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"
80 at 3 finding places for 4 years, at 1 finding place for 5 years and at 1 finding place for 10 years. That means that from the period spanning 303 years between 98 B. C. and 205 A. D. we have chronological evidence for the garrisoning of a watch-tower only during 3,3%, of this space of time even in the most favourable case. We cannot pass, of course, the obvious fact with silence that this source material is relatively scanty. This fact did not escape the attention of Sir Aurel Stein either who himself emphasized: "It is impossible to expect that, with such scattered and often incomplete materials as our documents from the watch-posts of the Tun-huang Limes are, we should be able with certainty to reconstitute all essential details."] 28] In spite of the obvious difficulties resulting from the scantiness of the evidence concerning the history of the Tun-huang Limes, we cannot despair of using it for the elucidation of the date of the Sogdian 'Ancient Letters' because this evidence — be it ever so scanty — does exist and neglecting it we would commit a serious methodological error. At first, we have to elucidate how this scattered written evidence came into being and what its relation is to the original mass of documents produced by the Chinese military administration on the Tun-huang Limes. On the basis of the testimony of the Chinese documents we can state that a written management existed at the greater part of the watch-towers where Chinese troops were permanetly stationed. The written documents comprised among others calendars, registers of official letters received, official orders, military and financial documents, private records etc. Surely, we have to reckon at least with one calendar and several dated official letters at each watch-post every year. Consequently, it becomes obvious that the original mass of Chinese documents at the watch-towers must have been considerably greater than the number actually found by Sir Aurel Stein. We may even regard the latter as a very small fraction of all written documents produced. The documents were obviously preserved for several years. On the basis of the "small official archive — thrown down together on the rubbish-strewn slope"]29] found at watch-tower T. VI. b and containing documents dated from 65 B. C. up to 56 B. C. , we can even presume that they were kept for a decade. Thereafter they were thrown on the refuse-heap or, as more frequently happened, repeatedly scraped, clean and used as palimpsest writing material] 30] or simply used as matchwood and fuel for heating. [ 31] Leaving the station the garrison evidently took the archive of the last few years along. Accordingly, unless the watch-tower suffered destruction, we must assume that the occupation of a watch-tower lasted 5-10 years beyond the last date on the Chinese documents found on the refuse-heaps there. On the basis of the above-said we must regard the testimony of the Chinese documents found by Sir Aurel Stein at the Tun-huang Limes as a minimum information system and not as a maximum one as was done by Haloun and Henning. Now, on the basis of these facts and considerations, we can draw some important conclusions as regards the history of the Tun-huang Limes and the general testimony of its Chinese documents. Table II enables us to draw the following sketchy picture of the stationing of Chinese troops at the watch-towers:
