In December 1900, alerted in Khotan by a "reliable 'treasure-seeker'" who brought fragments of wall painting with Brahmi script, stucco reliefs, and paper documents from a site known locally as Dandān-Uiliq, Aurel Stein set off in the footsteps of Hedin, accompanied by two of his guides and a team of thirty labourers, to begin excavations.
He uncovered a series of structures (labelled by Stein D. I to D. XVII), including dwellings and a number of Buddhist shrines.
D. II has a central rectangular platform surmounted by a moulded lotus statue base, on which only the foot of the image survives; the surrounding passage Stein identified as serving for parikrama (ritual circumambulation).
In an adjoining smaller building was a headless Buddha which Stein carted off on a mule and is now in the British Museum; another headless figure, clad in mail, wearing wide boots similar to the soft leather chāruks of contemporary Turkestan, trampling another figure, and thought to represent Kubera; and wall paintings of a seated monastic, a Buddha, horsemen, and a nude dancing girl in a pool of water against a backdrop of flowering lotus, adorned with jewels and a strategically placed vine leaf.

Among the documents discovered, written in a variety of scripts on paper, wooden tablets, and sticks, were Buddhist texts; a petition for the recovery of a donkey after the failure of its two purchasers to pay even ten months later; a petition for exemption from requisitions of grain and forced labour after visitation by bandits; a request for the military of skins for drums and quail feathers for arrows; records of loans; and an important early Judeo-Persian document edited and dated to 718 by David Samuel Margoliouth seemingly concerned predominantly with the sale of sheep, complaints of unfair treatment, and the teaching of a girl.
Aurel Stein translated the document into English.
In December 1900, alerted in Khotan by a "reliable 'treasure-seeker'" who brought fragments of wall painting with Brahmi script, stucco reliefs, and paper documents from a site known locally as Dandān-Uiliq, Aurel Stein set off in the footsteps of Hedin, accompanied by two of his guides and a team of thirty labourers, to begin excavations. He uncovered a series of structures (labelled by Stein D. I to D. XVII), including dwellings and a number of Buddhist shrines. D. II has a central rectangular platform surmounted by a moulded lotus statue base, on which only the foot of the image survives; the surrounding passage Stein identified as serving for parikrama (ritual circumambulation). In an adjoining smaller building was a headless Buddha which Stein carted off on a mule and is now in the British Museum; another headless figure, clad in mail, wearing wide boots similar to the soft leather chāruks of contemporary Turkestan, trampling another figure, and thought to represent Kubera; and wall paintings of a seated monastic, a Buddha, horsemen, and a nude dancing girl in a pool of water against a backdrop of flowering lotus, adorned with jewels and a strategically placed vine leaf.
Among the documents discovered, written in a variety of scripts on paper, wooden tablets, and sticks, were Buddhist texts; a petition for the recovery of a donkey after the failure of its two purchasers to pay even ten months later; a petition for exemption from requisitions of grain and forced labour after visitation by bandits; a request for the military of skins for drums and quail feathers for arrows; records of loans; and an important early Judeo-Persian document edited and dated to 718 by David Samuel Margoliouth seemingly concerned predominantly with the sale of sheep, complaints of unfair treatment, and the teaching of a girl. Aurel Stein translated the document into English.
Dandan Oilik