China News Service, Urumqi, January 31 (Jijiangtong, Li Mingfei, Zhao Kai) Starting from Kuqa City, Xinjiang, walking 20 kilometers north, you will reach the Kuqa River. On the alluvial plain of the river, the contiguous Subash Buddhist temple ruins complex Still paying attention. It borders the Cheletage Mountain, a branch of the Tianshan Mountains, to the north and the sandy Gobi Desert to the south. It stands there quietly, surrounded by only the sound of the wind.
In 628 AD, Xuanzang, an eminent monk of the Tang Dynasty, traveled to the west to collect Buddhist scriptures. He passed by this place and gave lectures and studied scriptures for more than two months. He recorded in "Records of the Western Regions of the Tang Dynasty": "More than forty miles north of the deserted city, there is a mountain and a river. Erjialan, the same name is Zhaochuli, and the east and west are named after each other. The decoration of the Buddha statue is almost artificial." Jialan means temple. Xuanzang vividly described the prosperity of the Subashi Buddhist Temple at that time with the image of "Buddha statue decoration, almost more than artificial".
The cultural imprint of the southern foothills of Tianshan Mountains
The ruins of the Subashi Buddhist Temple are divided into two temples, the East and the West. The Kuqa River runs through them, making the two temples face each other across the river. The existing area is nearly 200,000 square meters. There are main halls, pagodas and monks' rooms in the ruins, which are distributed from the gravel-strewn ancient river bed to the highlands at the southern foot of Qiletage Mountain. The three pagodas in the East Temple have Persian-style domes. There are many ruins in the West Temple, among which a square Buddhist temple more than ten meters high is the landmark building of the Subashi Buddhist Temple ruins. There is a row of Buddhist caves in the north, with Qiuci characters and Buddhist figures carved on the cave walls.
Aerial footage of the ruins of Subashi Buddhist Temple. Photo by Zhao Kai
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the country attached great importance to the protection of the Subashi Buddhist Temple ruins. Especially in recent years, it has implemented environmental improvement, ontology protection, display and utilization projects for the ruins, which has improved the current protection status and preservation conditions of the heritage and ensured the authenticity of the heritage site. , completeness, making it a window for Xinjiang to display its history and culture to the outside world and a beautiful business card for the integration of culture and tourism.
On November 20, 1996, the Subashi Buddhist Temple Site was announced by the State Council as a national key cultural relic protection unit. In 2014, it was included in the World Cultural Heritage List of "Silk Road: Road Network of Chang'an-Tianshan Corridor".
Eastern and Western civilizations converge here
In history, Subash Buddhist Temple was successively known as Queli Temple, Zhaochuli Temple, etc. It is now called the Subash Buddhist Temple Site. "Subash" is a Uyghur word, meaning "the source of water".
Ma Lili, director of the Kucha Museum in Kuqa City, told reporters: "The ruins of the Subashi Buddhist Temple were continuously used from the 3rd to the 10th century. It is the largest, most complete and oldest Buddhist architectural complex preserved in Xinjiang." Silk and woolen fabric fragments, Central Plains copper coins from the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty, Kucha and other local government coins, Persian silver coins, glassware, as well as inscriptions and documents in Chinese, Kucha and other languages have been unearthed. They are long-standing records of the ancient Kucha region on the Silk Road. As a political, economic and cultural center.
In 2016, archaeologists from Northwest University unearthed more than 140 cultural relics while conducting field archaeological surveys and cleanup of the Subashi Buddhist Temple ruins. Among them, copper lotuses were discovered for the first time, as well as a large number of utensils and decorations used to worship Buddha statues, which also confirmed the popularity of Buddhism in Qiuci during the Tang Dynasty.
Aerial footage of the ruins of Subashi Buddhist Temple. Photo by Zhao Kai
Ma Lili said: "The spread of Buddhism is from west to east. There is a pagoda at the Subashi Buddhist Temple site that is the same shape as the Big and Small Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi'an. It is commonly known as the 'Small Wild Goose Pagoda'. This pagoda is where Buddhism returned. It also reflects the influence of Central Plains culture on the Western Regions."
Ma Lili told reporters that in the history of cultural exchanges between the East and the West, the Kucha area was a transit point for monks from the East and West. Here, both Indian and Han monks need to learn Chinese, Sanskrit, Central Asian Tocharian and even common Greek. , so Subash Buddhist Temple plays an important role in the process of cultural exchange between East and West.
Exquisite cultural relics tell the story of culture
In 1903, Tetsunobu Watanabe and Kenio Hori of Japan's Otani Mitsui expedition unearthed a relic box at the site of the Subash Buddhist temple. The relic box is made of wood and decorated with gold foil. The body of the box is covered in three colors: red, gray and white, and dark blue. There are only ashes inside the box, and there is nothing special about its appearance. However, in 1957, while studying the box, someone accidentally discovered that there were traces of painting in the color layer of the relic box. Peeling off the surface paint reveals the image painted on the box - an exquisite "Su Mu Zhe" dance picture.
Ma Lili told reporters: "The music and dance picture on this relic box is a very rare and precious image material that reflects the art of music and dance (singing and dancing) in Kucha. It is also a true portrayal of the secular life in Kucha. The painting consists of 21 people. The "music and dance team" is lively and lively, with dancers, players playing musical instruments, and children dancing together. People wear different costumes, and it is a typical music and dance picture of Qiuci's Su Muzhe."
"Su Muzhe" dance spread to the mainland of China along the Silk Road. This relic box provides precious physical evidence for understanding and studying the secular life, religious beliefs, aesthetic tastes and artistic pursuits of the ancient Kucha region. It is understood that this relic box is currently stored in the Tokyo National Museum, Japan, and now we can only see pictures.
Although the ruins of the Subashi Buddhist Temple are full of vicissitudes and mottled spots, its cross-ethnic and cross-cultural tolerance and eclectic diversified creations still deserve to be the cradle for the development of human civilization and culture and art. (over)