Ancient City of Yotkan

The remains of this ancient city,believed to be the capital of the Kingdom of Hotan between the third and eighth centuries,are ten kilometers west of present-day Hotan,under four meters of accumulated mud,now planted with rice.Lovely sherds of decorated red pottery and pieces of jade can still be picked out of the sides of the water channels cutting through the site.

  Historical records say the city once covered 10 square kilometers.Both Sven Hedin and Aurel Stein visited Yotkan,and Hedin devoted a chapter to it in his mammoth book Through Asia,In the late 19^th century,finds of great value drew teams of local treasure hunters more interested in the gold and silver objects than in the richly varied sherds of pottery,which depicted animals and figures in a style heavily influenced by Indo-Hellenistic and Persian styles.Stein noted that much of the gold found was actually gold-leaf,and concluded that the statues and some of the buildings must have been lavishly coated with it.Among the coins he found were”bilingual pieces of the indigenous rulers,showing Chinese characters as well as early Indian legends in Kharoshthi,struck about the commencement of our era,to the square-holed issues of the Tang dynasty”.