XXVII Central Asian Studies

Extract

Central asia has come as a boon to all of us; it is a land of universal brotherhood. For centuries it has been the meeting-point of all races: Hindus, Persians, Turks, Tibetans, Buddhists, Jews, Christians, Manichaeans used to live there side by side in a happy spirit of harmony; and the same spirit of harmony now seems to inspire our Central Asian studies. Western and Eastern explorers — English, French, German, Russian, Japanese—entered into rivalry only in the most chivalrous mood. England can be proud of having led the way; the glory of the first and the most brilliant discoveries will for ever remain attached to the name of Sir Aurei Stein, a man of exceptional abilities, who has given proof of the highest gifts in the most different directions—as a philologist, as an archaeologist, as an explorer. I would compare him witli his patron saint, ablbīṁṭa-devatā, the Chinese pilgrim Hwan-tsang. Both traversed the same countries in their peregrinations; both had to endure the same hardships, had to prove the same energy; both brought home a treasure of notes, observations, and documents; both were cheered by the same hope of benefiting mankind, the Chinese monk with the word of Buddha, Stein with scientific and historical truth. Both proved equally right; catholicity belongs to science as well as to religion. No national pride interfered to raise difficulties in the working up of the mass of documents collected by Stein. Some of them have been entrusted to Thomsen, a Dane, the wonderful decipherer of the Orkhon Turkish runes; some to Von Le Coq, a German, himself another explorer of Central Asia; some to La Vallée Poussin, a Belgian, one of the authorities on Mahāyāna Buddhism. Pelliot, the French émule of Stein, who shared with him the treasures hoarded in the celebrated cave at Twan-hwang, was called upon for a catalogue of the Chinese MSS. Chavannes, the leading Sinologist of our day, had for his own part the task of publishing Chinese wooden tablets dating from the early centuries A.D. M. Senart and Father Boyer, both of high renown as decipherers of Kharoṣṭrī characters, were asked to accept a share as co-editors of the tablets traced in that sort of writing. Professor Gauthiot obtained the Sogdian fragments. I myself received the leaves written in the Tokharian language.