THE PIGEON SHRINE.
Page 206.
We visited the sheds fitted with flat nests of basket work, on many of which were fluffy yellow fledglings, and beams were laid from wall to wall on which the birds could perch. As may be imagined, the smell and dirt deterred me from taking more than a glance at this pigeon sanctuary; but our servants had no such qualms, and probably felt that the longer they stayed the more merit would accrue to them. Sir Aurel Stein shows that the legend about these pigeons is merely a variant of Hiuen Tsiang’s story of the sacred golden-haired rats, to whose burrowings the pilgrim attributed the conical sand-dunes that lie round this spot. The province, so the narrative runs, was invaded by a barbarian host that encamped close to the mounds thrown up by the creatures, whose aid the King of Khotan invoked in his despair. During the night a huge rat came to him in a vision, promising him success, and on the morrow, when the men of Khotan fell upon the enemy, they gained an easy victory, because the rats had gnawed the harness of the horses, the fastenings of the armour and the bowstrings of the invaders. From that day the miraculous rodents were accorded high honour: a temple was erected in the midst of the dunes, in which sacrifices were offered to them and where all who passed by worshipped and brought gifts, misfortunes falling upon those who neglected to do so. The pigeon has now taken the place of the rat of Buddhist legend in the minds of these primitive people, with whom tradition dies hard.
When we left the shrine we were prepared to cope with the gigantic dunes that we had been warned to expect; but, not for the first time, we grasped the inaccuracy of most of the statements made by the natives, there being only two or three somewhat difficult places for waggons. At the foot of the sandy waste in which the Mazzar stood was a stretch of reed-covered marshy ground, watered by a wide stream alive with water-fowl, beyond which flocks were grazing. We soon saw ahead of us the remarkably lofty weeping-willows of Zawa, and fetched up finally at a small garden beyond the village, where we found our tents ready pitched under the trees and were all thankful for a good rest and a general tidying up, in anticipation of our entry into Khotan on the morrow.
CHAPTER XI
KHOTAN THE KINGDOM OF JADE
There is no article of traffic more valuable than lumps of a certain transparent kind of marble, which we, from poverty of language, usually call jasper. These marbles are called by the Chinese Iusce.[3]—Benedict Goes, 1603 A.D.
To Mrs. St. George Littledale belongs the distinction of being the first English, if not European, woman to enter the town of Khotan, and I felt proud at being the next to follow in her footsteps. We had travelled over three hundred miles from Kashgar to this farthest city in the East of Chinese Turkestan, and hundreds of miles of desert lay between it and any place of importance in the Celestial Empire. A broad sandy road shaded by trees led to the capital, broken only by the wide stony bed of the Karakash River, the three branches of which we forded with ease, since much of the water had been drawn off for irrigation purposes into a broad canal.
Khan Sahib Badrudin, the British Agent, a fine-looking old man in a long coat of rich brocade and a snowy turban, met us and, dismounting from his showy horse, conducted us to the usual dasturkhwan. We were told that he wielded great power in the city. He was so frank and hearty that I took to him on the spot, and after running the gauntlet of the other receptions, we were conducted by him to his newly built and elaborately ornamented garden-house. During our tour we had the good fortune to be quartered in three entirely new residences, which any traveller who knows the dirt and squalor of the East will recognise as no small boon.