Sir Aurel Stein and the Treasures of the Silk Road: Can Communist China reclaim the Buddhist Artefacts Manuscripts and Scrolls

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Sir Aurel Stein and the Great Game 

Part I

Sir Aurel Stein (1862 - 1943) is  not a name that will ring too many bells today. But in his day he was regarded as an explorer extraordinaire and an archaeologist in a league all by himself. His prodigious output in terms of scholarly studies like Serindia, Ancient Khotan, Ruins of Desert Cathay and his On the Tracks of Alexander were all regarded as classics in his day. Though a citizen of Hungary, a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire which was ranged against Britain during World War I, Aural Stein rose to become one of the most respected figures of the imperial British establishment both in India and England. Like Mortimer Durand and Percy Sykes, Aurel Stein too was a Knight Commander of the Indian Empire, a decoration specially created to honor those who rendered service to the Empire. What exactly did that service consist of?

The late nineteenth century witnessed the rivalry between the Russian Empire and the British Empire, a rivalry in which India was sucked in due to its proximity to Central Asia and Afghanistan in which Russia had begun to take active interest. The main theatre of this rivalry was actually the Straits of Bosporusa and the Straits of Dardanelles both in Ottoman territory. The Crimean War was fought only to preserve the Ottoman Empire as none of the other European powers could agree about what its territorial gains would be should the Ottoman Empire be partitioned. Indeed all three major European powers had conflicting and divergent interests and so the status quo was the only solution. On the Asian frontier the situation  was quite complicated, a bundle of political and military skirmishes, high and low level intrigue, arming tribal groups of whom the Afriddis are the most notorious, using nomadic peasants as information suppliers, to which Arthur Connoly  in an inspired moment called the Great Game. And Great Game it was as both Russia and India under the Raj believed that the Chinese part of Turkestan the Sinkiang of today, the Uighur territory, was open for political and economic hegemony. The British had supported a warlord, Yakub Beg, for a few years towards the close of the nineteenth century, but the Russians were not far behind.

The Great Game had one unexpected participant: Aurel Stein. He was born of Jewish parents but given the anti s Semitism of the Austro Hungarian Empire his family thought it prudent to have him baptized. Aurel Stein converted to the Anglican Religion as he lay dying in Kabul in 1943. In 1883, Stein took his PhD in Oriental languages and he was trained in both Sanskrit and Persian. After his doctorate he came to India and soon found  employment in the Punjab where he served as the Registrar of Punjab University. The first major academic project undertaken by Aurel Stein was the translation of Kalhana's Rajatarangini into English. With the help of a Kashmiri pundit, Govind Kaul, managed to appropriate a manuscript written in the Sharada script which formed the basis of the Three volume Translation of the Rajatarangini. Impressed by his erudite lecture in Sanskrit the Maharaja of Kashmir retained Aurel Stein to catalogue the Sanskrit Manuscripts preserved in the Temple attached to the Royal Court. 

 To be continued

Sir Percy Sykes: Explorer Spy Diplomat Persia and the Great Game

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Persia in the Great Game: Sir Percy Sykes Explorer Soldier Spy

Anthony Wynn

Sir Percy Molesworth Sykes was a personality straight from the pages of a Rudyard Kipling novel. He combined the life of adventure for which T E Lawrence is famous for and a love for adventure which made Sir Richard Burton the cynosure of Victorian society. He traveled widely in Persia, Baluchistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia and as he traveled he explored the terrain  and sent detailed maps of the region to the Indian Army Intelligence Headquarters at Shimla. He lived and worked in dangerous times. Persia, an unstable patchwork of tribes and sectarian associations, was stirring intellectually to a new kind of political awakening. A movement aimed at transforming Persia into a Constitutional State was gathering momentum and by the first decade of the twentieth century had virtually rendered the Qajar Dynasty both powerless and seriously undermined. Percy Sykes was the Consul posted at Mashhad at a critical juncture and his long standing friendship with the Crown Prince made him a valuable source of political information for the English.

Percy Sykes was born in 1867 in Yorkshire and died in 1945. Educated in the well known Rugby School, Sykes joined the Sandhurst Military Academy and was posted in India. He was based in Sialkot with the 16th Lancers. Along with Francis Younghusband, Syskes too was seconded to the Indian Army and its Intelligence wing. And in this, Sykes was eminently successful as he was able to explore little known mountain passes, traverse the inhospitable Lut Desert, explore the migratory routes of Turkoman nomads as they crossed from Central Asia into Afghanistan and thence into Persia. As he wrote in his History of Exploration his guides in his exploration were the accounts of Alexander's conquests, particularly that of Arrian and the travels of Marco Polo. Sykes was a protégé of Sir Mortimer Durand whose biography he wrote in which he expressed admiration for the tireless manner in which he pursued British interests in Afghanistan which till today is institutionalised in the form of the Durand Line, the boundary between Afghanistan and India, now of course, the line dividing Pakistan from the Pashtun heartland of Afghanistan. Percy Sykes was well trained in Persian and so was able to acquire impressive intelligence.

Persia in the late nineteenth century was the target of two powerful and expansionist Empires: Britain and Russia. The Great Game as Rudyard Kipling called it was played out from the Pamirs, across the Taklamakan Desert, the snow capped peaks of the Hindu Kush to Tehran and Shriaz. An the Consul in Mashhad  and Kerman, Sykes kept a close watch on Russia. The construction of the Trans Caspian Railway had made it easier for the Russians to move its military rapidly and the tribes inhabiting the border areas were constantly in a state of what Ibn haldun called fitna, a state of political unrest. negotiations with tribal leaders on behalf of the Indian Government meant also dealing with the regime in Persia whose writ barely extended as far east as the Baluchi border. The increasing old of Russia over Tashkent meant that Indian trading interests suffered.

During his years of service, Sykes explored 3000 miles in the Himalayas and discovered no less than 40 passes that had strategic value. His detailed Reports which he submitted to the Legation in Tehran eventually found their way from the Foreign Office to the Royal Geographical Society. The task of communication was still filled with difficulties as the engineers sent to man the British Persian Telegraph Company were killed sometimes within days of reaching their posts.

Sir Percy Sykes was a keen observer of the landscape he surveyed. He noticed that the qanats that supplied water to the fields on the border between Baluchistan and Persia had been destroyed by the Mongols in the 13th century and agriculture had not quite recovered since. He also was intrigued by the spectacular structures he saw in the region adjoining Persia and Baluchistan. 

The windmills that harnessed the violent desert winds were described vividly by Sykes and they were still functioning when he wrote about them. Huge parallel wall made of mud capture the wind and funnels it towards giant sails that drive timber shafts to which are attached grinding stones. Some of these structures are still extant and are now recognised as UNESCO world heritage sites.

The discovery of Oil in Persia and the transition from coal burning engines to oil powered ships in the Royal Navy added another element in the tense relationship between Persia and the British. With Germany beginning to take an interest in the region in order to use political Islam as an ideology to motivate anti British feeling among Muslims all over Asia men like Sykes had their hands full. At Kashgar Sykes helped Sir Aurel Stein smuggle 146 cartons and boxes of antiquities into India and till this day the Chinese have neither forgotten nor forgiven this vandalism of their cultural heritage.

This book is well written and is based o the personal papers correspondence and Reports of Percy Sykes. In 1915 he was knighted for his services, receiving the KCIE. He died in 1945.