urkestan are not Calmucks, but Tungani; if the view taken here
is adopted, then they are Calmucks who have at various times adopted
Mahomedanism. These are the chief tribes of this portion of Central
Asia; and in the following pages it may be as well to bear in mind that
Khitay is applied exclusively to the Buddhist or governing class, and
Tungani to the Mahomedan or subject race in Kansuh and its outlying
dependencies. As race antipathies have not entered during recent times
so much into the contests of the people of the regions immediately under
consideration as religions, the difference as to the true significance
of the term Tungani does not materially affect one's view of the general
question.

CHAPTER III.

HISTORY OF KASHGAR.

The great difficulty encountered in giving a description of the past
history of Kashgar is to evolve, out of the series of successive
conquests and subjections that have marked the existence of that state
for almost two thousand years, a narrative which shall, without
confusing the reader with a mere repetition of names that convey little
meaning, place the chief features of its history before us in a light
that may make its more recent condition intelligible to us. We may say
in commencement, that those who desire a historical account in all its
fulness of Kashgar must turn to that contributed by Dr. Bellew to the
Official Report of Sir Douglas Forsyth on his embassy to Yarkand. They
will there find ample details of the events that took place in this
region of Central Asia from the commencement of our era; but a mere
reiteration of the various calamities, with brief and intermittent
periods of prosperity, each wave of which bore so striking a similarity
to its predecessor, would not serve the purpose we have at present in
view--viz., of considering its own history, for the purpose of better
understanding its relations with its neighbours and with China, and how
the state consolidated by the Athalik Ghazi was constructed on ruins
handed down by an almost indistinguishable antiquity.

For a considerable number of years anterior to the ninth century, the
Chinese Empire extended to the borders of Khokand and Cashmere. But the
dissensions that marked the latter years of the Tang dynasty were not
long in producing such weakness at the extremity of this vast empire
that the subject races and their proper ruling families were enabled to
obtain either their personal liberty or their los