Few tourists and low visibility, but here are the real spectacle

Maijishan Grottoes: A quiet spectacle

China Newsweek reporter/Ni Wei

Published in the 2023th issue of China Newsweek magazine on April 4, 3

Maijishan Grottoes are a visual wonder. From a distance, the peculiar visual experience of Maijishan Grottoes has an impact similar to that of the Leshan Buddha.

Maijishan Grottoes are located in the town of Maiji, 30 kilometers southeast of Tianshui, Gansu. Driving into Xiaolong Mountain at the western end of the Qinling Mountains, after driving more than ten kilometers on the mountain road, looking out from afar, a lone peak of earth yellow protrudes in the vast green forest and sea. Maijishan is like an adobe placed on the earth, and the craftsmen have carved it into a delicate sculpture on three sides and full of ingenuity.

Among the "Four Great Grottoes in China", Mai Jishan is the least well-known, and it is not even ranked in the top four in terms of the number of tourists. This is also related to its geographical remoteness. Far from the big cities, Maijishan is located between the lofty mountains at the westernmost tip of the Qinling Mountains, so it has not been noticed for a long time, and it is rarely listed as a special tourist destination to this day.

However, the size of the remains, historical information, and shocking effect on visitors are no less than those of the more well-known caves. As the earliest royal grotto in China, Maijishan Grottoes have been built for more than 1600,221 years by more than ten dynasties of the Later Qin, Northern Wei, Western Wei, Northern Zhou, Sui and Tang dynasties, the Five Dynasties, the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, and there are 1000 cave niches, about 3938,10632 square meters of murals, 2400,<> statues and <>,<> bodies, which is much more than more than <>,<> painted sculptures in Dunhuang.

As a foreign architectural type, the grottoes themselves are a typical physical evidence of the fusion of Chinese and foreign cultures, and Maijishan at the midpoint of the Chinese grotto map vividly reflects the characteristics of cultural integration, and it is inextricably linked with the Bafang Grottoes. This cave complex hidden in the mountains has recorded the history of uninterrupted Buddha statue construction for more than a thousand years, from the early Central Asian style to the beautiful bones of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, from the richness and humility of the Sui and Tang Dynasties to the beauty and charm of the Song Dynasty, all of which are displayed side by side on the cliffs, thus giving them irreplaceable richness and diversity.

crossroads

From Xi'an to Tianshui, the straight-line distance is about 300 kilometers, and it can now be reached in 4 hours by car. During the Northern Dynasties and Sui and Tang dynasties, this was a convenient area adjacent to the capital Chang'an. From Chang'an, Hanzhong or Longnan to the Hexi Corridor, Qinzhou (ancient name of Tianshui) is a must, and Maijishan is precisely at the throat point. In 2014, Maijishan Grottoes were inscribed as a World Heritage Site as part of the Silk Road – Road Network for the Chang'an-Tianshan Corridor.

In the 3~4th century AD, Buddhism was introduced to the interior of the Central Plains along the Silk Road through the Hexi Corridor, and Chang'an, Luoyang, Chengdu, Jiankang (now Nanjing) and other places were centers of Buddhist cultural dissemination. Qinzhou, adjacent to Chang'an, also became one of the first areas where Buddhism was introduced to the mainland. As a peculiar Danxia landscape area in Qinzhou, as early as the Eastern Han Dynasty, Maijishan has attracted people's attention and become a destination to cool off and seek seclusion. By the 5th century at the latest, there were as many as <> Zen monks practicing in Maijishan.

"From the perspective of China's territory, the Maijishan Grottoes are right in the center of China's major grottoes, which is a location that connects east to west and north to south." Li Tianming, director of the Maijishan Grottoes Art Research Institute, said that the Maijishan Grottoes have Xinjiang and Dunhuang Grottoes in the west, Longmen Grottoes in the east, Yungang in the north, and Thousand Buddha Cliffs, Anyue Grottoes, Leshan Buddha, and Dazu Grottoes in the south.

Xia Langyun, director of the archaeological research office of the Maijishan Grotto Art Research Institute, said that in the process of Buddhist cultural exchange, Maijishan Grottoes are a key hub, and its strong cultural background comes from its neighboring Chang'an to the east, "Maijishan Grottoes are actually a product of Chang'an Buddhist culture." At the beginning of the opening of Maijishan caves, it was a royal grotto in the Sixteen Kingdoms period, and the Later Qin, Western Wei, and Northern Zhou states were all in Chang'an, because there was no suitable site for opening caves in the Guanzhong Plain, so the earliest royal grotto chose Tianshui, and because the hometown of the Later Qin emperor Yao Xing was here.

According to Xia Langyun's research, the opening work of Yungang Grottoes "Tangyao Five Caves" may have been inspired by Mai Jishan's "Yao Qin Five Shrines". According to historical records, the Later Qin emperor Yao Xing was an avid Buddhist, and the early caves 90, 165, 74, 78, and 51 artificially excavated by the Maijishan Grottoes were believed by some scholars to be made by Western Qin or Later Qin, and Xia Langyun called them "Yao Qin Five Shrines".

Among the five adjacent caves, caves 90 and 165 are adjacent to the upper floor, caves 74 and 78 are adjacent to the middle layer, and cave 51 is on the lower level, which can be regarded as three excavation stages. In the history of Later Qin, the rulers who were a continuous political force were also five emperors, and there were also three stages in time, and the "Yao Qin Five Shrines" may have been created for the five emperors of Later Qin.

As the earliest and most magnificent cave group excavated in Yungang Grottoes, the "Five Caves of Tanyao" is an image that simulates the fifth emperor of Northern Wei, symbolizing that the emperor of Northern Wei is the embodiment of Buddha. Xia Langyun speculated that the Northern Wei rulers and their senior monks had paid attention to the model of the "imperial five niches" of the Later Qin Dynasty, and built a larger and more mature "Tanxiao Five Caves" for the five emperors of the Northern Wei dynasty, who mainly founded the foundation, "There seems to be such a historical possibility in the interrelationship created by the grottoes." ”

The early cave niche shape, statue characteristics, theme combination, and Buddhist thought of Maijishan Grottoes are the embodiment of Chang'an Buddhist culture. Later, the Yungang Grottoes in the Biansai area were influenced by Chang'an Buddhism in the central cultural area. The later Luoyang Longmen Royal Family Temple nature grottoes also originated from the Maijishan Grottoes. As for Dunhuang, Xia Langyun believes that as two important nodes of the Silk Road, the interaction between Dunhuang and Maijishan has never been interrupted.

Sun Xiaofeng, a researcher at the Maijishan Grotto Art Research Institute, said that looking at the existing large and small cave temples in China, most of them show the characteristics of the phased era, and there are not many cave temples like Maijishan that have very complete preservation of relics from different historical periods. Therefore, the famous sculptor Liu Kaiqu praised it as the "Oriental Sculpture Exhibition Hall".

Shuttling up and down between the layers of boardwalks, lingering among the statues, Mai Jishan's colorful sculptures often have the attraction of making people stop and linger. This power comes from the soul of the color sculpture, sometimes innocent and lovely, sometimes compassionate, amiable, always making people feel that this is the world, not the unreachable religious world. For example, "Whispering", one of Mai Jishan's three masterpieces, a bodhisattva and a disciple located in Cave 121 of Northern Wei, leaning their shoulders lightly, their heads together, smiling, like two students at the same table whispering, witty and playful. They were supposed to be secondary characters in this cave, but they attracted almost all the attention of the audience a thousand years later.

Some Buddha statues have an aura that instantly calms down, such as the main Buddha in Cave 44. This Buddha is the most typical statue of the Western Wei Dynasty, 1.6 meters high, sitting half-knotted, facing the vast mountains, with traces of painting on the bun, chest, and dress, which have faded to a faint turquoise. The hanging garment folds hang down from the Buddha's throne, layered like ripples, complex, noble, ethereal and holy. The most lingering thing is the quiet and peaceful smile, the bodhisattva lowers his eyebrows, silent, and has the reputation of "the smile of the East".

This Buddha statue has a tall and straight nose, connected to the forehead, and a rounded body, which shows that it has gradually transitioned from the beautiful bone statue to the abundance of the Sui and Tang dynasties. As an art, Buddha sculpture has been branded with the style of each era. From the Indian charm of the early Buddha statues with high noses and broad shoulders, to the beautiful bones and clear statues and clothes in the middle of the Northern Wei Dynasty, to the humble, healthy and plump Pu Da of the Sui and Tang Dynasties, and then to the beautiful and charming and weak and moving of the Song Dynasty, the dashing and unruly style of the Ming Dynasty can be found in the exhibition hall of Maijishan.

The Maijishan Grottoes not only displays sculptures from previous dynasties, but also records important details of the history of the spread of Buddhism. For example, Cave 133, known as the "Cave of Steles", left a scene of the Northern Zhou Dynasty Eradication Movement. Cave 133 houses 18 Buddha steles, standing against the wall, and the ancients carved rows of neat rows of small Buddha statues on a stone tablet more than one meter high. These steles are not cave creatures, but during the reign of Emperor Wudi of Northern Zhou, the imperial court deposed Buddhism, launched a campaign to exterminate Buddhism, destroyed Buddhist temples on a large scale, and ordered monks and nuns to return to the laity. The villagers under Maiji Mountain carried the Buddhist monument from the village up the mountain and hid it in a cave, and hid it for 1500,<> years.

Cave puzzles

The earliest caves of Maijishan were excavated during the Sixteen Kingdoms period, and the mainstream opinion is that it is Later Qin. The climax of construction was in the Northern Dynasty, and at the latest during the Northern Anniversary, the entire east and west cliffs were already densely packed with cave niches, leaving almost no open space. From the Five Dynasties to the Two Song Dynasties, mainly during the period of large-scale renovation of the Maijishan Grottoes, there were almost no newly excavated cave niches.

And in the Song Dynasty, Maijishan Grottoes gave birth to an unparalleled masterpiece. Among the 133 caves built by the Northern Dynasty, a main Buddha statue was added during the Song Dynasty, and a small statue stood in front of the Buddha statue, and Shakyamuni stretched out his right hand and draped it above the head of the small statue. According to folklore, this group of statues depicts the scene of the "Shakyamuni meeting son", and it is said that after Shakyamuni became a Buddha, he saw his son Luo Jiro again, Shakyamuni had love and debt, and Luo Jiro put his hands together, his expression was stunned and his face showed grievances.

More subtlety lies in the side. From the side, Shakyamuni is not standing upright, but leaning forward and approaching Rakyamuni. This tilt, how much tenderness is implied.

"I was also very touched by this group of statues, and the word compassion is most accurate here." Sharongyun said. However, after examining this group of statues, Sharangyun offered a new insight into its meaning: he believed that this was not a "Shakya meeting", but a gesture of Amitabha Buddha to introduce the world.

He believed that the small statue was a small Buddha with a flesh bun on its head, wearing a Buddha robe, and stepping on a lotus flower, representing the image of all sentient beings being introduced to Buddha by Amitabha Buddha. At the time of meeting with his father, Luo Jiro was a Shami, and if he was a statue, it should be a Shami. In the sutras, Amitabha is the Buddha who leads sentient beings to the Western Elysium. "If we compare Amitabha Buddha to a father and all beings to children, this can also be understood." Sharongyun said.

The evidence is not limited to this. Why are these Buddha statues standing in this cave? Or, why did the Song people erect this group of statues here? Sharongyun finds a clue in another cave, and the clue is a strange handwriting.

Cave 133 on the upper right side of Cave 135 has a group of Western Wei-style stone statues, with a standing Buddha in the middle and two flanked bodhisattvas, with the left hand stretched out, the fingertips twisting lotus seeds, and a half-open lotus flower sticking out from the cuffs. Sharang Yun thinks of Amitabha Buddha receiving Buddha, and the lotus flower on the cuff is a vehicle for leading sentient beings to Elysium. He speculated that these three statues should be the "Three Sages of the West" composed of Amida, Avalokiteshvara, and the Great Trend Supreme Bodhisattva.

However, these three stone statues standing in Cave 135 are not obviously related to the other contents of the cave and appear incongruous, while the murals on the roof of Cave 133 depicting the content of the past are more closely related to it. Sharongyun speculates that the "Three Saints of the West" may have been moved from Cave 133, where two long logs remain, one of which has traces of a serrated staircase, or may have been a tool for transferring stone statues at that time. After the Song Dynasty removed Amitabha Buddha in Cave 135, a new Buddha statue was built in the same place. The handwriting, which may contain key information, is engraved on the left side behind the Buddha in Cave 133, which at first glance is not easy to read, and Sharongyun believes that it is the reverse "B". The anti-book of the character was popular in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and there were many anti-books with the name of the tomb owner on the Shinto pillars of the tomb tombs in the Southern Dynasty. He thought of a person: Empress Yifu of Western Wei.

According to historical records, Yifu was given to die at Maijishan and was buried in a niche for the "Tomb of Silence". However, there is no record of which shrine is the tomb of Ephesis. Cave 133 has a special shape, similar to the character "karma", with a large horizontal front chamber in front and two small Buddha niches juxtaposed in the back, like a place for coffins in a tomb. Sharangyun believes that it makes perfect sense to initially place the Buddha to Elysium in this cave that serves as a tomb. "Later, time passed, dynasties changed, and people took away the statue of Ephus and made a larger statue to attract all living beings, rather than to one person alone." He said.

Mystery similar to Cave 133 is found all over Maiji Mountain. Very few inscriptions have survived, and the age, attribution and function of most of the caves are a mystery. Through the details of these remains, combined with historical records, it has become a very brain-burning and interesting work to verify the background information of each cave.

Cave 133 doesn't stop there. Another interesting statue is a humble little Shami in the corner less than 10 meters from the "Shakya Huizi". Shami, who is only half a meter tall, stands against the wall on the side of the shrine, lowers his head, leans over to look at his face, and finds him smiling, innocent, so that the viewer can't help but smile. This smile made the humble Xiao Shami one of the three masterpieces of the entire Maijishan Grottoes.

There is also a place in Cave 127 that has deeply touched Xia Langyun. The mural on the roof of the cave depicts a female flying into the sky, looking back and waving to everyone. He felt that it was also the moment when Bevers said goodbye to her family, she flew towards the west, glanced back to the east, and reluctantly waved her hand, resolutely turned her head and went west. "It's a very touching scene, and it also has a sense of compassion," said Sharongyun, who has two scenes of compassion in his mind, one of Amitabha and Little Buddha, and the other is this mural.

"Slowing down aging"

After the Ming Dynasty, the Maijishan Grottoes were forgotten by the world. Although there were also local repairs in the Qing Dynasty, it has long lost its former status. Until 1941, Feng Guorui, a local scholar in Tianshui who graduated from the Tsinghua Academy of Chinese Studies, saw Mai Jishan's information when sorting out local documents, and then came to Mai Jishan with several friends to investigate. With profound historiography, aesthetics, epigraphy and philology, Feng Guorui immediately recognized the extraordinary value of the Maijishan Grottoes and published the Maijishan Grottoes. Since then, he has used various opportunities and channels to advocate for the Maijishan Grottoes, gradually restoring the fame of this cultural treasure lost in history.

In the winter of 1952, Chang Shuhong, director of the Dunhuang Art Research Institute, also came to Maijishan. For a whole month, Chang Shuhong led the survey team to conduct the first survey, research, photography, surveying and mapping of Mai Jishan. When they arrived at Tianshui at the end of October, and at the end of the mountain road they saw the wheat cliff that looked like a farmer's wheat, and he remembered Du Fu's poem for Maijishan: "... Rocks pass through, cliffs build houses. The upper heavy pavilion is late, and the hundred miles see the confession. ”

In front of Chang Shuhong is a cliff 240 meters east and west and 50 meters up and down, the middle part has collapsed seriously, and some cave niches only have a corner left on the cliff, thus forming two parts: the east cliff and the west cliff. In the fifth generation, it was already known as the East Pavilion and the West Pavilion, indicating that this collapse had already occurred at that time. Chang Shuhong imagined the scene of the heavy mountain building and the flying bridge pavilion built on the cliff outside the cave, and couldn't help but yearn for it, but unfortunately the plank road had been destroyed, and only a few charred wooden stakes remained in front of him.

Due to the destruction of the boardwalk, many caves are no longer climbable. On the 190-to-<>-meter-high cliffs, Dunhuang mechanics and local carpenters installed new wooden stakes in the stakes of the ancient scaffolding and plank roads, re-erected planks one by one, and painstakingly carved out a flying stack passage. The survey team risked their lives to walk through the boardwalk and enter more than <> caves. Some caves have been untouched for centuries, and the thickness of guano reaches the neck. At night, they live at Ruiying Temple at the foot of the mountain, where the sound of leopards is clearly audible, and the temple has no mountain gate.

What amazes Chang Shuhong the most is the statue of Maijishan Grottoes, "There are 16-meter-tall Amitabha Buddha, there are small shadow sculptures as small as 10 centimeters, and there are thousands of life-size statues." Whether it is the Buddha or the 'golden horn and silver hooves' calf at the feet of the heavenly king, they are delicate and delicate, lifelike, full of life interest, making people feel cordial and not afraid. He felt that the Maijishan Grottoes were as important as the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang.

Chang Shuhong's first Maijishan expedition laid the groundwork, and decades later, in 2017, the Maijishan Grottoes were placed under the management of the Dunhuang Academy. At the same time, there are also Bingling Temple Grottoes and North Grottoes, plus the Mogao Grottoes, Yulin Grottoes, and West Thousand Buddha Caves under the original jurisdiction, and the Dunhuang Academy has formed a pattern of one court and six places. The change in management mechanism has allowed the Maijishan Grottoes to receive more direct support from the Dunhuang Academy, especially in the protection of cultural relics.

Li Tianming, director of the Maijishan Grotto Art Research Institute, said that the core of the institute's work is protection, the most basic is to ensure the absolute safety of all statues, assess the stability of each statue, and rescue from the most dangerous. For all the caves built on the mountain, the most devastating danger is earthquakes. The Maijishan earthquake risk assessment is a key project of the Gansu Provincial Science and Technology Department, and Li hopes that through daily reinforcement work, the Maijishan Grottoes can withstand earthquakes of magnitude 4 or 5. Is it possible for the Maijishan Grottoes to withstand a magnitude 8 earthquake without collapsing? "Impossible," he shook his head, "because the mountain can't resist." ”

Fears of earthquakes are not unfounded, Maijishan is located in the same seismic zone as the Wenchuan earthquake, and as the largest cave temple in the country, with a total of 12 floors, the structure is extremely vulnerable to damage. According to historical records, there were two major earthquakes here during the Sui and Tang dynasties, which caused damage to the grottoes. The Qinlong earthquake occurred in the 600th year of the Sui Kai Emperor (734 AD), and the Qinzhou earthquake occurred in the <>nd year of the Tang Kaiyuan (<> AD), and the continuous earthquake for two hundred years caused some cave niches in the central area of Maijishan to collapse, the scattered flower tower and the cliff Buddha were also seriously damaged, the monks fled, and the cave statues were stagnated.

Today, most of the Buddha statues in Maijishan Grottoes are clinging to the cliff face, with protective windows on the exterior, and some statues still have the white guano stains of the past. Before the reinforcement project in the seventies and eighties of the last century, they were all open to the open and withstood the sun and rain for more than a thousand years. Before the Sui and Tang earthquakes, these Buddha statues were located inside the cave, with murals painted on the top and four walls, and wooden eaves built outside the cave to protect them. The earthquake caused a large number of caves to collapse, leaving only the deepest Buddha statue and a few damaged murals.

The earthquake caused Maijishan to lose a layer of "skin", and the sand and conglomerate material of Maijishan was unstable, and there were always sporadic drops after that. In the seventies and eighties of the last century, the cultural protection personnel reinforced its exterior, and the grotto grew another layer of "skin". The 13-year restoration project also resulted in the construction of a steel-concrete boardwalk, replacing the wooden boardwalk that was renovated in the fifties and sixties. Since then, Maijishan has been open to the public.

"As President Fan Jinshi (honorary president of the Dunhuang Academy) said, the cave has been held for 1600,1600 years, but after a few more 10,<> years, it will eventually disappear." Li Tianming said that what each generation of cultural relics protectors has to do is to delay the speed of its disappearance, "When it is not protected, if its aging rate is <>, for example, we must tell it to keep slowing down, slowing down, and getting lower and lower." ”

Another important conservation measure is to complete digitalization, capturing the most realistic digital images of every inch of the corner, so that the grotto can be immortalized in another medium. This process must be completed as soon as possible, because degradation and fading are always ongoing, and every day of the grotto is the most complete and colorful day of the days to come.

China Newsweek, Issue 2023, 12

Disclaimer: The publication of China Newsweek manuscripts is authorized in writing