They are located at Baghqi township in Yotkan village which today is called Alnama. They are 13 kms  away from Hotan city. These Buddhist ruins belong to the Hah and Song Dynasties. It is under the Autonomous Regional Preservation of cultural Relics. The Yotkan city ruins cover an area of 10 square kms. Most of the cultural relics are about 3 - 6ms in the ground.
Among the excavated cuhrual relics mostly jade articles, golden Buddha figures and a large amount of old coins have been unearthed which were used during a long period of time. The earliest coins called "Wu Zhu" belong to the Han dynasty. The coin of the Wang Mang's period bave on two sides of the coins letters imprinted in Han and Sanskrit languages. The latest dated coins belong to the Karahan Dynasty while Mohammad Arslanhan ruled.
The Chinese Cultural Relics Department excavated a golden duck during their investigations. They also found one coin called "Qian Yuan Huang Bao" and collected some pottery pieces with human patterns and animals on it. Fa Xian from the Eastern Jin Dynasty and Xuan Zang from the Tang Dynasty set their feet on this place. Swen Hedin excavated some relics from Yotkan in 1896. Aurel Stein had twice excavated relics from here, once in October 1901 and then again in April 1906. Professor Huang Wen Bi inspected the place in 1929 and recorded his roundings. |
