Journeys on the Silk Road (23 page)

Soon the many bags that had already arrived in Khotan under Chiang’s care were joined by those Stein had sent for safekeeping to Macartney more than a year earlier, before Stein had crossed to Dunhuang. Macartney also sent sheets of tin—and drained Turkestan’s supply of the commodity in the process—so Stein could safely pack his manuscripts and other treasures for their journey beyond Turkestan. Narbagh had once echoed to the gentle strains of flutes that serenaded Stein at the feast in his honor; now the garden clanged with hammering and sawing as up to forty local laborers constructed case after sturdy tin-lined case. Stein watched the work progress, but the careful packing of his fragile antiquities he trusted to no one but himself.

Stein thought hard about how best to get his huge cargo from Turkestan to Europe. He had two options: land or sea. He could take it west via Russia, or south via India and onto a boat from Bombay. The Russian route was shorter and familiar. He had taken his goods that way in 1901, traveling via Kashgar and across the border to Osh in Russian Turkestan and then by train to Europe. He had needed only eight ponies for his antiquities and baggage for his first expedition. This cargo was roughly eight times the size. He needed twenty-four ponies just to carry the manuscripts. But it would be impractical to take it all with him on a passenger train, and even if he could it would be prohibitively expensive. He also feared the loss of material conveyed on an unreliable train system—the same railway that had mislaid the luggage of the German Grünwedel and the Frenchman Pelliot.

India was a slower but safer option. He considered two routes via Kashmir. He ruled out one through Hunza and Gilgit, in present-day Pakistan, as impossible for heavily laden animals. The only solution was to take it all over the Karakoram Mountains via Ladakh and then to Kashmir. The hidden library’s scrolls had survived entombed for a millennium because the dry desert atmosphere was devoid of humidity. They had reached Khotan unharmed. But ahead lay huge mountains, glacier-fed rivers, snow, and ice. It was potentially the most risky part of the journey for the Diamond Sutra and the rest of the manuscripts. One leaky case could ruin paper forever. The fragile murals from Miran needed extra protection. They were strengthened by gluing strips of cotton to them, then repacked between insulating layers of reeds.

Stein had much to occupy him. As he packed, the future of the finds and his own fate increasingly filled his thoughts. He cared little for London, where he would be hemmed in by arid deserts of bureaucracy and mountains of paperwork. He hoped he might at least find a quiet corner suited to the idiosyncrasies of a man whose preferred habitats were deserts and alpine meadows.

“I shall be more than ever bound to the collection & with it to London, and you can feel what that means for me,” he wrote to Allen. “I dread in advance its turmoil, its ‘cage’ feeling etc, to say nothing of prospective incarceration in [the British Museum’s] basements.” If only he could have help with the huge task that would await him. Someone such as his friend Fred Andrews. Stein resolved to escape his British Museum “bondage” as quickly as possible.

Packing was tedious, with only a break at dusk to walk or ride through the dusty village roads with Dash for company. Returning to Europe would mean leaving behind his canine companion. The little dog had distinguished himself en route to Khotan when he detected a tiger near the camp. No one realized why Dash had barked constantly one night. The next morning the footprints of a huge beast were found nearby. It would be hard to part with brave Dash. But Stein didn’t want to put him through a lengthy sea journey and quarantine in England. He had left behind Dash’s predecessor in India in 1901, but the dog died the next year. Perhaps some friends in Punjab would take Dash II, Dash the Great. “It is sad to think that I shall have to leave Dash when I go to England,” he told Allen. “How lucky those are who like Dash do not know of impending separation!”

But more immediate concerns demanded his attention. First he had to hose down a problem caused by his “worthless” Kashmiri cook. Ramzan, who had already absconded near Dunhuang, got into a scrap with a man in Khotan over a pony. The badly injured local was covered in bruises when he was conveyed to Stein on a litter. Stein paid compensation and hoped that might be the end of the problematic servant’s trouble. But apparently a fight over a pony was not all Ramzan engaged in at Khotan. Chiang heard rumors the cook was also procuring young women. Wearied by his cook’s bad behavior, Stein explained that he could not concern himself with the morals of his staff. Nonetheless, Ramzan’s behavior appalled Stein. “Disgust at having to employ such a scoundrel keeps me awake half the night,” he wrote in his diary. But Stein retained his services. A cook, it seemed, was harder to replace than a surveyor.

Chiang spent his days surrounded by bundles of scrolls attempting to make a rough list of the Dunhuang manuscripts. The results were thrilling, with Chiang turning up texts much older and more varied than Stein had expected when they began burrowing in the “treasure cave.” It was time-consuming work. Chiang had looked at just a third of the manuscripts at Khotan. “You can imagine the trouble of unfolding rolls of thin paper, often 30 yards long & more, to search for colophons etc. Chiang is glued to his table from morning till late at night,” Stein wrote to Allen.

Chiang’s work came to a sudden halt when he suffered a serious case of food poisoning. A photograph taken at Narbagh shows a gaunt Chiang, almost unrecognizable from the round-faced figure photographed in Dunhuang fifteen months earlier. “He suffered awful pains for days & kept me busy as improvised doctor & superintendent of nursing. But at last he got over the attacks & is now slowly regaining strength & spirits. Faith in my medicines was the main cure,” Stein told Allen. And he plied poor Chiang with doses of the salty yeast extract sent out from England. “Marmite turned to use at last,” he noted with satisfaction in his diary.

Stein too endured ill-health at Khotan. His malarial fevers returned, he suffered from a toothache and he became temporarily deaf in his left ear. Yet both men’s ailments paled beside the affliction suffered by Naik Ram Singh. Shortly after setting out for Miran, the Naik’s neck and back grew stiff. Soon he was struck by headaches that grew more intense each day. After five days, while sitting in an orchard to escape the noon heat, he began to reel and lost sight in one eye. Nonetheless, the hardy Sikh insisted on continuing, hoping his condition would improve. It worsened. At Miran, while clearing a temple with Ibrahim Beg, the Naik lost the vision in his other eye also. Still he waited—and hoped—for nearly two weeks. Finally he agreed to turn back and let Ibrahim Beg, a Muslim, guide him to Khotan. Although blind, Naik Ram Singh insisted on cooking his own food to avoid breaking caste rules, despite repeated campfire burns.

Stein was devastated to see the once-proud soldier so diminished. No event during the entire expedition affected Stein so deeply. In a heartfelt letter to Allen, his closest confidant, he shared his fears for the Naik.

You can imagine my feelings when I saw him arrive in this state of utter helplessness . . . [The Naik] luckily seems to bear his affliction with remarkable calmness & courage, perhaps a compensation of nature for a certain heaviness of mind & disposition. But whether this did not make him lose precious weeks on his return for the chance of proper treatment only the gods know. He himself seems confident of an early recovery & this is indeed fortunate. But alas I know only too well how delusive such hope may be & feel the full weight of his care.

Stein searched for some clue and cure for the handyman’s blindness. Khotan’s only surgeon was called and relieved some of the Naik’s pain, but was unable to restore his sight. The best chance of medical help lay 200 miles away in Yarkand, where Stein had sold his camels and where the Swedish medical missionary, Dr. Gösta Raquette, was based. The Naik was transported by cart to Raquette, a friend of Stein.

Raquette diagnosed glaucoma. The headaches were a symptom of its onset. There was no hope of recovery. Only a timely operation could have saved Naik Ram Singh’s eyesight. Raquette broke the terrible news to the Naik and reported back to Stein: “You have nothing to reproach yourself with. The disease might quite as well have come on if he had been at home & nobody can expect you to recognize a disease that very often in the beginning is overlooked even by medical men.”

The letter was scant consolation. Stein knew that at home in India the Naik would have been among his own people and had the chance of prompt medical treatment. The soldier had paid a high price for his wish to better provide for his wife and son. He had been enticed from his regiment by the promise of pay five times his army salary. Although Stein warned him of the trip’s hardships, this was a danger no one could have anticipated. Chiang was so distressed by the Naik’s plight that he again set aside his religious skepticism and made offerings for the handyman’s recovery at the shrine of a healing saint. Others, such as Stein’s prosperous friend Akhun Beg, urged the use of local treatments. Stein dismissed as “truly mediaeval” remedies that involved the use of breast milk and baby’s urine. The Naik, who had been so enchanted when he encountered a frozen lake, would never see such a sight—or any other—again.

Raquette advised that the Naik should head home as soon as possible. Arrangements were made for him to travel with a party of Hindu traders returning to India over the Karakorams to Ladakh. He rested in Leh, the capital of Ladakh, before being conveyed to Dr. Arthur Neve at the Srinagar Mission Hospital in Kashmir. He confirmed Raquette’s diagnosis. From there, the Naik’s brother escorted him to his family’s village in Punjab.

The soldier’s future weighed heavily on Stein. When Stein saw him in Punjab five months later, the explorer was shocked by the Naik’s mental disintegration, exacerbated perhaps by hashish consumption. Stein argued for a special pension for his loyal handyman. The government of India granted it, but he did not benefit from it for long. Within a year of losing his sight, Naik Ram Singh was dead.

After four months in Khotan, punctuated by a few exploratory diversions, Stein was ready to move. The packing in Akhun Beg’s orchard was complete. It had taken six arduous weeks, and the manuscripts alone filled thirty of the carefully made cases. Although he made a brief note in Khotan about a well-printed Chinese roll, Stein did not grasp the significance of what is now recognized as the world’s oldest printed dated book. It was simply one scroll among many. On August 1, more than fifty camels and a column of donkeys left Khotan under Tila Bai’s care for the journey through the Kunlun Mountains via a well-known caravan route. Stein, determined as ever to take the road less traveled, planned a more difficult path. He would then unite with Tila Bai and the antiquities convoy in late September to cross the Karakorams together.

It was time for farewells: to Turkestan, where Stein the lifelong wanderer felt so at home, and to the desert that had yielded such treasures. And it was time to part from some of his loyal followers. Turdi, the courageous
dak
runner who had risked his life to find Stein in the desert on Christmas Eve in 1906, filled his saddle bags with Stein’s mail for the last time. But no parting was harder than from Chiang. A deep friendship had developed during their two years together. The man hired as an interpreter had proved far more: an unlikely desert traveler, a trusted companion, teacher, witty raconteur, a skilled diplomat, and negotiator. Without him, Stein might never have secured Dunhuang’s treasure from Abbot Wang.

While the journey together—and especially their three weeks at the caves—would create an enduring bond between Stein and Chiang, the explorer had been mindful they would eventually part. Before he left Dunhuang he wrote to Andrews to secure a special parting gift. In typical Stein style, he was precise not only about what he wanted but how much he was prepared to pay. He requested a good silver watch—then a rare and prestigious item in Turkestan. The cost was not to exceed £2 10 shillings, and it should be inscribed: “Presented by Dr M.A. Stein to Chiang-ssu-yeh as a token of sincere regard and in grateful remembrance of his devoted scholarly services during explorations in Chinese Turkestan, 1906–08.”

Chiang dreamed of following Stein to London or India, but knew obtaining work in either country would be difficult. Stein, too, imagined spending summers with Chiang on Mohand Marg in Kashmir. But the bucolic idyll remained a dream. The reality was Chiang would remain in Turkestan, in exile from his home and family. Stein wanted to ensure Chiang had a good position and worked behind the scenes to secure one. In Khotan, Stein received welcome news from Kashgar that George Macartney had agreed to employ him as his secretary.