ABSTRACT
At last, on November 18th, we arrived at the scene of our excavations, the old ruined town of Khocho, to-day called Karakhoja. By native tongues it is called Apsūs (Ephesus), also the city of Dakianus (after the Roman Emperor, Decius, the persecutor of the Christians) and Idikuchahrī. The old Chinese name was Kao-chang. The name of Dakianus finds its explanation in the circumstance that in the immediate neighbourhood, in the valley of Tuyoq, there is a sacred shrine of the Seven Sleepers, which, even at the present day, has the reputation of great sanctity, and is visited by Mohammedan pilgrims from such distant lands as Arabia and India. But the Mohammedans were not the first to bring the legend there—Islam did not reach these districts before the thirteenth or fourteenth century—for it dates from Buddhist times, as I shall show later on.
