Accompanied only by a small Jack Russell terrier named Dash -- there were a total of seven dogs, all named Dash -- Sir Aurel Stein traveled a total of 25,000 miles, over freezing Himalayan passes and across scorching deserts.
With the support of the British and Indian governments, he traced the ancient caravan routes of the silk trade, oversaw the excavation of numerous archaeological sites, and documented the spread of Buddhism from India to China. His finds filled whole rooms in London's British Museum and Delhi's National Museum.
Among his most spectacular finds was the Diamond Sutra, the world's oldest dated printed text (dated May 11, 868), along with 40,000 other scrolls at the Mogao Caves, also known as "Caves of the Thousand Buddhas,"near Dunhuang on the edge of the Gobi desert .
And entire web site is devoted to Sir Aurel Stein who is buried in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he died in 1943.
Pictures of "one of the Dash's" can be found here, here, and here.
For another canine archeological sidekick, see the story of Rocket of the Caves of Lascaux
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