Most of the modern scholarship just professes the Buddhist nature of various cities of Serindian civilization and it is no doubt that most of the art work, murals, paintings, scriptures and icons that are found in these desert cities of the Taklamakan are Buddhist in nature.

But what most of the books on the lost cities of Chinese Turkistan miss to mention that at almost all of these cities, Hindu deities were also found.

A vigraha of Hanuman was found at Khotan. Many vigrahas of Hindu gods were found as far as Bezeklik. Unidentified vigrahas were found in many of the homes in these ancient cities frozen in time and buried in sand.

Sven Hedin one of the greatest explorers of Central Asia says upon one such finding in Keriya:

“Their hair was twisted in a black knot on the top of the head, and the eyebrows were traced in a continuous line, with a mark above the root of the nose, after the custom among the Hindus of the present day.”

They miss to mention that most of the ancient manuscripts that are found there, some of the oldest in the world, are in Sanskrit, at places like Dandan-Uilik and at Dun-Huang.

Very few now know that not only Sanskrit but Prakrit was also found at many of these places written in Brahmi script. They miss to mention that Brahmi script was frequently found in these Turkestani oasis towns such as Kucha.

They miss to mention that many lost Bharatiya languages like Kharoshti figure in too many manuscripts in these oasis towns such as Niya. They often miss to mention that at Lou-lan, Swastika was found. (67) Hopkirk says: “The language used throughout was, as Stein had surmised, an early India Prakrit written in Kharoshti script. No documents of such early date concerned with day-to-day life have yet come to light in India. Their discovery adds some credence perhaps to a local tradition, recorded by Hsuan-tsang and also found in ancient Tibetan texts, that the Khotan region was conquered and colonized by Indians from Taxila about two centuries before the birth of Christ.”

This is a discovery which should not only be celebrated in Bharat but should be trumpeted aloud for everyone to know and hear. Every schoolchild in Bharat should know how far Bharat’s armies went and created far-flung empires.

They should know that at one time in history it was Bharat which was establishing empires and fighting inside the borders of mainland China. Hopkirk mentions again: “At Lou-lan he made one other discovery of significance. In addition to the rich haul of Chinese official documents and papers, he also brought to light quantities of Kharoshti tablets. This was something of a surprise to Stein, who wrote afterwards: ‘I had scarcely ventured to hope for records in ancient Indian script and language so far away to the east.’ These records indicated, Stein explains, that the Chinese military authorities had allowed the indigenous administration to continue undisturbed in the hands of the local ruling family. The discovery of these Kharoshti documents raised another interesting possibility. They seemed to indicate that, at some time in its history, Lou-lan – on the very frontiers of China – had served as far-flung eastern outpost of an ancient Indian empire of which modern scholars had no knowledge.”

One would do well to remember that Lou-lan does not even lie in the Taklamakan but in the Lop Nor desert, very near the Mongolian border and very near Siberia.

That a Bharatiya empire was flourishing in the medieval ages here, right under the nose of China shows Bharat was not just mighty in knowledge but also in military power.

They miss to mention that in Dun-Huang, one of the greatest cities of this region and which yielded the most number of manuscripts, paintings and artwork of this civilization, many Sanskrit manuscripts were found. Dun-Huang is not even in Eastern Turkestan, but in China proper for it lies in the Gansu province of China. Dun-Huang is the city where the Jade Gate used to lie, the Gate which symbolized the boundaries of China proper, west of which no Chinese town would be found. In the West of this lay the Silk route and so many possibilities.

It might surprise Bharatiya’s today, but from 300 BCE to around 800 CE, not only Indian merchants and scholars, but sometimes even kings and dynasties crossed impassable barriers to take their culture and civilization to the oasis towns of the Taklamakan and even beyond.

This cultural contact came to a sudden demise during the middle ages, when Islam burst upon the scenes.

The sword flashing devout Muslims who came in hordes from Persia not destroyed the Silk Route connecting Bharat, China and Europe, but also the oasis towns of Central Asia and particularly the Taklamakan and Eastern Turkestan.

These oasis towns flourished in the trade between these three civilizations and when this trade was disrupted by Islamic armies these towns faded away.

But the story is seldom that simple with a Monotheistic religion. Islam, as is well known, had an intrinsic hatred of icons and vigrahas of Buddha and any other deity.

These oasis towns of Eastern Turkestan were full of grottoes, paintings, murals and rock-cut monoliths of Buddha and various other deities.

All of these were desecrated by the devout Muslims. The inhabitants were massacred, converted or driven away. As a result, these oasis towns also died a sudden death in many cases.

This happened all over Central Asia, but in the Taklamakan desert the signs of this former great Hindu-Buddhist civilization remained preserved due to the excellent preservative conditions: extreme dryness.

It was these remains that were discovered during the First Great Game, when great European explorers and Great Game players like Sven Hedin, Aurel Stein, Francis Younghusband, Albert von Le Coq, Paul Pelliot and Langdon Warner and others were scouring the former Silk Routes and the forgotten hot and cold deserts, mountain ranges and oasis towns of Central Asia.

(This article has been compiled from the tweet thread posted by @PankajSaxena84 on Feb 23, 2023, with minor edits to improve readability and conform to HinduPost style guide)