The account of his trip to China, where he has been tracing the art of Indian Buddhism for the past year, was told yesterday to a CRIMSON reporter, by Mr. Langdon Warner '03, Fellow for Research in Asia. Mr. Warner has been connected for years with archaeological work and expeditions, and was sent to China last June by the University to make a study of the traces of art to be found in Western China. He landed four days ago and in his first interview, gave the details of the expedition to the CRIMSON.
"When we started", Mr. Warner explained, "we had no idea of what we were going to find, but the results of the trip have surpassed our expectations. Some of the pure art will be sent to the Fogg Museum, while the uglier stuff, interesting from the archaeological point of view, will go to the Peabody Museum. We were not out for vandalism, however, and very little of what we found will be brought here, although our measurements and photographs will be of great interest.
World's Oldest Route
"The longest and oldest trade route in the world", Mr. Warner went on, "extends from the northern part of India through a narrow province of modern China to the valley of the Yellow River. This province, Kansu, is where we did most of our work, finding traces of Chinese art, influenced by the Indian Buddhist traders who brought ponies and jade to exchange for the wool and skins of the Tartars. This art is in the form of statues and frescoes left in caves, shrines and temples from the border of Turkestan to Loyang, where the Chinese civilization of that day was centered."
One Cave Untouched
"Pelliot, the famous Frenchman, had explored this route before, so that we hardly expected to discover anything new. One cave, however, that we found behind a shrine, was filled with nearly perfect carving which covered every inch of the surface. It was very early Buddhist work, and consequently most important. A statue in the cave, of one of Buddha's attendant gods, is one of the few things I have brought back with me and, by all odds, the greatest single prize of the trip."
"It was in this province of Kansu, which sticks out between Mongolia and Tibet like a bottle-neck, that we did some of our most interesting and least spectacular work. The Indian traders had used this trade-route for centuries, and we found many of their original holy books, written on long paper scrolls, in the original Sanskrit, or translated by medieval scholars into Chinese or Turki. It was significant because of the light it shed on the influence these traders, straggling periodically over the mountain passes, had on the art of the early Chinese.
Had to Dig for Water
"We turned from this trade-route at its western end and followed the Black River north until it became so low that we had to dig in its bed to get water. After several days of most arduous travelling, we reached Edsina, the famous town where Marco Polo prepared for his forty-day hike to the palace of the Great Khan at Kara Korum. One of the strange encroachments of the desert has left the town deserted now, but its huge walls stand up 35 feet in the air, making a picturesque sight with their weathered, unbaked bricks. The remains of the bastion form a particularly good example of medieval fortification. We did a great deal of digging here, unearthing a lot of stucco sculpture, with the color still fresh, a magnificent bronze mirror, and some very good fragments of fresco-work."
When the reporter asked Mr. Warner if he had any excitement on his trip, he replied, "Why, the most thrilling adventure I can imagine is to peel off plaster and paint from the wall of a shrine and find these fascinating paintings behind. Of course, most of them mean little to me; an expedition like this would have to have had scholars in every field of science and language, in order to appreciate each 'find" at its true value.
Meets 20 Cent Murderers
"To be sure, however," he added, "we did have a lot of thrills of the kind you mean. The provinces of Honan, Chensi and Chansi are infested with rascally bandits, discharged soldiers, especially around Loyang. In the western provinces, the bandits are no less numerous, but here they are Mohammedans who are called Chanto, or turban-people, by the Chinese. Any one of these would stick you in the back for 20 cents, but they are a rough, genial sort, and are a problem to the Chinese in Kansu. Around the Yellow River and Huang Ho, Field Marshal Wu Bel Fu rules with an iron hand, yet he asked me to wait three days before continuing my journey, so that he could warn the bandits to let me alone.
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