Aurel Stein

AUREL STEIN. Pioneer of the Silk Road. By Annabel Walker. Pp. 393, 29 b/w photos, 4 maps, 1995. (John Murray, London, L 25).

In June 1932 at a meeting in London, the speaker, Stein’s old friend Sir Edward Maclagan, used an Italian anecdote to explain Stein’s approach to his work. The story concerned a young officer in the army of the eighteenth-century Iranian ruler, Nadir Shah, who hearing his king qualify his praise of a certain sword by the observation that it was too short, gave the word of command: ‘One pace to the front’. That, observed Maclagan, had been the motto of Stein’s life. Whatever difficulties he had encountered, he had relied on his own resources, taken ‘one pace to the front’ and conquered all set backs.
(p.288)

This is a biography of Aurel Stein, who true to the above quote had pushed archaeology ‘one pace to the front’. Born in 1862 in Hungary, he studied Sanskrit and comparative philosophy in Vienna before moving to England to study further. He reached India in 1887 and worked in Lahore and Calcutta. From here, with support of the government he organised his first expedition to Chinese Turkestan which lasted two years (1900-1901) and ended by connecting the areas with Indian Trigonometrical Survey.

His second expedition, in 1906 to 1908, was the most important one where he explored the Wakhan corridor of Afghanistan and discovered the Caves of Thousand Buddhas at Tun-huang. He bribed the custodian and carried back with him thousands of manuscripts and paintings from the caves back to Europe. This trend was repeated in his successive expeditions when he returned to the caves and other areas of Central Asia. In later years of his life he worked in the Middle East, particularly Iran.

Stien’s devotion to archaeology went beyond any boundaries, including his personal life. He even remained a bachelor to devote himself fully to exploration and always rejected any suggestions to be tied down

He responded far more positively to a remark made by his friend and colleague, the philologist Sir George Grierson, who wrote on one occasion that he wished Stein, like himself, could have found a wife. ‘But what then would have become of Central Asia! You chose her for a bride, with the blessing of your Patron Saint, Hsuen Tsiang; and you are a confirmed monogamist.’ Stein called Grierson’s conceit ‘happy and delightfully true’.
(p.324)

But there are many who doubt the motives of Stein and others like him in taking away the art-effects to Europe from their natural habitats of Central Asia. Some argue that with the ‘Cultural Revolution’ in China all these would have been destroyed while today they are well-preserved in the European museums. But the debate continues.

In the preface to the Chinese edition of Peter Hopkirk’s Foreign Devils on the Silk Road, Duan Wenjie wrote of the history of ‘robbing and plundering’ recorded in the book, referred to Stein and others as ‘robbers’ and ‘thieves’, and expressed the hope that all Tun-huang relics would one day be returned to the caves.

It was argued how an Englishman might feel if a foreign archaeologist bribed the custodian of an old English monastery to hand over medieval manuscripts, offering this as a direct comparison with Stein’s behaviour at Tun-huang. But the differences are clear. Anyone hoping to smuggle such manuscripts out of Britain would know they were removing them from a country able and eager to conserve them, and with laws governing the ownership and removal of such objects.
(p.353)

One also has to look at it with the care and study which the objects have received in their new homes, including a museum in Delhi. It is argued that this would not have been possible if they had remained in Central Asia, awaiting Chinese scholars to arrive many years later. One can only look at it from the times in which Stein operated

The use of hindsight to judge a person’s actions in the past all too often indicates a lack of imagination and, more worryingly , a wish to deny the reality of that past. It seems glib to condemn a man for acting in a way entirely consistent with the period in which he lived and the Western world in which he was raised.
(p.354)

However Stein’s claim to greatness cannot be denied. He is perhaps the least-known explorer and archaeologist and this well-researched biography throws light on all aspects of his life. Sensitively written, it brings out the travels and travails of Stein’s life well. He died in Kabul in 1943. This book a worthy tribute to this great explorer, like the epitaph on his grave.

Stein’s grave lies in the shady surroundings of Kabul’s Christian cemetery — miraculously unharmed by the battles around — as a proof that only death denied him the chance he had been wanting all his life. ‘He enlarged the bounds of knowledge’, says its inscription. More important than this tribute, however, are the final words on the tablet. For someone who felt himself so often an outsider, who was so touched by marks of friendship, a memorial that describes him as ‘A man greatly beloved’ is surely the best tribute of all.
(p.355)

Harish Kapadia