Towards the sacred Ali Plateau in western Tibet, China, there is a vast plateau called the roof of the world, with an altitude of 4,400 meters, accounting for about one third of the total area of Tibet. However, the population density here is only 0. 16 people per square kilometer, and there are thousands of kilometers of no-man's land in the territory, which is the most attractive secret place on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and full of mystery. This is the famous Ali Plateau.
If you open the map, you can find shiquanhe town, the capital of Ali today, in the westernmost part of China. Its geographical coordinates are 325 N and 800 E, and it is 0/800 km away from Lhasa/KLOC, the capital of Xizang Autonomous Region. So far, there is no air route from Lhasa to Ali. If you start from Lhasa and use the most advanced means of transportation in Tibet, it will take four or five days at the earliest to reach shiquanhe town. Therefore, even Tibetan locals, few people have been to Ali.
However, Ali's popularity in Tibet and even South Asia is very high. The reason for this is that there are countless natural mysteries and historical mysteries fascinating on this seemingly barren plateau.
In the north of Ali, there is the famous Kunlun Mountain. In the Classic of Mountains and Seas, this is the market where immortals live. The flaming mountain where Zhongdian monks learn from the scriptures in the Journey to the West is said to be the bonfire mountain in the present Kunlun mountain system. In the Himalayas to the north of Alishan, there are five towering peaks, which have become the legendary five fairies, and stories are circulating among the people. However, the most mysterious mountain in Ali is Gangdise Mountain, which lies between Kunlun Mountain and Himalayas. Its main peak, Gangrenbuche, is located in Pulan County, Ali Plateau, with an altitude of 6714m. It is regarded as a common mountain by different regions, religions and ethnic groups in South Asia, attracting thousands of followers of Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism and our religion to Korea every year.
Besides the holy mountain, there are also holy water and holy lake. Four great rivers in Ali flow down the Gangdise Mountain and then flow into the Indian Ocean from different directions. People named these four rivers after horses, lions, elephants and peacocks, and regarded them as divine waters. Divine water is also injected into Yongcuo Lake in Mabian near Gangrenbuche, which is the highest freshwater lake in the world. Some people think it's the Yaochi in the Western Heaven recorded in the Records of the Western Regions of Datang. Buddhists believe that it is the nectar given by the Buddha to the world, which can cleanse the five poisons in people's hearts, so it has become a holy lake with the same name as Shenshan.
In addition to the legends of magical natural landscapes such as mountains, water and lakes, Ali still has many unsolved historical mysteries, which are even more fascinating. Therefore, since ancient times, it has been a religious holy land that people yearn for, attracting countless religious believers, explorers and travelers to explore.
In the western part of Ali Plateau, the mysterious kingdom of Xiangquan Valley, there is a mysterious kingdom of Guge that has been recorded and described countless times by various literary works. According to historical records, this area was once the territory of the same country as early as the Tubo era or even earlier. The history book "Tongdian" records that Dayang is connected with Tubo in the east, Lamb in the west and Khotan in the north, with a distance of more than 1,000 miles, winning 890,000 soldiers. He weaves hair and touches fur, and raises livestock as a profession. There is much ice and snow, and the ice is thick. The products produced are quite similar to those of customs. There are no words, but only wood carvings and knotted ropes. The criminal law is severe. (Volume 190. Frontier defense 6) In the Biography of the Five Kingdoms of Tianzhu in the Hui Dynasty, there is also a record of Yang: the fifteenth northeast of Kashgar Miro is the Great Polo country, and Yang and Bo Boci are the countries. These three countries are all under the control of Tubo, wearing different styles, including fur, fur, felt, shirt, boots and trousers. The land is narrow and the mountains and rivers are dangerous. Yang Tong and Yang Tong mentioned here are located in today's Ali. In Tibetan historical books, this area is called Zhangzhong, with a wide geographical scope. Among them, Zhong Xiangxiong refers to today's Guge and Gangdise Mountains, which is the central area of Xiangxiong Kingdom composed of dozens of tribes or tribal groups. It is said that Yin Cheng, the capital of Xiangxiong Kingdom, was built here, with a strong force and a large population. It was not until the 7th century AD that Songtsan Gampo established a powerful Tubo kingdom, and the oldest country in western Tibet was destroyed.
At the end of the Tubo kingdom, the descendants of the last Tubo king Longdama fled to Ali, where a small separatist dynasty was established. The capital of one of the small dynasties, the Guge Dynasty, was built in Zharang, which is today's Zada County. Up to now, hundreds of grottoes, Buddhist temples and grottoes with exquisite murals are preserved in the site, and gunpowder, armor, helmets and various iron weapons are stored in the warehouse in the city. According to the Tibetan history book "The Story of the Prince of Tibet", Guge Kingdom inherited sixteen generations of kings. Finally, in the17th century, due to the infiltration of western missionaries into Guge, the Catholic King of Guge had a serious conflict with the ministers who insisted on Buddhism as the state religion. The neighboring Ladakh Kingdom took advantage of the chaos in Guge to send troops to besiege its capital and destroy it.
Two ancient western countries, Xiangxiong and Guge, have since disappeared in the smoke of history, making archaeologists, historians and ethnologists search hard in the historical sea of Wang Yang, trying to restore their ancient history with scientific evidence.
Regarding the kingdom of Guge, although historians and archaeologists from all over the world have done a lot of investigation and study, there are still many problems hidden in the misty sea of clouds and mountains. Among them, one question that archaeologists are most interested in is that when the kingdom was the most powerful, it once claimed to have reached100,000 people. Today, the existing ruins in the capital of Guge Kingdom can only accommodate about 2,000 people, which makes scholars speculate that there must be countless castles like Zharang hidden in the depths of the desert wasteland and covered up by historical dust.
As a result, one expedition after another set foot on the Ali Plateau to explore the unknown world hidden in the depths of the desert. The expedition team of the author is composed of Tibetan Culture Management Committee and Tibetan-Chinese archaeologists of Sichuan University. It visited the Ali Plateau several times and finally made a major archaeological discovery. Dongga and Piyang: A Lost World went to June 1992. After completing the archaeological investigation and excavation in Ritu County, the northernmost part of Ali, the expedition team crossed Gangdise Mountain on June 17 and entered Zada County, the southern edge of Ali Plateau.
Zada County is located between the Himalayas and the Gangdise Mountains, bordering India in the west and south, Indian-occupied Kashmir in the northwest, and Pulan County and Gaer County in the northeast respectively. Its topography is completely different from that of North Ali, and it belongs to the area called Zada Basin in geological circles. There are a series of small valley plains and basins, with 14 rivers, the largest of which is Xiangquan River (called Qin Lang Zangbo in Tibetan), which flows through the county from east to west and flows into India, and its downstream flows into the Indus River in Pakistan. There is a section called Satler Jihe River in India. Crops such as highland barley, wheat, peas and rape can be produced in the plain and small watershed of Xiangquan River Valley. There are small pastures in the valley area, and the climatic conditions are suitable for agriculture and animal husbandry.
Along the gully on the edge of the ancient lake basin in Zada, you can go down from the flat plateau to the Xiangquan Valley. The natural landscape is also vertically distributed with the change of height: at the highest point, the majestic Himalayas can be seen across the sky, and there are several towering ice peaks under the snow; Below the ice peak and snowfield, there is a world of yellow brown soil forest, which is the basin edge of Zada Basin formed after the deposition of ancient lakeside. At the bottom of the basin are many flat river terraces in Xiangquan Valley, which are embedded on both sides of the river like oases.
Dongga and Piyang, two adjacent small villages, located about 40 kilometers northwest of Zabu, are one of these countless oases. In summer, in Dongga and Piyang, the clear river flows quietly to the depths of the valley, the green grass is full of red and yellow flowers, the cattle and sheep flock together, and the pastoral sounds come and go, which is a scene of paradise. It is hard to imagine that in the history of Guge kingdom, there was a brilliant stroke here.
As soon as I entered the ditch of Dongga Village, the first thing I saw was the remains of rows of pagodas on the ridge. Further on, you can see that the khaki cliffs are covered with caves. On the top of the mountain, the ruins of the collapsed Buddhist temple are vivid. Walk about 2 kilometers from Dongga to the east, and after turning two cliffs, you can see the huge Piyang Cave site in the distance. Under the blue sky and white clouds, the caves are mountainous and covered with cliffs about one kilometer long, which is extremely spectacular.
Dongga Cave Group is located on the cliff in the north of Dongga Village, about 400 meters away from Dongga Village in the south, and a stream flows from east to west in the south and flows into Xiangquan River. The caves are dug eastward according to the mountain trend, and there are nearly 200 existing caves, among which several caves painted with exquisite murals are concentrated on a U-shaped cliff in the east. On the slope of the south platform of the site, there is a large abandoned Buddhist temple and Tallinn site, which shows that this is a huge site group integrating grottoes and temples. Piyang Cave Group is located in the north of Dongga, and it is also a large-scale site composed of temples, castles, grottoes and Tallinn. Grottoes are distributed in the front and back of the mountain. According to local legend, the number of caves here is 1000 before and 1000 after. The actual survey statistics are close to 65,438+0,000. However, due to the age, many caves have already collapsed, which is not counted. If you add this part of the grottoes, it will be almost the same as the legendary grottoes. At the foot of Piyang Mountain, there is a high platform called Green Pond, on which there are ancient Buddhist temples and Tallinn. Halfway up the mountain and at the top of Qian Shan, there are the ruins of Dukang Hall, an early Buddhist temple, and the ruins of Rangzi, a monk named Shela, which are mixed with caves. There are palaces, dharma halls and a large number of cave sites in Houshan, and the overall scale exceeds that of Dongga.
However, there are almost no records about Dongga and Piyang in the ancient books of Sino-Tibetan literature. These two huge sites, like a world that has long disappeared, are silent and unknown. They have been quietly located in the desert soil forest for many years, welcoming the sunrise and sending away the splendid artistic treasures at sunset.
June 22nd 199 1, which is a day we will never forget. At about 5: 30 in the afternoon, after the scheduled inspection that day, we drove back to the campsite. On the way, a teenage Tibetan shepherd girl asked for a ride home in our jeep. In the car, we invited her to visit this cave without murals. Who knows, when she understood what we meant by this ruin, she definitely nodded and said, Just at the waist of a hillside behind Dongga Village, there is such a cave. When she was herding sheep, she drove them into the cave to shelter from the rain and witnessed the beautiful murals painted inside.
We'll let her lead the way and drive to Dongga at once. On a U-shaped cliff not far from the village, there are more than a dozen caves of different sizes. While climbing the mountain, I found very well-preserved murals in three caves (later numbered Dongga No.1, No.2 and No.3 respectively). Later, many caves with murals were also found in Piyang, about 2 kilometers away from Dongga.
This great discovery opened an extremely precious picture scroll in the art history of China Grottoes, and provided precious historical materials for the spread and development of cave temple art in Tibet Plateau and the study of the history of Guge Kingdom. Dongga and Piyang Grottoes are the largest Buddhist grottoes discovered in Tibet so far. According to preliminary observation and analysis, the types of grottoes are ritual grottoes dedicated to Buddha, rooms where monks practice and live, warehouse grottoes where sundries are piled up, Lingta grottoes where the remains of eminent monks are placed, and so on. Among them, there are a large number of beautifully painted murals in the Li Buddha Grottoes, which are very rich in content. The murals in Dongga and Piyang Grottoes are roughly divided into 10 main themes, namely: Buddha statue, Bodhisattva statue, all kinds of female statues, the statue of the founder of the eminent monk, the statue of the protector, the statue of the patron, Buddhist stories, quotations and ritual charts, tantric mandala and various decorative patterns.
As an archaeologist, what attracts our attention most is the image of the provider in the mural. The benefactor not only funded the excavation of the grottoes to promote Buddhism, but also set a meritorious record for himself. Because they were laymen, they all wore fashionable clothes at that time, so when painters painted their portraits on murals, they also left us vivid portraits of the people at that time. In the caves of Dongga and Piyang, customers are drawn in the form of pictures saying "Buddha" on both sides of the door or under the cave wall. Usually monks are chanting Buddha, diners are listening to Dharma, sitting sideways facing the monk, with solemn and pious expressions. Such scenes can be seen in caves 1 and 2 of Dongga 1 site, and caves 79 and 35 1 in Piyang.
The clothes worn by these providers have very obvious characteristics. Both men and women wear large triangular lapels with sleeves longer than their hands. The collar and hem of the sleeve are inlaid with wide-brimmed or patterned robes. Men often wear a wide-brimmed hat or a headscarf on their heads, and women often comb their hair into braids, divide it into several strands and wrap it around their heads, and then wear headdresses on it. These well-dressed figures should be supporters who contribute to the construction of caves.
Through careful comparative study, we find that the costumes of these supporters are similar to those of the royal nobles in the Tubo era. For example, caves 158 and 159 dug during the Tubo occupation of Dunhuang, and the robes worn by Tubo Zampa have this triangular lapel style. People in the Tubo period painted in Dunhuang silk paintings in the early 8th century also wore such robes. 1 1 After the century, the Tubo prince of Mangnang Temple in Tibet and the royal family painted in the paintings of Tuobo and Al Chibi in Ladakh, an early Buddhist temple adjacent to Guge, also wore the same clothes, all of which were characterized by triangular lapels. Through comparative study, we think that the patron of the Dongjiapiyang Grottoes belongs to Guge's royal aristocrats. According to the literature, this may be related to the religious activities of some royal families in Dongga during the division of Guge.
The grotto murals show us a colorful and colorful world. Among all kinds of Buddhist themes, in addition to all kinds of Buddha statues with solemn expressions, the most common ones are all kinds of bodhisattvas. Bodhisattva statues in grottoes can be divided into two categories according to their names. One kind is the bodhisattva whose name is specifically mentioned in the Buddhist scriptures, that is, the bodhisattva who realizes equality, which helps Sakyamuni to promote enlightenment, such as Manjusri Bodhisattva and Guanyin Bodhisattva. The other is all kinds of offering bodhisattvas with extremely complicated names. For example, there are hundreds of names of bodhisattvas recorded in Tibetan inscriptions in Dongga No.2 cave. Bodhisattva's costume features are basically the same, with a high bun, a crown of three flowers and five flowers on the head, large earrings and necklaces, or tassels, topless, armbands, bracelets and so on. Stumbling on the lotus platform, holding something in both hands or tying a knot, surrounded by headlights and backlight behind you. Most of the Guanyin Bodhisattvas in the Buddha statues are upright, such as the eleven Guanyin statues painted by Dongga 1 Cave, which are plump, beautiful, graceful and touching.
In addition, the biggest change in plastic arts is all kinds of female (goddess) statues. Different kinds of female statues are depicted in cave murals. One kind is female king kong, such as various goddess king kong statues painted on the west wall of Dongga 1 Cave; One is the goddess of offering sacrifices, including the goddess of offering incense, the goddess of offering flowers, the goddess of scattering flowers, the goddess of singing and the goddess of being good at dancing. There are also various Tara and Buddha mothers. These statues are vivid and diverse, which are the most exquisite parts of western grotto murals and show a high artistic level. Their clothing features are basically similar. Usually wearing a crown or treasure crown, earrings, necklaces, armbands, bracelets and anklets with large rings, wearing silk on the shoulders, flying clothes, naked upper body or body, and various handprints or utensils tied to the hands. In painting, the painter outlines his outline with elastic lines and highlights his plump female figure with shadows.
Like the Buddhist grottoes in India, Xinjiang and Dunhuang, Tian Fei is the most vivid little angel in the murals of Dongga Grottoes. Tian Fei, also known as Chandapo, is a bodhisattva who can fly in the air. Its duty is to scatter flowers and play music in the air when the Buddha speaks. It is good at flying and fragrant, so it is also called The god of the sweet sound. In Dongga Grottoes, Feitian is mainly painted on both sides above Datura and on both sides of Buddha statues in Buddhist niches. They wear crowns, bare upper bodies, or tight short sleeves, holding musical instruments or donors in their hands, and some have a canopy over their heads. They all fly upward from the upper body, but their feet are different: some are straight, and some are bent backward from below the knee; There are also feet leaning back, knees slightly bent, clothes ribbons flying in the wind, and the whole body flying in the air. For example, the first-class flying sky painted above the Buddha statue on the back wall of Dongga No.2 cave has rich and colorful changes in legs and body, and with the sky clothes and ribbons fluttering up and down, it produces different flying dynamics, which fully shows the various styles of flying sky.
The murals also depict a large number of animals and plants, including dragons, phoenixes, lions, sheep, cows, horses, ducks, geese and elephants. Some animals are not from Ali Plateau, while others are deified animals in Buddhism, such as peacocks, Capricorn fish and arowana. Their images are exaggerated and changeable, obviously from other cultures. Animal patterns are particularly popular in animal composition forms, such as the entanglement of two dragons, the singing of two deer and the opposition of two phoenixes. In addition, there are five deer, eight phoenixes, one tiger chasing three sheep, one lion chasing two sheep and other composite animal combination patterns. These patterns have a unique artistic style and may be influenced by Buddhism in the western regions. Plant patterns are mainly trees, and others include flowers and fruits. Trees often appear as backgrounds, and their shapes are exaggerated into palm, corolla, mushroom, triangle (arrow) and so on. In addition to the special Buddhist significance of lotus, honeysuckle patterns, grass-rolling patterns and flowers wrapped in branches are more common in decorative patterns. These ever-changing flowers and trees decorate almost every blank in the grottoes.
The discovery of the world-famous Donggapiyang Grottoes not only fills a big gap in the art of ancient grottoes in western Tibet, but more importantly reveals to us the important position of western Tibet in the whole ancient Asian civilization chain.
In recent years, the clues of Buddhist grottoes murals in western Tibet mastered through archaeological investigation are not limited to Dongga-Piyang, but widely distributed in the Ali Plateau centered on Guge Kingdom. From the geographical position of Ali, it is located at the intersection of two major Buddhist popular areas in Central Asia and South Asia. From the aspects of painting methods, style characteristics, characteristics of people and animals, there is no doubt that Piyang Cave murals are closely related to Buddhist art in Central Asia and South Asia. For example, the decorative patterns of birds, beasts and beads in murals were once one of the characteristics of ancient Persian art in Central Asia. The leading triangle robe worn by the characters in the murals is also a common costume in the cave murals unearthed in Dunhuang during the Tubo period, which shows the cultural connection between them. Therefore, there are signs that the grottoes in western Tibet may have been introduced directly from South Asia, which is directly related to the tantric art in the late Polo Dynasty in India. At the same time, it probably absorbed some elements of Buddhist art in Central Asia to some extent.
So far, the research on the artistic discovery of Piyang Grottoes in Dongga is still in progress. Experts in archaeology, history and Tibetan language of Han and Tibetan in China are continuing to conduct comprehensive research from different angles, such as grotto modeling, mural content, inscriptions and pigment composition, in combination with ancient documents and classics. These studies can be said to be topics of worldwide significance, which have attracted great attention from scholars in many countries and regions. We believe that China scholars' research will hopefully make great progress and write a new chapter in the history of ancient civilization in China.