Journeys on the Silk Road (39 page)

There’s no doubt the future will be digital. Libraries are at the frontline in the shift from print as their collections are digitized and made available in cyberspace. How best to achieve this is still being debated. As centers of learning and understanding, libraries have always been far more than simply storehouses of books. They are keepers of cultural memory that hold safe what we know and encourage further inquiry.

What is changing is how that cultural memory is accessed. The so-called “Heavenly Library” that exists in the cloud of the internet may make available more works than any single “real” library could hold. The move by Google to scan the collections of the world’s great libraries and make them available online remains controversial. Advocates compare the move to the development of Gutenberg’s printing press, arguing that it will have a democratizing effect. But critics question whether responsibility for digitizing the world’s books should rest with a private company, rather than a public non-profit organization. The political and social consequences of the technology are not yet apparent as the Gutenberg Age gives way to the Google Age. Yet if the past is a guide, these will be far-reaching.

Wading through the reams of Stein’s correspondence, so carefully preserved in the Bodleian Library in Oxford and on microfilm in the British Library, the handwritten letter already seems a relic of a bygone era. Perhaps today Stein would blog to keep his friends and backers apprised of his journey, or SMS his friend Fred Andrews for a new pair of spectacles. Even Stein’s neat cursive script seems beyond the ability of many of us who are more likely to tap, tweet or text a message on a keypad than pick up a pen. Some might wonder, who needs handwriting in an age of the keyboard? But if we don’t need it, how long might it be before the ability to read the handwritten word becomes a rare skill, its form as incomprehensible to an average reader as ancient Sogdian?

The knowledge that everything changes is at the heart of the religion that produced the Diamond Sutra. The scroll itself has undergone so many changes, passed through countless hands and survived potential catastrophes. It outlived a 1,000-year entombment on the edge of the Gobi Desert, it evaded the looting of Dunhuang, it could so easily have been lost in a mountain stream, sunk at sea en route to Britain or burned in the bombings of World War II. Miraculously, it survived these trials by earth, fire, water, and air. Of all the paradoxes associated with the Diamond Sutra, none is greater than the endurance of this text about impermanence. Having survived its elemental trials, the Diamond Sutra has fulfilled a 1,300-year-old promise: that it be freely available to all.

Postscript

Percy Allen
became president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Stein was a frequent visitor to his home. An Erasmus scholar, Allen traveled extensively in Europe, where he visited libraries great and small. He died in 1931.

Fred Andrews
built a house in Srinagar from where he could see across a valley to Stein’s camp at Mohand Marg. He returned to England in 1929. He was technical adviser on his brother George Arliss’s 1936 film
East Meets West
. He died in 1957, aged ninety-three.

Chiang-ssu-yeh (Jiang Siye)
remained in Kashgar, where he died in the spring of 1922. Stein felt deeply the loss of his devoted companion and helped pay to transport Chiang’s body back to his home in Hunan.

Dash the Great
remained in Oxford with the Allens. Aged about fourteen, Stein’s favorite fox terrier was run over by a bus in Oxford in 1918.

Florence Lorimer
spent three years in Kashmir before returning to London. The “Recording Angel” became a buyer of Oriental carpets for a London department store and later assistant librarian at the Royal Asiatic Society. Aged forty-five she married a retired civil servant. She died in 1967.

George and Catherine Macartney
left Kashgar in 1919. They retired to Jersey in the Channel Islands. Lady Macartney penned a memoir of her Kashgar years,
An English Lady in Chinese Turkestan
. Knighted in 1913, Sir George died on Jersey in 1945, Lady Macartney nearly six years later.

Aurel Stein’s grave
was tended for nearly thirty years by an Afghan man named Rahimullah, along with the graves of other foreigners buried in the British Cemetery in Kabul. The elderly caretaker died of natural causes in March 2010. His son Abdul Samay has taken on the role.

Abbot Wang Yuanlu
spent the rest of his life at the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas. He died in 1931. His burial stupa is at Mogao, where visitors pass it daily on their way to his beloved caves.

Acknowledgments

A journey across more than a thousand years and several continents doesn’t happen without great kindness, memorable encounters and eureka moments. It is a journey that began when a scruffy backpacker set down her rucksack in the shabby surrounds of Kashgar’s Chini Bagh in 1989. But the seeds for the book might never have ripened without a fleeting computer image of the Mogao Caves glimpsed during a visit to the Getty’s Conservation Institute in Los Angeles in 2005.

Since then it has become a shared journey during which we have crossed the dunes of the Taklamakan Desert atop reluctant camels, spent quietly thrilling days absorbed in Aurel Stein’s letters in the British Library and Bodleian Library and been captivated by the painstaking work to conserve the Diamond Sutra.

His Holiness the fourteenth Dalai Lama made time in his schedule of teachings to discuss the Diamond Sutra. Others also shared their understanding of Buddhism, including Robert Thurman, Paul Harrison, Gary Snyder, Robina Courtin, Wai Cheong Kok and Yoon S. Han. The Nan Tien temple in western Sydney welcomed us to hear practitioners chant the Diamond Sutra. Renate Ogilvie graciously related her moving personal story.

At the British Library, Susan Whitfield and Frances Wood were generous in their time and knowledge, illuminating in their responses to queries and made invaluable comments on an early draft of the manuscript. That said, any errors are our own. Mark Barnard opened the door of his conservation studio to us. Lynn Young pointed us to archival gold, and staff of the Asian and African studies reading room were endlessly helpful.

At the British Museum, Helen Wang shared her expertise on Stein and Florence Lorimer; and Marjorie Caygill her wartime knowledge. Archivists Stephanie Clarke and Julia Flood were enthusiastic in their support.

We are indebted to Colin Harris at the Bodleian Library and Julian Reid, archivist at Merton and Corpus Christi Colleges, Oxford. Stein’s biographer Annabel Walker offered insights into the explorer’s life. Medi Jones-Jackson and other staff at the National Library of Wales unlocked their secret wartime tunnel for us, and even provided the hard hats.

In Dunhuang, Wang Xudong, Neville Agnew and his colleagues from the Getty’s Conservation Institute explained their work at the Mogao Caves, as did Sharon Sullivan, Kirsty Altenburg and Peter Barker.

In Australia, Edmund Capon, former director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, opened his personal library. Gallery curators Jackie Menzies and Liu Yang shared their expertise, as did Lindie Ward from the Powerhouse Museum. Alan Oakley, former editor of
The Sydney Morning Herald,
gave the precious gift of special leave to work on the book, which Peter Fray kindly extended.

Anne Coombs provided wise counsel and incisive comments on the manuscript, as she has during three decades of friendship. Brenda O’Neill’s eye for detail was meticulous. Julian Droogan and Mark Rossiter read portions of the manuscript and suggested improvements. We drew on the specialist knowledge of Victor H. Mair, Lukas Nickel, Mark Allon and Judith Snodgrass. Barbara Harper, Linda Mors, Bob Smillie, Susan Varga, Rae Bolotin, Isabelle Li, Tony Twiss, Philippa Drynan and Sasha Anawalt helped in miraculous ways.

At Lyons Press, Holly Rubino and her team have been enthusiastic in their support. Our agents, Pamela Malpas and Lyn Tranter, have been energetic champions. We are grateful to all who helped us weave together the threads of this Silk Road story.

Endnotes

A note on spellings:

There are numerous possible renderings of Chinese and Turkic names into English. We have generally used the spellings Stein adopted in his books and letters for events set in his day. (The key exceptions are Dunhuang and Xuanzang.) Elsewhere we have favored contemporary spellings for people and places.

CHAPTER
1:
THE
GREAT
RACE

“more like a log”: Aurel Stein,
Ruins of Desert Cathay
, vol 1, p 24.

“incapable of facing prolonged hard travel”: ibid., vol 1, p 9.

“Sadiq now in Chinese prison”: Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Stein MS 3, Macartney telegram, April 10, 1906.

CHAPTER
2:
SIGNS
OF
WONDER

“I wonder whether you have seen”: Bodleian, Stein MS 90, John Lockwood Kipling to Stein, May 16, 1902.

“It was a melancholy duty”: Aurel Stein,
Ancient Khotan,
vol 1, p 502.

“A great many of the grottos”: Bodleian, Stein MS 294, application of September 14, 1904.

“It seems scarcely possible”: ibid.

“The wide-spread interest”: ibid.

“center of intellectual sunshine”: Jeannette Mirsky,
Sir Aurel Stein: Archaeological explorer,
p 210.

“A bold demand”: ibid., p 212.

“Rejoice”: ibid., p 217.

CHAPTER
3:
THE
LISTENING
POST

“There is a piece of news”: Bodleian, Stein MS 96, Macartney to Stein, January 20, 1905.

“another poacher on your preserves”: Bodleian, Stein MS 296, Macartney to Stein, October 16, 1905.

“The sooner you are on the field”: ibid.

“The absence of the Professor”: ibid., October 19, 1905. Extract from Macartney’s confidential report dated October 18, 1905.

“There is a good deal”: ibid., November 10, 1905.

“Good morning, old fat-head”: Albert von Le Coq,
Buried Treasures of Chinese Turkestan,
p 76.

“I have never believed”: Bodleian, Stein MS 297, Stein to Macartney, February 6, 1906.

“Grünwedel is ill”: Bodleian, Stein MS 296, Macartney to Stein, December 29, 1905.

“My own plan now”: Bodleian, Stein MS 3, Stein to Allen, January 20, 1906.

“The true race”: ibid., January 6, 1906.

“the most timid, unenterprising girl”: Lady (Catherine) Macartney,
An English Lady in Chinese Turkestan,
p 2.

“living newspaper”: Aurel Stein,
Ruins of Desert Cathay,
vol 1, p 122.

“Wolves, leopards, and foxes”: Catherine Macartney,
An English Lady in Chinese Turkestan,
p 40.

“Baby had three falls”: Bodleian, Stein MS 96, Macartney to Stein, May 7, 1904.

“They tell me”: Catherine Macartney,
An English Lady in Chinese Turkestan,
p 38.

“I sometimes suspected”: ibid., p 131.

“easy-going slackness”: Bodleian, Stein MS 3, Stein to Allen, June 25, 1906.

“It cost great efforts”: ibid.

Bactrian camels are so critically endangered today that fewer than a thousand remain in the wild. See iucnredlist.org and edgeofexistence.org.

“inordinate addiction to opium”: Aurel Stein,
Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan,
p 116.

“captivating Khotan damsel”: ibid., p 466.

“shrivelled up with the cold”: Bodleian, Stein MS 3, Stein to Allen, June 2, 1906.

“a hardy plant”: Bodleian, Stein MS 37, Stein to Andrews, January 31, 1907.

“lively ways”: Aurel Stein,
Ruins of Desert Cathay,
vol 1, p 116.

“They may turn up”: Bodleian, Stein MS 3, Stein to Allen, June 19, 1906.

“The rush past”: ibid.

“a cave by the seashore”: Aurel Stein,
Ruins of Desert Cathay,
vol 1, p 124.

CHAPTER
4:
THE
MOON
AND
THE
MAIL

“One may invade the house”: Aurel Stein,
Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan,
p 184.