During
my first visit to the National Museum at New Delhi about 4 years ago,
I had found two of the exhibition halls, most interesting. One of
these was the hall displaying the artifacts and other items from the
Indus-Sarswati culture and the second one was the hall dedicated to
Aurel Stein Collections, brought by him from China.
Sir
Marc Aurel Stein,(1862 – 1943) was a Hungarian born British
archaeologist. From his early age he had such great interest in
oriental studies that in 1884 he went to England to study oriental
languages and archeology and became a British citizen. In 1887, Stein
came to India, employed by the British Indian Government. At the
beginning of the 20th century, Aurel Stein undertook his
archaeological expeditions in Central Asia with the agreement that in
return for his having been provided government funding, the results
of his expeditions would be divided between British and Indian
collections. While the largest portion of what he acquired went to
the British Museum in London, a sizable number of objects, some of
them of great interest, are in New Delhi. There are number of
exhibits from places like Miran, LouLan, Khotan, Nia, Astana cemetery
and a large collection of paintings and manuscripts from Dunhuang
caves, which are really noteworthy.
While
going through the museum exhibits leisurely, my attention was drawn
to a small painted stucco head of a female. As usual, Stein has
described this exhibit in minute details as;
“ Clay
stucco head, female (?) ; painted. Plump oval face ; straight, normal
eyes, small nose (broken) and mouth ; delicate and rather weak chin.
Eyebrows well arched ; hair in short close curls (?) over brow, long
in front of cars. Tiara (broken). Hair at back in loose flat bands
interlacing ; at top it is drawn high up like a plume, but coiled
into tight roll, presenting volutes at the sides. Flesh pink, hair
black. Type very Etruscan(An ancient Italian civilization). Stick
projecting downwards from neck. 3-1/2″ x 2” x 1-3/4”. ”
What I
found particularly interesting was the name of the place, mentioned
on the legend plate, where Stein had found this head. The name was
mentioned as “Khara Khoto.” The name got stuck in my memory
because it nearly matches a Marathi word, which means “True False.”
Later on, I did some research and found that this is the Mongolian
name of the place and means Black Castle. Chinese have
several, similar sounding names for this place as Heishui City,
Hēichéng or Hēishuǐchéng, which mean "black city" or
"black water city". I was surprised as to why
anyone would call a city as black city? I decided to find out more
about this strange city and found that there were many more surprises
in store such as, even though the city was located on China-Mongolia
border, people were not of Chinese origins, They followed Tibetan
Buddhism and some of the documents had even Kharoshti and Sanskrit
scripts inscribed on them and as happens with everything in central
Asia, association with Genghis Khan.
The
name of this city is mentioned in 'The Travels of Marco Polo (CE
1200-1300), as Etzina or Eji Nai ( in Chinese as Yijinai.) However, it is far from clear, why Mongolians named this place as Black Castle. Even the last Mongol king , who ruled the city up to 1372 was known as Khara Bator ( Baiter) or Black Bator.
Alxa League
Next
question in my mind was, where was this ancient city? China's Inner
Mongolia province lies just south of the present China-Mongolia
border in the Gobi desert region. This province is divided in 12
prefecture level divisions and 3 extant leagues. Alxa League or
Ālāshàn League is one such division. The league borders Mongolia
to the north and Gansu to the south and west. Banner is a county
level division in the Chinese administrative hierarchy. The Khara
Khoto city ruins are located in Ejin Banner of Alxa League near the
former Gashun Lake ( a lake in the Gobi desert that has dried up in
1961). In fact the banner has been named after the city itself.
T
The
Gobi is Earth's northernmost desert and least inhabited. It straddles
the boundaries of China and Mongolia, and occupies an area of
500,000 square miles (1.3 million square kilometers). Very often less
than 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) of rain falls here in a year. Its
rocky soil mostly consists of gravel. During winters the weather is
almost cruel cold and summers are full of sand-blasting or scouring
gales
that can flay exposed skin and strip the paint from a car.
Alxa
League or Ālāshàn League lies at the heart of this desolate
forbidden region. Geographically speaking, the region is a plateau
known as Alashan
Plateau, covering 260,000 square miles (673,400 square kilometers)
in China and Mongolia and is home to wild horses, snow leopards, and
rare Bactrian camels. The place is so remote and sparsely inhabited
that it has hardly figured in China's long history.
The
question therefore naturally arises that if this Alxa
League or Ālāshàn League and the Ejin Banner, which is a part of
it, are located in such barren, godforsaken terrain, how a major city
was founded here in the year 1032 and became a thriving center of
Tangut empire trade in the 11th century? I suppose we
would have to go in the details of the geography and the history of
the city as well as the region for that purpose.
Before
we do that, let us see how the city was as can be visualized from the
ruins almost buried in sand. The city was walled in a giant 30-foot
(9.1 m)-high ramparts and 12-foot (3.7 m)-thick outer
walls. We can get an idea of the size of the city from the fact that
the outer walls ran for some 421 m (1,381 ft) east-west by
374 m (1,227 ft) north-south.This explains at least one doubt, why this city was known as a castle. What else would you call a place that had 30 feet high ramparts around it?
(To
be continued)
2nd
March 2015
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