[Footnote 454: It has even been suggested that hinduized Malays carried some faint traces of Indian religion to Madagascar. See _T'oung Pao_ 1906, p. 93, where Zanahari is explained as Yang ( = God in Malay) Hari.] [Footnote 455: Groeneveldt, pp. 19, 58, 59.] [Footnote 456: This word appears to be the Sanskrit area, an image for worship.] [Footnote 457: _E.g._ Van Eerde, "Hindu Javaansche en Balische Eeredienst" in _Bijd. T.L. en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië_, 1910. I visited Bali in 1911.] [Footnote 458: See Pleyte, _Indonesian Art_, 1901, especially the seven-headed figure in plate XVI said to be Krishna.] CHAPTER XLI CENTRAL ASIA 1 The term Central Asia is here used to denote the Tarim basin, without rigidly excluding neighbouring countries such as the Oxus region and Badakshan. This basin is a depression surrounded on three sides by high mountains: only on the east is the barrier dividing it from China relatively low. The water of the whole area discharges through the many branched Tarim river into Lake Lobnor. This so-called lake is now merely a flooded morass and the basin is a desert with occasional oases lying chiefly near its edges. The fertile portions were formerly more considerable but a quarter of a century ago this remote and lonely region interested no one but a few sportsmen and geographers. The results of recent exploration have been important and surprising. The arid sands have yielded not only ruins, statues and frescoes but whole libraries written in a dozen languages. The value of such discoveries for the general history of Asia is clear and they are of capital importance for our special subject, since during many centuries the Tarim region and its neighbouring lands were centres and highways for Buddhism and possibly the scene of many changes whose origin is now obscure. But I am unfortunate in having to discuss Central Asian Buddhism before scholars have had time to publish or even catalogue completely the store of material collected and the reader must remember that the statements in this chapter are at best tentative and incomplete. They will certainly be supplemented and probably corrected as year by year new documents and works of art are made known. Tarim, in watery metaphor, is not so much a basin as a pool in a tidal river flowing alternately to and from the sea. We can imagine that in such a pool creatures of very different provenance might be found together. So currents both from east to west and from west to east passed through the Tarim, leaving behind whatever could live there: Chinese administration and civilization from the east: Iranians from the west, bearing with them in the stream fragments that had drifted from Asia Minor and Byzantium, while still other currents brought Hindus and Tibetans from the south.