Aurel Stein- The Pioneer of the Silk Road by Annabel Walker

 Aurel Stein- The Pioneer of the Silk Road by Annabel Walker

Scholar-Explorer

Unable to find an academic position, and alarmed by the growing antisemitism in his native Hungary, Aurel Stein migrated to England, and from thereon came to India, as a minor functionary of the crown administration. Like any contemporary Indian, his major preoccupation was to keep his Government job and the pension that came with it, while working on his passion- Archeology. These were times when the Archeological Survey of India was not yet born, and he could not get any formal role in this, his chosen area. However as a master manipulator, he was able to convince the Viceroy of his time, Lord Curzon- a part time traveler and explorer himself, to give him paid leave for his exploration of Chinese Turkistan (the current day Sinkiang), and the Silk Route which coursed through the northern and southern borders of the Taklamakan desert. But by the time he could manage all this bureaucratic jugglery, it was 1900, and he was already 38 years old- for the life expectancy of his period, already well into his middle age. So what did he do until then? Peter Hopkirk (The Great Game) is silent on this issue. However we learn from Annabel Walker, that Aurel Stein, in this period mastered Sanskrit, discovered the one authentic version of Kalhana’s Rajatarangini, which was in the possession of a prominent Brahmin Kashmiri family, and translated it. The length of this translation went to into at least four volumes. Even today, this stands as one of the most authentic versions of Kalhana’s great classic and is widely cited (Sampath, Bravehearts of Bharat- Vignettes from Indian History).

Starting from 1900, Aurel Stein turns his attention to the exploration of the Taklamakan for the next forty years, almost up to the moment of his demise in 1940. The decade from 1900-1910 (loosely known as the Edwardian age) was a period of change. I quote from    “Unsinkable” The Full Story of RMS Titanic, by Daniel Allen Butler, (Stackpole Books, 1998, pp25-26):

“The accelerating rate of change was most marked in the last decade. In 1900 there had been fewer than 8000 automobiles in the entire United States, but by 1910 there were close to a half-million. In 1903 the first flight of a heavier-than-air craft lasted twelve seconds and covered 852 feet; in 1909 Louis Bleriot had flown across the English Channel, a distance of twenty-six miles. The years between 1900 and 1910 had seen the introduction of the phonograph, wireless telegraphy, turbine-powered steamships, the electric light, the original Kodak “brownie” camera, heavier-than-air flying machines, motion pictures- all of them as reliable apparatus rather than mere technical novelties.

The Edwardian world would witness revelations in the physics of Roentgen’s X-rays, Marie Curie’s radium, and Einstein’s E = mc2; in the psychology of Jung, Freud, Pavlov, and Adler; and in medicine, where the secrets of vitamins, genes, and hormones would be unlocked. Science had been transformed from a dalliance for eccentrics into a systematic discipline, becoming the foundation of industry.”

Aurel Stein benefitted from the incredible changes of this decade. While he started his career in the Taklamakan trundling through the giddy heights of the surrounding mountain ranges into the desert- bitterly cold and intolerably hot in turns, but always without water, his baggage carried by camels, mules and donkeys, he ended his career exploring the Persian desert using high speed cameras mounted on the underside of an aero plane.

Together with other explorers, Stein unearthed the rich Buddhist architecture, frescos and ancient Buddhist manuscripts in the oases towns along the Silk Route, mapping the incredible inroads made by the Indian influence on these remote regions. There can be no doubt that Stein’s motivations came from Kalhana’s Rajatarangini, which documents the conquest of the Tarim basin (in modern day Sinkiang) up to the towns of Kuchha and Turfan, by the Kashmiri King Lalitaditya (Sampath, Bravehearts) around 755-56 CE. As a matter of fact, Lalitaditya becomes an early victim of the waterless desert, and fails to return to Kashmir, meeting his end in the desert, but not before carrying the message of Buddhist and Hindu cultures to these far outposts. Both Kuchha and Turfan yield to Stein, an unprecedented volume of archeological finds.

Since then, the sword of iconoclastic Islam had overtaken the oases towns of the Silk Route and much of the paintings and frescos not buried in the sand had been destroyed by religious vandals. But what remained hidden was in a spectacular state of preservation given the low humidity of the desert climate. These, Stein dug out, and took away, in camel loads, in the course of three long forays into the desert. These invaluable objects can today be seen in different museums in various parts of the world, including the museums in Delhi.

With technological advancement also comes a generational change in the social psyche. The Chinese Central Government became suddenly conscious of its cultural legacy and began to control the foray of foreign freebooters into their country. Back in India, which was Stein’s launch pad, the people had begun to agitate for their independence. Stein remained a kind of Rip Van Winkle, believing that he was rendering a service to conserve human heritage while carting off the Taklamakan plunder to European museums, and that India’s future lay within the British Raj. Death came in 1940 relieving him of the trauma of upcoming upheavals of the forties decade.

Walker traces the life of Stein, in great detail, but with compassion and without passing a judgment.