy of Ruins of Desert Cathay.

I cannot express on paper how glad I was to hear the grant of the t.i.tle of K.C.I.E. on you. An honour well merited and bestowed on a deserving servant of the Govt . . . I received your book too in two volumes. The company of this book is to me as if I was in your company and marching in your train in the great plain-like Taklamakan . . . Please accept my best thanks for the kind thought of remembering by the gift of this book.

By then, Stein knew Chiang had suffered a serious illness that had left him profoundly deaf. But Chiang was quick to rea.s.sure him. "Mr. Macartney has been kind to me and is patiently putting up with the inconvenience of shouting at the top of his voice occasionally and trying to make me hear what he wants me to write for him."

Macartney updated Stein on his secretary's health. Stein arranged for an expensive ear trumpet to be sent from London. Despite his hearing loss, Chiang still proved invaluable to Macartney. "Deaf as he is, poor old Chiang-ssu-yeh manages somehow to hear what is going on in the Yamens and keeps me well posted," Macartney wrote. Chiang's deafness was not the only change in Kashgar that Macartney reported. Revolutionary fervor swept across China in 1911 and 1912 and led to the collapse of the Qing dynasty, the abdication of Emperor Puyi, the last emperor, and the establishment of the Republic of China. Eventually the revolutionary zeal reached the Turkestan oases.

"Chiang-ssu-yeh can't quite make up his mind as to the respective merits of the old, and of the new, regime and his indecision is reflected in his head-dress. His queue [pigtail] has certainly gone; but now and then when a reactionary wave sweeps over the Chinese in Kashgar with murder in the air, he wishes he still had his appendage. One day he puts on an English cap and another a Chinese hat, just according to how he is influenced by the political weather. Today the English cap is in favour with him," Macartney wrote.

Although Macartney made light of Chiang's response to the political change, the violence would reach Chini Bagh's gates. Across the Turkestan oases, Chinese officials had been murdered and their yamens looted. In Kashgar, officials had been beheaded and their bodies left in the streets as a warning. The Macartneys provided shelter within Chini Bagh's garden for terrified refugees fleeing the slaughter. "Ma.s.sacres of Chinese officials by Chinamen in the old & new cities of Kashgar started," Macartney wrote. "You know old Yuen Taotai, well he was set upon at night by 15 a.s.sa.s.sins and cut to pieces."

Back in London, work was underway at the British Museum for the first major exhibition of Stein's great discoveries from Turkestan. Paul Pelliot, who had been examining the Chinese scrolls for two years, was helping to select material for the show. If there was a eureka moment as the Diamond Sutra was slowly unwound and the realization dawned that here was the world's oldest printed and dated book, Stein makes no reference to it. But by late 1912, the work had been identified. That was when Pelliot wrote to the museum about the items to be included in the forthcoming exhibition, saying: "Finally there is the substantial printed roll that Stein has already put aside, the Diamond Sutra of 868." Although Stein won the race through the desert, it may have been his greatest rival, Pelliot, who first recognized the significance of Stein's most celebrated find.

The exhibition was planned for spring 1914 to celebrate the opening of the British Museum's new wing. After nearly a thousand years in a cave and a perilous journey across continents, the Diamond Sutra was at last to be revealed to the public.

Neither Stein nor Andrews would see this event. Soon after returning to India, Stein started lobbying his friend to leave the Battersea Polytechnic "mill" and join him. Stein helped sow the seeds of discontent in a letter-by turns disparaging of London and flattering of his friend-that reveals much about his att.i.tude to life: "The more I see of this glorious land the more I pity those who live & work in London whatever their pay, etc. For a pleasant existence in England one must have independence, plenty of money-or else tastes not too artistic or intellectual. Yours are!" Stein's persuasion worked. Andrews accepted a role as head of a new art inst.i.tute in Srinagar and, with his wife Alice, readied to leave London for Kashmir. Stein's friend from his youthful Mayo Lodge days in Lah.o.r.e would soon be back with him on Indian soil.

Stein's regret at missing the forthcoming exhibition was fleeting. His interest was exploring, not working behind the scenes to prepare a show. "In a way I am sorry that neither of us will see the exhibition, on the other hand we shall both be saved from spending time over what is scarcely to be regarded as altogether productive work. Our experience at the 'Empire Exhibition' was enough for a long time," he wrote to Andrews. Lorimer was left to oversee the details, sending weekly updates to Stein from the museum "cave."

The museum's new wing, due to be opened by King George V, was much antic.i.p.ated. The Times of May 2, 1914, noted Stein's antiquities would be on show and singled out a star attraction. "[The collection] contains some of the most remarkable curiosities of literature hitherto discovered. Among them is a complete printed roll of Chinese workmanship. It is 16 ft long and was printed in 868 by w.a.n.g Chieh [w.a.n.g Jie]. This is the oldest specimen of printing known to exist."

The same day as The Times published its report about the Diamond Sutra, a death threatened to derail the public unveiling. The ninth Duke of Argyll, a former governor-general of Canada, died at Kensington Palace. The long-awaited opening planned for five days later might be delayed, Lorimer wrote.

Late on a spring morning, two open landaus, each pulled by four horses, left Buckingham Palace. The royal party, King George V and Queen Mary and their daughter Princess Mary, made the short journey along Pall Mall, Regent Street, Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road before arriving at the museum, where they were met by a guard of honor provided by the Artists Rifles, a volunteer regiment initially raised among painters, musicians, and actors.

Although the royal visitors wore mourning dress to mark their bereavement, the official opening went ahead on May 7 as planned. The Queen's outfit was somber, but nonetheless impressed The Times correspondent, who noted approvingly that "the Queen wore a hat covered with black jet and a string of magnificent pearls." In another newspaper, the Daily Sketch, the entire event was overshadowed by the appearance of the teenage princess and the sign of her growing maturity. Its headline the next day read: "Princess Mary makes her first public appearance since she put her hair up."

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the museum's princ.i.p.al trustee, was waiting on the steps. No doubt security was tight. Just a few weeks earlier, a suffragette had taken a meat cleaver to Velazquez's The Toilet of Venus (The Rokeby Venus) in the nearby National Gallery, and the British Museum itself had been warned to expect similar attacks. The Prime Minister, Henry Herbert Asquith, politicians, amba.s.sadors, and the building's architect, John James Burnet, were among those gathered to hear the Archbishop's opening address-"needlessly long," according to The Manchester Guardian. After unveiling a bust of the late King Edward VII, the royal party toured the new galleries.

"The King and Queen showed especial interest in the astonishing collection of finds brought home by Sir Aurel Stein from Chinese Turkestan. These pictures and ma.n.u.scripts-vestiges of civilisations hardly known to the experts in these matters-are arranged with strange effect in the wide bleak s.p.a.ces of the great ground floor gallery," the same paper noted.

The Times also singled out Stein's collection, calling it the most exciting part of the opening exhibitions of museum treasures, which also included works by William Hogarth and Leonardo da Vinci. "His two greatest finds were, first, the remains of a very ancient Chinese frontier wall, with towers and guard-houses, the whole of which was absolutely unknown; and secondly, in a region that is still inhabited, the marvellous contents of a certain walled-up cell in the caves known as the 'Caves of the Thousand Buddhas.'"

After the morning's pomp and ceremony, a private viewing was held in the afternoon. It took place in an elementally charged atmosphere. Clouds blackened the sky making it hard for visitors to see the Diamond Sutra or any of the other material in the thirty-two cases. Lorimer updated Stein: "There was a succession of heavy thundershowers and it became extremely dark. After a time they put on the big lights in the gallery but the lights at the top of the cases themselves were not yet finished, so that one could not see anything at all well."

Among those peering into the cases was Stein's one-time rival Albert von Le Coq. The German had arrived back in Europe two months earlier after another eight-month trip to Turkestan with his a.s.sistant, Bartus. Von Le Coq had returned with more than 150 cases of antiquities, but few of these matched the treasures he saw before him.

There was no sign of Paul Pelliot. Long before the exhibition opened, disquiet had been brewing over what came to be dubbed the "Affaire Pelliot." Pelliot was a dazzling scholar, but the dawdling pace at which he was working on the cataloguing ignited fears the task might never be completed. Lionel Barnett, the British Museum's keeper of Oriental Printed Books and Ma.n.u.scripts, wrote a pointed letter to Pelliot. What progress was he making? When did he expect to finish? Barnett alluded to the possibility of appointing a replacement.

Stein was quick to defend the Frenchman. "He is better qualified than any scholar living to deal with the hundreds of local doc.u.ments comprised in the collection. His readiness to prepare the inventory therefore represents an advantage such as is not likely ever to be offer [sic] again," Stein wrote to the British Museum's director, Sir Frederic Kenyon.

Pelliot insisted he would complete the work, yet soon a replacement was being discussed despite the Frenchman's a.s.surances. Lionel Giles, then a.s.sistant keeper of Oriental Printed Books and Ma.n.u.scripts, could take on the role, Barnett suggested to the museum's director: If you should prefer to break off the bargain [with Pelliot], I should think that Giles might do the work sandwiched in with his other cataloguing. He is not by any means a specialist in this subject; but he has a really good knowledge of the literary language, and could make a useful hand list. The work would probably not proceed very rapidly, but it would go on regularly.

The director concurred, and the huge task fell to Giles, among others. And it took years. Giles's catalogue of Chinese ma.n.u.scripts-the largest category-was not published until 1957. Stein did not live to see it.

How to divide Stein's huge haul of ma.n.u.scripts, murals, and other antiquities was a th.o.r.n.y question. With two backers, the British Museum and the government of India, the intention was the larger share of the treasures would return to India. Under the agreement reached before Stein left for Turkestan, India would get three-fifths of the treasures, having contributed 3,000 of the 5,000 allocated to the expedition, the British Museum two-fifths. The deal was agreed to long before anyone knew the nature of what Stein would uncover.

Most of the antiquities Stein brought back were fragile, and the contents of the Library Cave especially so, consisting mainly of paper scrolls and silk banners. A damp, unstable atmosphere could quickly destroy what had been preserved for a thousand years in the dry desert. Stein wrote to Kenyon setting out his views: It is from every point of view desirable to keep those objects which are specially liable to injury through atmospheric and other influences in a place where every care can be given to their preservation. In the second place there can be no doubt that among such objects must be reckoned all paintings on silk and other fabrics; the tempera paintings on friable mud plaster; the wood carvings; the embroideries and figured textiles; and all written records on wood and paper. All these have during long centuries of burial become impregnated with fine disintegrated particles of salt from the desert and thus particularly liable to attract atmospheric moisture, etc.

Stein feared that even if the objects survived a return journey to India, no museum there would be able to care for them adequately. The tropical hothouse environment of Calcutta's Imperial Museum-"a vast marshy delta"-was particularly unsuitable. The delicate material should remain in Britain, he argued. This effectively meant most of the finds-as well as the most valuable-should stay. There was another reason too: imperial pride. It would be difficult to compete with the great collections of Eastern art being built up by inst.i.tutions in Berlin, St. Petersburg, Paris, and elsewhere unless most of the collection was retained by Britain.

But when the India Office learned of Stein's views on the inadequacy of their museums, its officials were furious: The museums in this country have the first claim to such articles of archaeological interest as may be collected at the expense of Indian revenues . . . To the view that our Indian museums are, for climatic reasons, unsuitable for the preservation of articles of a perishable nature, we are unable to a.s.sent. On the contrary, we have reason to believe that, with proper precautions, antiquities can be quite as well preserved in Calcutta, Lah.o.r.e or Delhi as in London.

Anyway, the intention was not to house the Indian share in Calcutta but in a new museum proposed for Delhi. In the meantime, India's share of the ma.n.u.scripts and doc.u.ments still needed for study could remain for up to five years at the British Museum.

The tussle between Britain and India over the antiquities continued behind the scenes during the early years of World War I. There was agreement on one matter: it was too risky to remove anything until after the war ended. Barnett protested vehemently at what he called the proposal to a.s.sign "rotting lumps" to the British Museum. The acrimony escalated when Fred Andrews, then in Srinagar, weighed in on the Indian side. Andrews objected to some of the swaps suggested by Laurence Binyon, the museum's deputy keeper of Oriental Prints and Drawing.

Binyon was also a poet and is best remembered for penning For the Fallen, with its lines still repeated at annual commemorations for the war dead in Britain and Australia: "Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn . . ." But over Andrews's proposed division of some silk paintings, Binyon penned fighting words: "Mr Andrews's disadvantages in the matter are apparent from the inaccuracies in his report, and from his own admissions."