KHOTAN (locally ILcm)  , a town and oasis of East Turkestan, on the Khotan-darya, between the N. foot of the Kuenlun and the edge of the Takla-makan desert, nearly 200 M. by caravan road S.E. from Yarkand . Pop., about 5000 . The town consists of a labyrinth of narrow, winding, dirty streets, with poor, square, flat-roofed houses, half a dozen madrasas (Mahommedan colleges), a score of mosques, and some masars (tombs of Mahommedan saints) . Dotted about the town are open squares, with tanks or ponds overhung by trees . For centuries Khotan was famous for jade or nephrite, a semi-precious stone greatly esteemed by the Chinese for making small fancy boxes, bottles and cups, mouthpieces for pipes, bracelets, &c . The stone is still exported to China . Other local products are carpets (silk and felt), silk goods, hides, grapes, rice and other cereals, fruits, tobacco, opium and cotton . There is an active trade in these goods and in wool with India, West Turkestan and China . The oasis contains two small towns, Kara-kash and Yurun-kash, and over 300 villages, its total population being about 150,000 . Khotan, known in Sanskrit as Kustana and in Chinese as Yu-than, Yu-tien, Kiu-sa-tan-na, and Khio-tan, is mentioned in Chinese chronicles in the 2nd century B.C . In A.D . 73 it was conquered by the Chinese, and ever since has been generally dependent upon the Chinese empire .

During the

early centuries of the Christian era, and long before that, it was an important and flourishing place, the capital of a kingdom to which the Chinese sent embassies, and famous for its glass-wares, copper tankards and textiles . About the year A.D . 400 it was a city of some magnificence, and the seat of a flourishing cult of Buddha, with temples rich in paintings and ornaments of the precious metals; but from the 5th century it seems to have declined . In the 8th century it was conquered, after a struggle of 25 years, by the Arab chieftain Kotaiba ibn Moslim, from West Turkestan, who imposed Islam upon the people . In 1220 Khotan was destroyed by the Mongols under Jenghiz Khan . Marco Polo, who passed through the town in 1294, says that " Everything is to be had there at Cotan, i. e . Khotan] in plenty, includingabundance of cotton, with flax, hemp, wheat, wine, and the like . The people have vineyards and gardens and estates . They live by commerce and manufactures, and are no soldiers."' The place suffered severely during the Dungan revolt against China in 1864—1875, and again a few years later when Yakub Beg of Kashgar made himself master of East Turkestan . The KHOTAN-DARYA rises in the Kuen-lun Mountains in two headstreams, the Kara-kash and the Yurun-kash, which unite towards the middle of the desert, some 90 m . N. of the town of Khotan . The conjoint stream then flows 18o m. northwards across the desert of Takla-makan, though it carries water only in the early summer, and empties itself into the Tarim a few miles below the confluence of the Ak-su with the Yarkand-darya (Tarim) .

In

crossing the desert it falls 1250 ft. in a distance of 270 M . Its total length is about 300 M. and the area it drains probably nearly 40,000 sq. m . See J . P . A . R6musat, Histoire de la ville de Khotan (Paris, 1820) ; and Sven Hedin, Through Asia (Eng. trans., London, 1898), chs . Ix. and lxii., and Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, 1899-1902, vol. ii . (Stockholm, 1906) . (J .