Journeys On The Silk Road Part 2

Stein bid farewell to his Abdal guides, Old Mullah and Tokhta Akhun, whose sc.r.a.p of paper had led to such spectacular finds. Stein admired how the hardy pair, like their fellow Lopliks, seemed impervious to the extreme climate in which they lived-the icy gales in winter, the mosquitoes and dust storms in summer. Such resilience had no doubt contributed to the long lifespan of so many of Abdal's inhabitants. Tokhta Akhun had an elderly mother to care for. Even Old Mullah-himself long past middle age-still had his elderly parents, which was why, to Stein's regret, Old Mullah could not accompany him along the route he had rediscovered. Instead, Stein's guides on his final leg to Dunhuang would be the voices from the past, including the pilgrim monk Xuanzang and Marco Polo. The Venetian traveler had described the route by which he crossed and estimated it took twenty-eight days. It was still reckoned to do so.

Having spent so long at Miran, as it yielded such rich rewards, once again Stein needed to hurry. But this time the rush was prompted by the seasons rather than the advance of his rivals. His chosen path was northeast following the old caravan route. Stein knew the route was pa.s.sable for only a few weeks more. Soon the pure chunks of ice that could be hacked from the frozen salt springs would thaw. Spring would render the heat unbearable and the water undrinkable. With his winter diggings over and the laborers paid off, Stein was looking forward to the crossing since it afforded a rest from the burden of overseeing so many men and excavations. It is a mark of how difficult the winter dig had been-and of Stein's stamina-that he would approach a 350-mile trek across a frozen desert as a respite.

He set out for Dunhuang on a morning in late February. Relying on Marco Polo's estimate, he left with a month's supplies for his thirteen men, eleven ponies, eight camels, and nearly forty donkeys. The extra donkeys he had hired to carry provisions would be dispatched back to their owners at intervals along the way when no longer needed. But within a couple of days of departing, three died. Soon six donkeys were dead. Stein feared the loss of more would make it hard to transport the supplies. The fates of men and beast were intertwined in the desert. As one after another died, Stein suspected foul play-that the donkey drivers were deliberately underfeeding their charges so their owners could get compensation. He put the entire donkey train under the command of one of his own men, Ibrahim Beg, and he promised the donkey drivers extra money for each animal that survived the journey. The strategy worked.

The first week pa.s.sed in exhausting marches of up to twenty-six miles a day along the edge of dried-up salt marshes, clay terraces, and gravel slopes devoid of vegetation. They were "a drearier sight than any dunes," Stein told Allen.

Stein was cheered by Chiang's good humor and the pair chatted together, Stein in his halting Chinese. "My unmusical ear fails to remember or distinguish the varying tones of the identical syllable & I fear it will take long before others will be as clever as [Chiang] to catch the meaning of my conversation . . . Often we have talked of Marco Polo who had described this old route so truthfully," he wrote.

As they camped one night, Stein pulled from his bags Marco Polo's account of the route and read it to Chiang. It was hardly cheerful reading: When travellers are on the move by night, and one of them chances to lag behind or to fall asleep or the like, when he tries to gain his company again he will hear spirits talking, and will suppose them to be his comrades. Sometimes the spirits will call him by name; and thus shall a traveller ofttimes be led astray so that he never finds his party. And in this way many have perished. Sometimes the stray travellers will hear, as it were, the tramp and hum of a great cavalcade of people away from the real line of road, and taking this to be their own company will follow the sound; and when day breaks they find that a cheat has been put on them and that they are in an ill plight. Even in the daytime one hears those spirits talking. And sometimes you shall hear the sound of a variety of musical instruments, and still more commonly the sound of drums. Hence in making this journey 'tis common for travellers to keep close together.

The supernatural account evoked awe in Chiang. If the desert could cast such a spell over the otherwise skeptical Chiang, a scholarly, erudite man, its effect was felt even more keenly among the more superst.i.tious members of Stein's party. Little wonder they were getting restive. So all were relieved when midway through their journey they spotted five toghrak trees. It signaled they had arrived at the place where they would rest for a day-the only one on the entire crossing. The windswept trees, bravely clinging to life in the desert, were rare enough in this wasteland to give their name to the site, Besh-toghrak, meaning simply five toghrak trees. Saddles were repaired and the camels and ponies were watered at two nearby wells and treated for sore backs. Stein planned to leave eight of the weakest donkeys no longer needed at this lonely spot. A young Abdal donkey man was left to care for them. The man was given a twenty-eight day supply of rations and a box of matches. Until the caravan collected him on the way back, he would "have to make the best of his solitude-or the visits of goblins," Stein commented dryly.

A fierce cold wind was blowing a few days later when, through the dust-filled haze, the party caught sight of an abandoned fort. They made their way toward it in a thin line to s.h.i.+eld against the headwinds. Six times the height of the tallest man among them, the fort was entered via an archway carved into walls fifteen feet thick. Centuries ago, this would have seemed an impregnable stronghold for a ruler's army. Now, nothing hinted at human habitation, save for the debris of a recent caravan that had attempted the perilous crossing.

Stein climbed a staircase hewn perhaps 2,000 years ago into a corner of the ma.s.sive clay fortress. Thirty feet up, he held his ground as he was buffeted by the gale. He reached for his binoculars and surveyed the forbidding expanse: beyond the beds of reeds near the fort, tamarisk scrub and bare gravel stretched to the barren foothills of a distant mountain range. He turned into the wind and focused his gaze on four distant mounds that stood out against the hazy grey horizon: watchtowers. His excitement rose. These were more evidence of a long-forgotten military frontier. He had spotted traces of a ruined wall and other watchtowers in recent days. As he stood on the immense clay walls, he imagined an ancient military chief surveying the line of watchtowers under his command, eager for signals-fire by night, smoke by day-that pa.s.sed along them. Beacons that once signaled the approach, or retreat, of armed enemies. Could this fort and the watchtowers be part of that forgotten frontier? In the empty isolation of the desert, such answers seemed unknowable. And yet he would soon find an answer.

Stein descended the fort's staircase and rejoined his party. This was not the time to explore further, no matter how much curiosity the watchtowers provoked. The food and water were almost gone. The animals were hungry and his men were irritable and exhausted. They had not seen another soul since leaving Abdal nearly three weeks ago. They had crossed quickly, in a week less than Marco Polo estimated. But all now needed rest. They must get to Dunhuang as quickly as possible.

A distant line of bare trees and cultivated fields on the edge of Dunhuang were heartening sights for Aurel Stein and his caravan on March 12, 1907. While a persistent wind howled its numbing welcome as they approached the town, at least the weary men and beasts were not enduring its blasts in the desert. Warmth and shelter would soon be at hand. Not that Stein wanted to linger in Dunhuang; he was eager to return to the ruined wall, fort, and the string of watchtowers he had seen as he crossed from Abdal.

Dunhuang was the Silk Road's gateway between China and Central Asia, which was why he planned to use it as a base for six months of archaeological work and exploration in the surrounding desert and mountains. He planned a short halt, just long enough for his men and animals to rest and for him to visit the painted meditation grottoes-the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas-about fifteen miles to the southeast. He had longed to see these remote, sacred caves, and he was determined to realize this dream. But his real work lay elsewhere. Or so he thought.

His approach to his first oasis within China was unsettling after the hospitality he had enjoyed in Turkestan and where he felt at home. He knew its ways, its language and its daily rhythms, punctuated by the sound of the Muslim call to prayer. But now he was on foreign ground. In Turkestan, local headmen invariably rode out to meet his party as he approached an oasis. So too did the rapacious Hindu money-lenders, no doubt eager for business. But this time there was not so much as a single merchant to acknowledge his arrival. As always, Stein had attempted to smooth the path, sending word of his approach, his intended business and requesting accommodation. But unusually, no response had come. Was he being deliberately neglected? Was this how things were done on Chinese soil? What did it mean? Most immediately, it meant no quarters had been prepared for him or his party.

First impressions of Dunhuang, the once-vibrant oasis on the edge of the vast Gobi Desert, were hardly encouraging. Few people were outside on this bitterly cold and dust-filled day as he pa.s.sed down the narrow main street. The few locals who could be found directed him to the caravanserai, the main stopping place for travelers needing accommodation, but it was so filthy and cramped he looked elsewhere for a more suitable camp. About a half a mile from the walled town's southern gate he found a large orchard with a dilapidated house. It was inhabited by a widow, her mother and several children, who agreed to house them in their unoccupied rooms.

Other differences from Turkestan soon became apparent. Stein was accustomed to-and approved of-the way Muslim women promptly removed themselves from the company of strangers. But purdah was not practiced in Dunhuang. Instead, Chinese women with bound feet teetered around as his dusty, travel-weary party settled in the unused rooms built around a courtyard. Stein erected his tent in the orchard, preferring its peace and relative comfort to the cavernous hall he had been offered as quarters.

Fuel, fodder, and food were his next concerns. But how to pay for them? Once again he was reminded that things were done differently in China, even in the far-flung western province of Gansu. As expected, no one would accept the coins of neighboring Turkestan, and the only silver bullion he had was in the form of horseshoes. Finding a blacksmith who could cut some silver into small change didn't occur to him the first day. Meanwhile, the daily market had closed and it took hours for supplies to arrive. The mood of his men darkened, frustrated by the delays in finding shelter and then food. Already apprehensive of venturing onto foreign soil, it seemed their worst fears of China's strange customs had been realized. All except Chiang, who instantly made friends with the widow's children, were on unfamiliar turf. Frustrating as his arrival in Dunhuang was, Stein later saw its absurdity, writing: "It amused me to think what our experiences would have been, had our caravan suddenly pitched camp in Hyde Park, and expected to raise supplies promptly in the neighbourhood without producing coin of the realm!" He quickly grew alert to the tricks of the money-exchange trade-silver pieces loaded with lead, and the way merchants used different scales depending on whether the customer was buying, selling or exchanging silver.

His men could at last rest the next day, fed and sheltered. Wrapped in their furs, they dozed in front of their fires. But, typically, Stein was not about to rest. He sent his last piece of yellow Liberty brocade to the local yamen as a gift for the magistrate. By midday he had swapped his travel-stained furs for his best European clothes-black coat, pith helmet, and patent leather boots-to pay his official visit. There the reason for the absence of a welcome became apparent. A new magistrate, w.a.n.g Ta-lao-ye, had himself only just arrived in Dunhuang-so recently that a fire had not been lit nor furniture installed in the bare reception hall. Stein felt the day's chill in his spiffy but all-too-thin clothes. The new magistrate had only just found his predecessor's doc.u.ments about the impending arrival of this important visitor, and he was suitably impressed, even over-awed, by what he discovered in the papers. Whether through bureaucratic incompetence or clever mistranslation, Stein's travel doc.u.ment had elevated him to Prime Minister of Education of Great Britain.

Protocol required a return visit, and it came more quickly than Stein expected. No sooner had he arrived back at his tent and swapped his thin footwear for fur boots than the magistrate arrived. Seated on a thick felt rug and with a charcoal fire to warm them, Stein showed off some of the ancient Chinese records he had uncovered in recent months, and he found an appreciative audience in the learned man. "I instinctively felt that a kindly official providence had brought to Tun-huang [Dunhuang] just the right man to help me," Stein wrote. He soon called on the influential local military commander, the bluff and burly Lin Ta-jen, who provided a camp guard.

But it was a meeting with a group of Turkestan traders in the oasis that would prove most fortuitous. Unlike the magistrate, the traders knew the area well from living many years in the province. Among them was Zahid Beg, who, like many of the traders in town, was on the run from his Turkestan creditors. Zahid Beg told Stein of various half-buried ruins he claimed to have seen north of Dunhuang. His information was vague, rumors perhaps, but at least he was more forthcoming than the local Chinese, who greeted Stein's inquiries about ancient ruins in the area with steely silence. And Zahid Beg conveyed a tantalizing snippet, one that could not fail to ignite Stein's imagination. A huge cache of ma.n.u.scripts was said to have been discovered a few years earlier, hidden in one of the painted grottoes at the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas. And, so the rumor went, the ma.n.u.scripts were still there.

6.

City of Sands On the edge of the Gobi Desert near Dunhuang, a cliff about a mile long rises from a river valley. Beyond the cliff, sand dunes roll like ocean waves. In certain winds, these dunes were said to emit eerie music that inspired their name: the Ming Sha, or Singing Sands. But it was a vision, not a sound, that shaped history here, and it occurred more than 1,500 years before Stein's caravan arrived.

Legend has it that in AD 366, a wandering Buddhist monk named Lezun sat on the valley floor to rest from his travels across forests and plains. As he admired the sunset on Sanwei Mountain, he beheld a vision of a thousand Buddhas. Celestial nymphs danced in the rays of golden light, and Lezun watched the glorious scene until the dusk turned to dark. The monk, described as resolute, calm, and of pure conduct, was so inspired that the next day he set down his pilgrim's staff and abandoned plans to cross the Gobi. Instead, he chiseled a meditation cave into the cliff. The following day he mixed mud and smoothed the walls of his tiny shelter. And on his third day, he painted a mural on the wall to record the wondrous vision he had witnessed.

Lezun then visited Dunhuang to share his discovery, and the news quickly spread to the surrounding provinces, according to one folk tale. Similarly inspired, others joined him and honeycombed the conglomerate cliff with an estimated 1,000 hand-carved caves. The first caves were small, spartan cells, just big enough for a solitary monk. But as the religious community grew, elaborate grottoes were carved as chapels and shrines. Some were large enough for a hundred wors.h.i.+ppers to gather. Murals in lapis, turquoise, and malachite covered the walls and ceilings in many of the caves. Nearly half a million square feet of magnificent murals were created. The wall paintings give an unparalleled picture of a thousand years of life along the Silk Road.

The location would eventually become known in China and beyond as a place of unrivalled beauty, sanct.i.ty, and knowledge. Although the monk Lezun is credited with founding the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, or Mogao Caves as they are known today, he is but one of four men who have shaped their history through the centuries. The story of the Silk Road's most sacred site is inextricably bound with clandestine journeys, wandering monks, and intrepid travelers.

Why a sacred center flourished in such a remote place is simple. The reason is geography. Near Dunhuang, the Silk Road split in two to skirt the rim of the Taklamakan Desert. The roads met again 1,400 miles west at Kashgar. But between these two oases lay the Silk Road's most dangerous terrain. Among the threats were starvation, thirst, bandits, and ferocious sandstorms that were known to bury entire caravans. For those traveling west, Dunhuang was the last stop for caravans to rest and stock up before they faced the desert. For those heading east, it was the first oasis on Chinese soil. Any traveler would want to express grat.i.tude for surviving such a journey or pray for safe deliverance before embarking, so it is little wonder that as long as the Silk Road thrived, the caves did too. Wealthy merchants and other patrons paid for the grottoes to be created and decorated as acts of thanksgiving. Dunhuang-the name means Blazing Beacon and refers to the nearby line of military watchtowers that guarded the area-might have begun as a dusty military garrison town, but it became a prosperous, cosmopolitan center, the Silk Road's great beacon of spiritual illumination.

The Silk Road, or roads really, was a network of trade routes that linked China with the West. From its eastern end in the ancient Chinese capital of Chang'an, now Xian, the route pa.s.sed through Dunhuang before branching south to India, present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan, or west to Samarkand, Bokhara, Persia, and the eastern Mediterranean. For about a thousand years, caravans of camels loaded with silk, rubies, jade, amber, musk, and far more halted at Dunhuang.

But despite all its ancient connotations, the name Silk Road is relatively new, coined only in the nineteenth century by a German geographer and explorer, Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen. It conjures exotic images of heavily laden camels plodding through rolling dunes, bells tinkling. The name is far more romantic than if it had been named after another desirable commodity traded along the way, which might have seen it dubbed the Rhubarb Road.

Silk, which originated in China, was the best known and among the most prized of the route's merchandise. Few caravans traveled the entire route. Rather, the goods would change hands-as well as camels and donkeys-many times along the way, and inhabitants at one end of the Silk Road knew little about those at the other. Consequently, the Romans, who had an insatiable hunger for the exquisite fabric (despite a Senate ban on men wearing it), had only vague ideas about the land or people who produced it. But rumors abounded. Some talked of Seres, the Kingdom of Silk, as a land inhabited by giants with red hair and blue eyes. Others thought it home to people who lived for 200 years. For centuries, the Romans thought the gossamer thread grew on trees and was combed from leaves. This suited the middlemen through whose lands the goods pa.s.sed and who lived off the profits. Even when a Greek traveler a.s.serted that it came from insects-giant beetles, he claimed-the West lacked the means to make the luxurious fabric. But in the sixth century, two Nestorian monks returning from China are said to have reached the court of the Byzantine emperor Justinian with silkworm eggs concealed in their bamboo staffs.

Coveted as it was, silk was not the only treasure to travel the ancient trade route. Ideas, too, made their way along the Silk Road, the original information superhighway. The most influential of these was Buddhism, whose story began around 400 BC, when Prince Siddhartha was born into the ruling Shakya clan in the Himalayan foothills of present-day Nepal. He grew up in luxurious seclusion, sheltered from life's sufferings and harsh realities, according to Buddhist tales. At twenty-nine, he ventured beyond the palace and encountered the sufferings from which he had been s.h.i.+elded. He saw an old man, a sick man, a corpse, and an ascetic. Troubled by this confrontation with ageing, sickness, and death, he resolved to find a way to overcome suffering and mortality.

He rejected his privileged life and secretly slipped away from the palace to become an ascetic himself. He wandered for years, studying under various teachers but, unsatisfied, continually moved on. He sought answers through extremes of spiritual renunciation and physical deprivation, including near starvation. At the age of thirty-five, he sat beneath a fig tree near present-day Bodhgaya and vowed not to rise until he attained enlightenment. He realized what Buddhists call the Four n.o.ble Truths: suffering exists; desires cause suffering; it is possible to end suffering; and a path exists to achieve this. Freed from the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, he arose as Buddha Shakyamuni, the Awakened One and the sage of the Shakya clan. He spent the rest of his life-the next forty-five years-traveling around northern India and teaching what he had learned. His teachings were later written in the form of thousands of sutras. Buddha Shakyamuni is sometimes referred to as the historical Buddha. There are said to be countless Buddhas; many have existed in the past, others will appear in the future.

Buddha Shakyamuni delivered the teaching known as the Diamond Sutra in a garden near the ancient Indian city of Sravasti. According to Buddhist lore, a wealthy merchant named Sudatta, or Anathapindika, who was known for his generosity to orphans and the dest.i.tute, heard the Buddha teaching. The merchant was so impressed he invited the Buddha to Sravasti to teach. However, the only suitable place to build a temple to house the Buddha and his disciples was in a forest south of the city, and it belonged to the Crown Prince Jeta, who had no interest in selling his pristine real estate. "If you can cover the ground with gold pieces, I'll sell it," the prince allegedly joked. Undeterred, the philanthropic merchant went home, opened his treasury and brought back enough gold to carpet the 200-acre site. For twenty-five rainy seasons the Buddha gave some of his most important teachings in a park once covered in gold.

More than 200 years after the Buddha Shakyamuni left his palace, another clandestine journey began, one that would ultimately result in the establishment of the Silk Road. It was a trip designed to prevent what China's Great Wall could not-raids by a marauding tribe of Central Asian hors.e.m.e.n called the Xiongnu. Some say the Xiongnu were related to the Huns who would later cut a swath through Europe. Whatever the case, the Han emperor Wudi wanted them stopped. The emperor knew his people were not the only ones being terrorized by these fierce fighters. A nomadic group had been driven from their lands on China's far western fringe, their king executed and his skull turned into a drinking cup. The Yuezhi, as the routed nomads were called, wanted revenge.

The emperor decided to seek an alliance with the Yuezhi-"the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is hardly a new diplomatic strategy. He dispatched an envoy from the ancient capital of Chang'an on a secret mission about a hundred years before the birth of Christ. The man who volunteered for the dangerous a.s.signment was a court official called Zhang Qian. He was about thirty years old and considered bold and trustworthy. He was given an escort of a hundred men, a yak-hair tail atop a bamboo pole-a symbol of imperial power-and effectively told to "go west, young man" and forge the alliance. That was easier said than done. To travel west meant venturing into unknown lands and crossing enemy territory. There was also a fearsome desert along the way and no known route around or across it.

As a diplomatic mission it was a disaster. All but one of his men perished during the journey. Zhang Qian himself was captured and spent a decade as a prisoner of the Xiongnu. When the envoy eventually escaped, he tracked the Yuezhi to present-day Afghanistan but life had utterly changed for them. The Yuezhi had settled down to a peaceful, prosperous existence and weren't terribly interested in taking revenge on their one-time foe. The envoy turned around and trekked back to China. Although he returned from his thirteen-year journey without an alliance, he did not return home empty-handed. Aside from his remarkably resilient yak-hair tail, he brought something far more significant: knowledge. He had not only found a way around the Taklamakan Desert, he brought news of mysterious lands and great civilizations, places where dazzling goods and unknown foods such as grapes, carrots, walnuts, and alfalfa were traded. He also brought word of powerful blood-sweating horses from Ferghana, in present-day Uzbekistan, said to be descended from celestial steeds. (The blood is now thought to be the result of a parasite that causes lesions.) The strength of these horses made them ideal for battle, and the appeal of such superior steeds to the emperor was obvious. The Heavenly Horses have long inspired Chinese paintings, poems, and statues.

News of such horses and other desirable goods prompted moves to establish the trade routes that became the Silk Road and fostered exchanges between these distant lands. Over time, missions were sent and garrisons established, including at Dunhuang, to protect the growing commerce. Zhang Qian is pictured in a mural at the Mogao Caves taking leave of Emperor Wudi. His groundbreaking journey helped forge an overland route between China and the West-and laid the path for Buddhism's arrival from India. The path from the Himalayan foothills through Central Asia and into China was circuitous, but the vast mountain ranges between China and India posed formidable obstacles to a more direct route. As Buddhism meandered into China, a unique form of art developed as the religion b.u.mped up against different cultures along the way. The art was a tangible expression of the Buddhist desire to be freed from the cycle of rebirth and suffering.

Buddhism split into two branches as it traveled. Theravada Buddhism, which emphasizes individual enlightenment, took hold in Thailand, Burma, and Sri Lanka. Mahayana Buddhism, which a.s.serts everyone can become a Buddha and seeks to free all beings from suffering, became dominant in north Asia, including Tibet, Korea, j.a.pan, and China. The Mahayana pract.i.tioner strives over many lifetimes to become first a bodhisattva, a wise, compa.s.sionate being who leads others to enlightenment, and ultimately a fully awakened Buddha.

Central to Buddhism is the idea of karma, a cosmic chain of cause and effect whereby everything a person thinks, says or does leaves a "seed" that will ripen in the future. Negative seeds ripen as suffering and virtuous seeds as happiness and, ultimately, enlightenment. Therefore performing virtuous, or meritorious, actions is imperative for a Buddhist. A virtuous act includes the making-or sponsoring the making-of holy images and objects. And the more that are created, the greater the merit. This is a key reason behind the creation of the Silk Road's numerous painted grottoes, of which the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas are the most splendid example.

For about 400 years, the Buddha's words were memorized and transmitted orally. They were not written down until the first century AD. But once they were, the Diamond Sutra and other teachings could propagate easily across the great trade routes, in particular the Silk Road. The written scriptures were exactly what a young Chinese monk was after when, in 629, he too embarked on a clandestine journey. His name was Xuanzang (Hsuan Tsang), and he was destined to become one of the world's greatest travelers. From beyond the grave he would play a pivotal role at the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas.

Xuanzang was on a quest for spiritual enlightenment rather than a sensitive diplomatic mission when, like the envoy with his yak tail, he traveled west along the Silk Road-by then a well-worn path-from Chang'an. He left behind the capital's floating pavilions and secluded gardens and slipped through the outer gates of the city's triple walls to embark on a sixteen-year journey that would take him across the desert and over the jagged Pamir Mountains to India and back to China. He would prove himself an intrepid traveler, a brilliant translator, and a remarkable eyewitness: one part Christopher Columbus, one part St. Jerome, one part Samuel Pepys.

His life has inspired numerous folk tales and legends, such as the cla.s.sic Chinese novel known in English as Monkey, in which he is overshadowed by his companions, including a greedy pig and a trickster monkey. j.a.panese cartoons and a 1970s cult television series have also drawn on Xuanzang's adventures. The tale has even inspired an opera performed at London's Covent Garden in 2008, composed by Damon Albarn, the songwriter and vocalist for the rock band Gorillaz. Folk tales aside, the monk left a written account of the places he visited which has proved so accurate that geographers and archaeologists still consult it today. Like Stein, Xuanzang was fastidious, whether recording the distances between places and the heights of individual stupas or recording the myths, ma.s.sacres, and monarchs he encountered along his way. But he reveals little of himself and his own life, leaving that for a devoted disciple, Huili, who wrote his biography. Xuanzang's account is written with philosophic detachment, his disciple's filled with vivid anecdotes. Together the two works give a unique account of a vanished world and one of the greatest journeys of all time.

Xuanzang began studying Buddhist scriptures when he was about thirteen and was ordained as a monk at twenty. After years spent immersed in Chinese translations, he found the teachings contradictory and incomplete. Likewise, he found the religion's various schools conflicting. What was true? He resolved to seek clarity from the great masters in distant India. More importantly, he wanted to bring back the original Buddhist texts for translation. Unfortunately, foreign travel was banned and as the young monk, then about twenty-six years old, did not have imperial permission to leave, he departed the capital in secret, traveling by night and hiding during the day. His journey was nearly a short one. His guide tried to murder him near the Jade Gate, the landmark near Dunhuang that marked the western edge of China, through which many Silk Road caravans pa.s.sed. Amid the desert's demons and hot winds, he became lost and almost died of thirst. At Gaochang, near Turfan, the oasis city's king was so impressed by Xuanzang's knowledge that he forcibly detained him, prompting the monk to begin a hunger strike. The king relented, provided the monk with an escort, supplies, gold, and letters of introduction, and extracted a promise that Xuanzang would remain in Gaochang for three years on his return from India. The monk's chances of surviving such a trip may have seemed slim, but the G.o.ds were clearly on Xuanzang's side. He lived through a range of death-defying adventures which saw him attacked by bandits, captured by pirates and almost offered as a human sacrifice to the bloodthirsty Hindu G.o.ddess Durga.

Apocryphal as the stories sound, the descriptions of the terrain he covered have attracted the attention of explorers, historians, and archaeologists, not least Aurel Stein, who was the same age as Xuanzang when he, too, first departed for India. (Stein suggested there was some truth and wisdom in one of the odder, seemingly more fanciful stories in which the monk is persuaded to swap his good horse for a scrawny nag ahead of a hazardous desert crossing because the old horse had made the trip many times before. Stein knew all too well how horses and camels could not only detect water and food in the desert from a great distance but also remember their locations from previous visits.) Xuanzang crossed the Pamir Mountains and journeyed through the Buddhist kingdom of Gandhara. Along the way he gave one of the first accounts of the then sparkling new Bamiyan Buddhas of central Afghanistan. They glinted in the sun with their gold paint and jeweled ornaments. They had been carved into a cliff about a hundred years before the monk arrived. The figures-one stood 180 feet tall, the other 125 feet-rose above a valley that was home to a flouris.h.i.+ng Buddhist community with thousands of monks. And there they remained for 1,600 years-long after the Buddhist culture that created them had vanished from the valley-until the Afghan Taliban blew them to pieces in March 2001. Curiously, Xuanzang describes a third, much larger Bamiyan Buddha, a sleeping figure 900 feet long said to be within a monastery nearby. His description has prompted a search for its elusive remains in recent years, although a smaller reclining Buddha was found in 2008.

Xuanzang made his way along the Himalayan foothills to the Buddhist "holy land" in northeast India. He arrived at the great center of Buddhist learning, Nalanda, one of the world's first universities. The center had about 10,000 students and was in its heyday when Xuanzang first saw its pointed turrets, sparkling roof tiles, lotus ponds, and flowering groves. It drew scholars from other lands-j.a.pan, China, Persia, and Tibet-to study not just Buddhism but medicine, mathematics, and astronomy. Its three libraries were so extensive that when they were razed by Muslim invaders in the twelfth century-about the time the University of Oxford was established-they were said to have burned for months. The ruins of what was once an architectural masterpiece remain today in Bihar state. A memorial hall to Xuanzang was opened at Nalanda in 2007, with a statue of the pilgrim carrying scrolls on his back.

At Nalanda, the great abbot Silabhadra was expecting him. Years earlier, the abbot had a dream foretelling that a monk would come from China and ensure the survival of Mahayana teachings abroad. Xuanzang became the abbot's disciple. As well as studying, Xuanzang visited Buddhism's sacred sites in India and present-day Nepal: Buddha's birthplace at Lumbini; Bodhgaya, where he attained enlightenment; Sarnath, where he preached his first sermon; and Kus.h.i.+nagar, where he died.

Xuanzang also visited Jetavana Vihara, the place where the Buddha first delivered the Diamond Sutra teaching. A seven-story temple was built and one of the first statues of the Buddha was said to have been created there out of sandalwood. But the park named after Prince Jeta was in ruins, and little remained other than a solitary brick building containing an image of the Buddha. The city of Sravasti, too, lay in ruins, although a stupa marked where the generous merchant who procured the site had lived. Pilgrims still visit the remains northeast of Lucknow today.

After years of study and travel-and having acquired hundreds of sacred texts to translate-the monk planned his return home. But it was a dangerous journey, as he knew all too well. Would he make it? How long would he live? And how would he get his sacred material safely back to China? He put his questions to a fortune teller, a naked Jain, who appeared in Xuanzang's cell at Nalanda one day. Yes, he would get home safely. He would live another ten years. (He lived another twenty-plus.) As well, the Jain said, Indian kings would help Xuanzang on his way. And indeed one king provided an enormous white elephant, the equivalent of supplying a private Learjet today. No one could remember a monk ever being given an elephant before. The animal could carry Xuanzang's baggage but his fuel costs were high, requiring forty bundles of hay a day. Thoughtfully, the monk's regal patron provided plenty of gold and silver to pay for the elephant's prodigious appet.i.te and Xuanzang's caravan. The monk's heavy baggage included more than 200 sutras, six statues of the Buddha, and other relics. His return to China, though, was not without mishap. He lost some of his ma.n.u.scripts while crossing a treacherous stretch of the Indus River. In the mountains on his way to Kashgar, he was attacked by robbers. In the ensuing panic, his normally placid elephant plunged into a river and drowned. When Stein read of this, he took the pilgrim's tale at face value. From the topographical description, Stein identified the likely gorge, a narrow spot particularly vulnerable to attack by robbers.

At the Buddhist kingdom of Khotan, Xuanzang awaited the delivery of more ma.n.u.scripts to replace those lost in the Indus. The monk's description of Khotan evokes a Paris of the desert, where sophisticated and beautifully dressed inhabitants thrived on art, music, and literature. He also described a local legend about how the closely guarded secret of silk-making spread beyond China. According to his story, the king of Khotan, determined to learn the secret, sought the hand in marriage of a Chinese princess. He sent an envoy to collect the new bride and warn her that her new homeland was without silk. If she wanted robes of the precious material, she would need to bring the means to make the fabric herself. The princess discreetly acquired silkworm eggs and mulberry seeds and hid them in her headdress. She smuggled them across the Chinese frontier knowing the border guards would not dare search the headdress of a princess. Stein recognized the same legend depicted on an ancient painted panel he plucked from the desert.

Having slipped out of China without permission, Xuanzang decided it was prudent to let the Imperial Court know he would soon be returning but was presently stuck without transport across the desert since losing his elephant. The emperor sent officials from Dunhuang to meet him. Xuanzang rested at Dunhuang, where it is a.s.sumed he visited the nearby caves, before traveling to Chang'an and a hero's welcome. He did not return to Gaochang because its king had died during Xuanzang's long travels, thereby releasing him from his promise. Instead, he spent the rest of his life translating Buddhist scriptures, including the Diamond Sutra, and is still considered among China's greatest translator monks. He too is commemorated at the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas in a vivid Tang dynasty image, in which he is shown crossing the Pamir Mountains with his white elephant and caravan. As well as his translations, he wrote the account of his travels, Records of the Western Regions, a work Stein consulted like a seventh-century Lonely Planet guide.

The Caves of the Thousand Buddhas had been left to the mercy of the encroaching sands and largely forgotten when, at the end of the nineteenth century, another wandering monk arrived. What brought w.a.n.g Yuanlu, or Abbot w.a.n.g as he is also called, no one knows. He came from Macheng in Hubei province. He was born in about 1850, probably into a farming family, and received only a basic education. Famine forced him to leave, and he joined the army as a foot soldier stationed in Suzhou, about 250 miles east of Dunhuang. After leaving the army, he became a Daoist monk in Suzhou. Like the visionary monk Lezun, the envoy Zhang Qian and the intrepid Xuanzang, w.a.n.g was a long way from home when he reached Dunhuang in the 1890s.

By then the Silk Road too had been abandoned for more than 500 years. Even before the fourteenth century, sea routes began to replace the dangerous overland route between China and the West. With its fate inextricably tied to the Silk Road, cosmopolitan Dunhuang became a dusty outpost, and the great monastic community that thrived there dispersed. The caves entered a sleep lasting centuries during which many filled with sand; others were destroyed by earthquakes. The wooden entrance paG.o.das, where temple bells and silk banners once hung, rotted or burned down.

Although Abbot w.a.n.g was a Daoist monk, not a Buddhist, what he saw when he arrived at the ruined, deserted caves changed his life. Perhaps the contrast between the desert beyond and the meditative art within the caves resonated with the contemplative monk like a teaching on the aridness of the outer world and the richness of the inner. He abandoned his wandering life, appointed himself guardian of the caves, and dedicated the rest of his life to their preservation and restoration. He planted poplar trees by the river bank and eventually built a guesthouse for pilgrims. w.a.n.g hired laborers to dig out centuries of wind-blown sand from the caves to expose the wonderful images within. He ordered new statues and arranged for the repainting of old ones. He commissioned paintings to depict legendary scenes from the life of his hero, the wandering monk Xuanzang. w.a.n.g was no scholar. What appealed to him were the folk tales of the great monk's daring deeds. Others might consider his statues and paintings gaudy, but not w.a.n.g. He was immensely proud of them. He sold Daoist spells and conducted begging tours among the wealthy landowners to pay for the work. The restoration and the fundraising were endless.

One hot summer's day in 1900, Abbot w.a.n.g was supervising restorations in a cave temple at the northern end of the cliff. It had taken more than two years of back-breaking toil to clear the boulders and drift sand that had blocked the cave's entrance. The pace of work was slow-he could afford to pay for only a few laborers at a time-but at last he was ready to install new statues he had commissioned for the chamber. As the work proceeded, w.a.n.g's laborers drew his attention to a crack in a mural along the narrow pa.s.sage leading to the chamber. Just across the threshold, where the desert's dazzling sunlight gave way to flickering lamplight, the crack suggested the outline of an entrance. Plastered over and painted, it had been deliberately concealed. w.a.n.g ordered his workmen to break through the plaster. Behind it was a small, dark room. He peered inside. The s.p.a.ce was little bigger than a walk-in pantry. Crammed from floor to ceiling were thousands upon thousands of scrolls.

At least, that is what w.a.n.g told Stein. But the history of the cave's discovery is muddied by conflicting versions. When the Frenchman Paul Pelliot subsequently arrived, w.a.n.g claimed that knowledge of the cave had arrived in a dream sent by the G.o.ds. A smile on the abbot's face, however, made it clear neither man put much stock in that version. A Chinese account speaks of a pipe-smoking scribe named Yang who set up a desk in the large adjoining cave to copy sutras. While taking a break, he tapped his pipe on the wall to empty it and heard a hollow sound, then noticed a hairline fracture in the plaster. The scribe alerted w.a.n.g and that night the pair broke through the hidden doorway to reveal the chamber and its treasure.

Whatever the truth, w.a.n.g sensed his discovery was significant and tried hard to interest authorities in the cave's contents. He informed officials in Dunhuang of the find, taking two yellowed scrolls with him, but the local magistrate dismissed the doc.u.ments as useless sc.r.a.ps of old paper. About three years later, when a new, more learned magistrate arrived, w.a.n.g again presented evidence of the great find. This magistrate came to the caves and departed with a few ma.n.u.scripts, but did nothing. Yet still w.a.n.g persisted. He took a donkey with two boxes of ma.n.u.scripts to Suzhou, yet even there a scholar who inspected them was unimpressed. Finally, in 1904, the provincial government in Lanzhou ordered Dunhuang officials to protect the scrolls. But there was no money to transport up to seven pony loads of ma.n.u.scripts to another location. Resigned by the years of inaction, a dismayed w.a.n.g did what he was told to do: he resealed the cave and consigned the cache of doc.u.ments back to their dark, dry tomb.

In a place where there is something that can be distinguished by signs, in that place there is deception.

VERSE 5, THE DIAMOND SUTRA.

7.

Tricks and Trust For years, Stein dreamed of seeing the sacred caves. He had learned about them from a friend, geographer Lajos Lczy, who was with the first party of Europeans to reach the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, in May 1879. Lczy, a fellow Hungarian, had spoken in glowing terms of their magnificent art. To stand inside the caves was one reason why Stein had pressed to travel so far into China. But the rumor of a hidden cache of ma.n.u.scripts made him even more eager. So his first days in Dunhuang must have seemed like torture. The caves were a mere fifteen miles away, but he was stuck at his desk tending to the necessary but most wearying part of his expedition. He brought his accounts and official correspondence up to date; he farewelled his donkey men with a generous tip; and he sent his camels off to graze.

He could barely contain his excitement when on a cold, bright March morning, four days after he had reached Dunhuang, he rode to the caves with Chiang and the Naik. He soon left behind the ploughed fields of the oasis and crossed a stretch of barren gravel. After nine dusty miles, he turned into a river valley where a cliff rose perpendicular on his right. At the gateway to the valley was a large ceremonial bell. Rusty and cracked, it was covered in Chinese characters from a Buddhist text. But what interested Stein most was that it contained a date, even if not a terribly old one. "It gave me the first a.s.surance that the chronological precision so characteristic of Chinese ways was not ignored by Buddhist piety in these parts," he wrote. Indeed the Chinese inclination to date everything was a gift for an archaeologist. It removed the guess work-and would ultimately provide certainty about the expedition's greatest treasure, the Diamond Sutra.

From a distance, the honeycombed grottoes reminded him of troglodyte dwellings. Some of the dark cavities, layered in irregular tiers up the cliff face, seemed accessible only by rope. Others were connected by disintegrating steps or rickety ladders. As he drew closer and crossed the Daquan River in front of the cliff, he could see the painted walls inside the crumbling caves. "'The Caves of the Thousand Buddhas' were indeed tenanted, not by Buddhist recluses, however holy, but by images of the Enlightened One himself."

No one was around to guide or distract him as he wandered in awe from cave to cave. He marveled at Buddhas that looked Indian, Gandharan, Tibetan, Chinese. The changing face of the Buddha, as Buddhism wound its way from India along the Silk Road into China, evolving along the way, was literally on the walls. Many of the beautiful chapels appeared to date from the Tang dynasty, a time of peace and prosperity in Dunhuang and a high point of Chinese civilization from the seventh to the tenth century. The pa.s.sageways that opened onto the temples were covered in processions of bodhisattvas. Many of the sculptures within the grottoes were damaged, either through decay, by iconoclasts or ham-fisted restorations. The fragile sculptures weren't made of stone-there was none to be quarried in the surrounding conglomerate cliffs-but of clay stucco over a skeleton of wood or bunches of tamarisk twigs. Some had modern heads and arms, but the original bodies survived and revealed exquisite color and drapery. Stein was relieved to find no many-headed, many-armed "monstrosities," as he disapprovingly described some Indian and Tibetan depictions. On his first visit he presumably did not see the examples that exist, including a pair of many-armed Tibetan Tantric deities wrapped in an intimate embrace, nor the thousand-eyed bodhisattva, Avalokitesvara.

As Stein walked from cave to cave, absorbed by the beauty of the murals and statues (and no doubt pondering how he might remove them), a young Buddhist monk approached. He appeared to have been left in charge of the small houses and chapels nearby. Stein seized the chance to sound him out about a concealed cave rumored to be full of ma.n.u.scripts. Under Chiang's questioning, the young monk proved most forthcoming. Yes, a cave had been discovered. Yes, it was full of ma.n.u.scripts. Enough to fill several carts. The cave had since been fitted with a locked door and only the temple guardian, Abbot w.a.n.g, had the key. But he was off on a begging tour and wouldn't be back for weeks.

Here was confirmation that the remarkable rumor Stein had heard when he first arrived in Dunhuang was true. But that was not all Stein gleaned from the monk. The young man's spiritual mentor, a Tibetan monk who lived among a small Buddhist community at the caves, had borrowed one of the ma.n.u.scripts for his own use. He kept the doc.u.ment at a nearby chapel. The young monk agreed to fetch it. Stein waited anxiously near the locked door of the Library Cave for his first hint of what might be inside. The monk returned carrying a large paper roll. Stein and Chiang carefully unwound the forty-five-foot scroll. It was beautifully preserved, its paper smooth and strong, but there was no way to determine its age. It was written in Chinese and appeared to be Buddhist. But Chiang, unfamiliar with Buddhism, could make no sense of it. The intriguing scroll only increased Stein's determination to get into the Library Cave.

Stein quietly discussed with Chiang how best to get access to the cave and overcome any priestly objections. "I had told my devoted secretary what Indian experience had taught me of the diplomacy most likely to succeed with local priests usually as ignorant as they were greedy, and his ready comprehension had a.s.sured me that the methods suggested might be tried with advantage on Chinese soil too."

But Stein could see obstacles to his ambitions. Clearly, many caves were still used for wors.h.i.+p, despite the neglect of centuries. This was not a problem he had confronted elsewhere in the desert, where he explored long-abandoned sites. Chipping off murals and statues from chapels that continued to attract pilgrims would hardly go unnoticed. "Systematic quarrying," as he put it to Allen, might even provoke outrage. Could the priest be persuaded to turn a blind eye to the removal of sacred objects? What about the locals? Stein didn't know.

But he did know the value of a well-placed offering. He was keen to reward the helpful young monk who had not only confirmed the cave's existence, but also shown a sample of its contents. "I always like to be liberal with those whom I may hope to secure as 'my own' local priests," he commented blithely. Chiang advised caution-too generous a tip would arouse suspicion about ulterior motives. So Stein offered a small piece of silver. "The gleam of satisfaction on the young Ho-shang's [monk's] face showed that the people of Tun-huang, whatever else their weaknesses, were not much given to spoiling poor monks," Stein wrote.

Having at last seen the painted grottoes and evidence the rumored cache of ma.n.u.scripts did indeed exist, only the gathering dusk compelled him to leave the caves. He rode back to Dunhuang in darkness, his head swimming with the images he had seen and the prospect of realizing a scholar's dream-uncovering an ancient secret library. But he must wait until Abbot w.a.n.g returned.

Stein was not about to sit idle. He was eager to revisit the ruined walls and watchtowers he had glimpsed on his long, cold march to Dunhuang. However, he would need to start immediately if he hoped to complete his investigations before the arrival of summer's blistering heat made such work impossible. Before he could set out, though, he needed local laborers. Finding them would not be easy. Dunhuang's population, decimated by a Muslim rebellion forty years earlier, had still not recovered. The few laborers for hire did not relish swapping oasis life for hard, cold work in the feared Gobi. And another debilitating force held the town in its grip, which is why the team he eventually a.s.sembled seemed less than promising. They were "the craziest crew I ever led to digging-so torpid and enfeebled by opium were they; but I was glad to have even them."

Despite his drug-addled team, what he uncovered during a month in the desert while awaiting w.a.n.g's return would reveal as much about ancient secular and military life as the caves would about spiritual life. He returned to the ruined fort where he had halted en route to Dunhuang, on whose ramparts he had walked alone, pondering the rise and fall of empires. He soon realized this ruined fort was one of the very sites he had set out to find, and among the most important of the ancient world. It was the famed Jade Gate, the fort named after the precious stone from Khotan carried by caravans traveling east. Stein had uncovered what he described as the western extension of the Great Wall, built to keep out invaders, extend China's influence and safeguard the Silk Road trade. He marveled at the strength of the wall, built with bundled layers of tamarisk twigs, reeds, and stamped clay. "Across an extensive desert area, bare of all resources, and of water in particular, it must have been a difficult task to construct a wall so solid as this," he remarked.

At a watchtower near the Jade Gate he found a post bag lost in transit between China and Samarkand around 313. Within it was a unique collection of letters, written in Sogdian, a Persian language that was once the Silk Road's lingua franca. The Sogdians are remembered today as the Silk Road's great merchants-although in one of these letters a trader is recalled in far less flattering terms. The merchant's wife, abandoned with their daughter in Dunhuang, penned a letter cursing her fate. Her fury is evident 1,700 years on. Dest.i.tute and far from home she writes to him, "I would rather be a dog's or a pig's wife than yours!"

From the desert sand, Stein also pulled relics of China's ancient military might. There were mundane reminders, such as a "sorry we missed you" note, carved on a stick by three men and intended for their friend stationed at a garrison. Stein excavated a dungeon, like a deep well, whose grim horrors he preferred not to dwell on-horrors that seemed to be confirmed when he not only found a note about a man who had died after a beating but uncovered a stick used to inflict such punishment. He also unearthed shreds of the fabric intricately connected with the area: silk. Past and present seemed to merge as he found objects so well preserved they looked as if they had been abandoned the previous day. He was in his element. In a letter that seemed to reflect the Buddhist beliefs that surrounded him, he told Allen: I feel at times as I ride along the wall to examine new towers, etc, as if I were going to inspect posts still held by the living. With the experience daily repeated of perishable things wonderfully preserved one risks gradually losing the true sense of time. Two thousand years seem so brief a span when the sweepings from the soldiers' huts still lie practically on the surface in front of the doors or when I see the huge stacks of reed bundles as used for repairing the wall still in situ near the posts, just like stacks of spare sleepers near a railway station. I love my prospecting rides in the evenings especially when the winds have cleared the sky . . . I feel strangely at home here along this desolate frontier-as if I had known it in a previous birth.

The ruined wall prompted a rare reflection on his "beloved father," who had followed the paths of old Roman walls in southern Hungary. "He had spent many a hot day in tracing their lines; but, alas, the day never came when he could show me what had puzzled & fascinated him." Perhaps Stein felt a twinge of sorrow that, as he too stood before an ancient wall, he was unable to share his own fascination with his late father, by then dead nearly two decades.

In a sheltered spot, he found evidence of a more recent visit: his footprints made a month earlier remained undisturbed by the desert winds. (He would be even more surprised when he returned seven years later to find an echo of 1907: not just his own footprints but also those of Dash the Great.) Amid the ruins of a recently abandoned homestead he left something for a future archaeologist who might visit in another two thousand years-a piece of dated newspaper.

Thrilled as he was by his discoveries, the weeks of marching from site to site were not without difficulties. Stein knew his opium-addled laborers, good-natured though they were, would far rather be elsewhere. "If they are people hard to keep at work, especially in the desert, they are yet jovial & wonderfully well-mannered. You ought to have seen the polite bearing, the pleasant smile of my laborers, though they were ever at the point of deserting," he wrote to Allen. Some of them did.

There were ructions too among his core crew. His camel man Ha.s.san Akhun picked a fight with one of the Chinese laborers. This prompted retaliation from the entire group of laborers, who set aside their good manners and attacked the camel man. The rheumatic surveyor Ram Singh was full of complaints. There was too little rest and not enough comfort for his liking. He was dissatisfied with his pony and wanted a better one. He was unhappy about sharing a cook with the Naik and irritated by the latter's snoring. Stein's Kashmiri cook, Ramzan, went on strike before taking a pony and disappearing. Stein figured he would not get far. He knew the cook would go to Dunhuang, where his presence would soon be noticed. Sure enough, his arrival alone in the oasis aroused such suspicion he was arrested and locked up. And there he would have stayed until Stein returned from the desert had not the trader Zahid Beg, who had told Stein the rumors of the ma.n.u.scripts, bailed him out and agreed to keep an eye on him. The cook, realizing he had no chance of escaping his contract, decided instead on a sulky apology. He pleaded "mental distemper brought on by the air of the desert." Even Stein's dog disappeared for a time. Dash took off in the desert with shepherd dogs only to return badly mauled.

The change of seasons was swift and dramatic. Clouds of mosquitoes filled the air and Stein, who suffered from repeated bouts of malaria, attempted in vain to s.h.i.+eld himself with a protective net. "So I have learned at last how the world looks through a veil. But I am glad that ladies always wearing it have something more pleasant to look at!" Soon desert digging would be impossible, and not just because of the baking heat. For spring, which elsewhere brings renewal and hope, in this desert unleashes its most destructive might: sandstorms, or burans.

Even witnessed from the safety of an oasis, a buran could terrify. Catherine Macartney described "a great black pillar advancing towards us through the clean air, with the sun s.h.i.+ning on either side of the black ma.s.s. It grew bigger and bigger, while the sun became a ball of red before it disappeared entirely." The sky grew darker, and the distant wind shrieked before the storm burst upon Kashgar with a roar. "The trees bent as though they must break and it grew dark as night, while the dust in the air penetrated through the cracks and crevices covering everything, making it difficult even to breathe."

For those exposed in the desert, a buran could strike with deadly force. It obliterated all tracks and sense of direction, its fury impossible to withstand. The only defense for caravan men was to s.h.i.+eld behind their kneeling camels or take cover under heavy felt blankets-no matter how hot the day-as rocks pelted down for hours. But that was no guarantee of survival. Many have perished in such sandstorms, including a sixty-man caravan en route to Turfan in 1905. "Like h.e.l.l let loose" is how von Le Coq described a buran. Stein, less dramatic than von Le Coq, made a brief note in his diary shortly before concluding his desert dig: "Overtaken by violent sand storm driving before it even small pebbles."

Spring showed its more benign face when Stein returned to the Dunhuang oasis in mid-May. Fields of young green corn had sprung up in the weeks he had been away, and the wild blue irises growing beside the roadside reminded him of Kashmir. Elm trees that had looked like skeletons on his first arrival were now green, and peach and pear blossoms sprinkled his tent in the widow's garden. After so long in the desert, the sight soothed his "parched, dust-filled eyes." Although his thoughts had never been far from the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, he soon learned he would have to contain his ever-growing impatience for a few more days. The good news was that w.a.n.g had returned from his begging tour. The bad was that the caves were swarming with visitors. An annual pilgrimage was under way and thousands of locals dressed in their bright holiday clothes were b.u.mping their way in carts to wors.h.i.+p at the shrines. Eager as he was to move his caravan to the site that drew him "with the strength of a hidden magnet," this was not the time to do so. What he had in mind could best be accomplished away from prying eyes. With the oasis in its spring dress, for once Stein welcomed a brief, peaceful interlude. He rarely seemed more contented or reflective as on the day spent beside Crescent Lake, Dunhuang's other magnificent sight.

"The skill of man made the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, but the Hand of G.o.d fas.h.i.+oned the Lake of the Crescent Moon." So said the Dunhuang locals, according to two hardy British missionaries, Mildred Cable and Francesca French, who stopped beside it in the early 1900s. Even today the perfect crescent in a hollow amid the towering dunes bewitches, reflecting clear blue sky amid golden sands.

At the lake, about three miles south of Dunhuang, Stein and Chiang spent a rare relaxing day. The paG.o.da and temples on the southern fringe of the lake, a quarter of a mile long, were filled with a mix of Buddhist and Daoist statues and murals. The offerings within were recent, but the annual pilgrimage to the caves meant the pious were elsewhere. No one was around to disturb their tranquil respite. The lake so enchanted Stein as he sat beside it writing to Allen that he volunteered he might choose it as the site of his own grave. "There could be no more appropriate place of rest for a desert wanderer than this charming little Tirtha [pilgrimage place] enclosed all round by sand ridges up to 300 ft in height."

If the sight prompted reflections on mortality in Stein, it prompted acts of levity in his a.s.sistant. Stein watched in amus.e.m.e.nt as Chiang slid down one of the dunes. It was, he told Stein, to test the local lore that the dunes could be made to produce miraculous music. In his dainty velvet boots, Chiang slowly ascended his chosen dune. With each step, the powdery sand gave way, but finally Chiang reached the summit, turned around and began his descent. As he skittered down the dune, both men heard a "sound like that of distant carts rumbling," satisfying them that the legend was based on fact. The Ming Sha dunes had earned their name: the Singing Sands. Chiang shared with Stein a local folk tale he had gleaned, that after the annual pilgrimage, the G.o.ds would send a violent dust storm to cleanse the sacred caves. Given that buran season was approaching, Stein felt the prediction of a "divine sweeping" was almost certain to come true.

After nearly a year in each other's company, a strong friends.h.i.+p had developed between the two men. Not only had Chiang adapted to the wandering life, he had developed a keen interest in the finds being uncovered, and he kept his ear to the ground for folk tales and far more besides. "My brave [Chiang] is an excellent diplomat and why I am even more grateful for an indefatigable worker," Stein told Allen. "It is great comfort to have a gentleman by one's side & one ever cheerful." As Stein sat by Crescent Lake on that idyllic spring day, penning lines to his dear friend in England, thanking good fortune for his Chinese comrade-and amused by his moment of sand-sliding whimsy-Stein could not know just how crucial a role Chiang was about to play.

The predicted sandstorm swept through the