É. Apor (ed.): Jubilee Volume of the Oriental Collection, 1951–1976. Papers Presented on the Occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the Oriental Collection of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
J. HARMATTA: Sir Aurel Stein and the Date of the Sogdian "Ancient Letters"
88 chiu chang' (No. 4 = T.XV.a.I. 5) was found together with a slip (T. XV.a. 1. 12) dated from 67 A.D., this conclusion is obviously inevitable. 24. Cf. MASPERO, op. cit. pp. 16-19. The indications of this calendar satisfy two years: 13 B.C. and 205 A.D. Maspero himself adopted the former date. It must not be forgotten, however, that the series of watch-towers marked with XXII produced evidence of only one date from the early 1st century B.C. (98 B.C. ); all other dates occurring in the documents found at these watch-towers belong to the 1st and Ilnd centuries A.D. It seems, therefore, more reasonable to refer the date of No. 5. M to the end of the Later Han Dynasty rather than to the intermediate period before the usurper Wang Mang. 25. BSOAS 12 (1948) 601, n. 2. 26. The watch-towers are regarded as sites here, the refuse-heaps, dustbins, quarters at the watch-towers as finding places. The signs for the finding places are indented. 27. Each year is quoted only once, even if it occurs in several documents. 28. Serindia II.p. 744. 29. Serindia П. p. 645. 30. Sir Aurel STEIN, On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks (Hung. ed.), Budapest 1934. pp. 97, 123; Serindia II. pp. 646, 685, 714. 31. Sir Aurel STEIN, On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks, p. 97. 32. Cf. W. B. HENNING: BSOAS 12 (1948) p. 602. Nobody - and least of all Sir Aurel Stein — asserted that "the Sogdian Letters must belong to a year in which occupation of the site is attested by the presence of a Chinese document, or to a year earlier than that" (Henning: op. cit. p. 601). 33. Cf. Sir Aurel STEIN, Serindia II. p. 687. 34. СНА VANNES, op.cit.p. 136; Sir Aurel STEIN, Serindia II. p. 749, n. 35a. 35. Serindia 11.669 foil. 36. Serindia II. p. 699. 37. Serindia II.p. 651. 38. Serindia П.р. 679. 39. СНА VANNES, op.cit.p. 45; Sir Aurel STEIN, Serindia II. p. 756. 40. СНА VANNES, op.cit.p. 84. 41. Serindia II.p. 652. The description of the tablet (Serindia П.р. 770) runs as follows: "Early Sogdian wooden doc. ; slip trimmed down R. side, broken away down L. , inscr. at top with 4 11. Sogdian and one char. (5th 1. ) and rectilinear diagram below." 42. STEIN (Serindia II.p. 654) supposed" that the tablet was cut into two exact halves" but the contents of the Sogdian text prove that such an assumption is impossible. The preserved part may constitute only one fifth or one sixth of the original. Of course, even though the original form of the tablet might have been different from the one supposed by Stein, this fact does not exclude the possibility that Chinese soldiers used a part of it as tally. 43. Sir Aurel STEIN, Serindia II. p. 674. 44. J. HARMATTA,'Eine neue Quelle zur Geschichte der Seidenstrasse': Jb. f. Wirtschaftgeschichte (1971) 135 foil.
