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