In spite of the Turki proverb that heads this chapter, it appeared to me that Chinese Turkestan had evolved no art of its own, everything of the kind being influenced by its neighbours, China, India or Persia.
The province is a back-water of the Chinese Empire, and the race of petty farmers who inhabit it cultivate the soil as if by instinct. The so-called cities are comparatively small towns, where the trade is not on a large scale. They are separated one from another by the Takla Makan desert, and have been conquered and re-conquered during their whole history at bewilderingly short intervals, an experience which does not make for progress in art.
We rode all over Kashgar and its environs, and also visited every building of any pretensions in Yarkand and Khotan, but found nothing of real architectural merit; nor could any mosque or shrine compare with the magnificent monuments of India or Persia. As to Chinese architecture, it must be borne in mind that the conquerors would scarcely raise fine temples in a country which they looked upon as a land of temporary exile; moreover, buildings constructed of mud crumble away in the course of centuries, and it has been the custom of some of the many rulers of Turkestan to destroy the places of worship erected by those of another religion. For example, Yakub Beg, when he made himself ruler of Turkestan, set to work to raze all Chinese monuments to the ground, and perhaps the two ruined Buddhist stupas to the north and south of the Consulate owe their dilapidated condition partly to the fury of the early Mohamedan conquerors. At present these Tims, as the Kashgaris call them, are shapeless mounds giving no idea of their original form. Sir Aurel Stein, who has carefully examined them, believes that they date from between 600 and 800 A.D.; but too little was left for him to have any opinion as to what they looked like when erected. It seems curious that, although Kashgar is supposed to be on the site of Kie-sha, visited by Hiuen-Tsiang, yet these two stupas are apparently all that remains of the hundreds of Buddhist monasteries that he mentions.
RUINS OF THE BUDDHIST TIM, KASHGAR.
Page 85.
CHAPTER V
OLLA PODRIDA
It is doubtful if these Central Asian towns ever change. Their dull mud walls, mud houses, mud mosques look as if they would remain the same for ever. In most climates they would be washed away, but in Central Asia there is hardly any rain and so they stay on for ages....
“As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be,” would be a particularly appropriate motto to place over the gateway of a Central Asian town.—The Heart of a Continent, Sir F. Younghusband.