Cave No.1 17 of Mogao Grottoes (Tibetan Sutra Cave)
Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, also known as Thousand Buddha Cave, is one of the first world cultural heritages in China. Mogao grottoes were built in the pre-Qin period of sixteen countries. After hundreds of years of construction, they have formed a huge scale. There are 735 caves, 45,000 square meters of murals and 24 15 clay sculptures. It is the largest existing Buddhist art shrine in the world. At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, the Mogao Grottoes were gradually forgotten because of the war and sand burial. The Mogao Grottoes are famous for the discovery of the Tibetan Sutra Cave.
The discovery of the Tibetan sutra cave
Mogao Grottoes is a world-class cultural treasure house. It is world-famous precisely because a large number of cultural relics, such as scrolls, documents and paintings, have been found in a small grotto. This small grotto is the Dunhuang Sutra Cave, which is the common name of Cave No.1 17 of Mogao Grottoes.
The Tibetan Sutra Cave is a branch of the north wall of 16 tunnel, and it is a cave in the cave. Built between the fifth year of Tang Dynasty and the third year of Xian Tong (85 1-862), it was a theater for releasing monks from Hexi in the late Tang Dynasty to beg for floods.
The Tibetan Sutra Cave is very small, nearly square on the plane, less than 3 meters in length and width and 3 meters in height. It is covered on the top of the bucket-shaped cave and is a real abbot's bucket room. On the north wall of the grottoes, a rectangular low altar in the form of a Zen bed was built, on which clay sculptures were used to explain the flood. The northern mural Bodhi Tree II is connected with branches and leaves. Draw a bhikshuni on the left side of the bodhi tree, holding a fan against the wind in both hands. On the right side of the bodhi tree, there is a picture of a man close to the maid, each holding a stick. The western wall is embedded with a monument to the five-year flood control in Dazhong.
The Dunhuang Tibetan Sutra Cave was discovered in 1900 by the Taoist king in charge of the Mogao Grottoes.
1892, the Taoist king came to the Mogao grottoes. At this time, the Mogao Grottoes are very desolate, most of the passages between cliffs have been destroyed by war, some caves have collapsed, and the caves at the bottom have been covered with yellow sand. Only some lamas who are fluent in Chinese live here.
There are different stories about the discovery process of the Tibetan Sutra Cave.
According to legend, after the king settled in the Mogao Grottoes, the incense gradually flourished. He saved the money given by his followers and began to rebuild and transform the Mogao Grottoes. His first job is to clear the sand accumulated at the bottom of the cave. When cleaning up the accumulated sand in 16 tunnel, Wang Daoren diverted water and washed sand, and accidentally washed water into 16 tunnel, resulting in cracks in the sealing wall of the chamber in the north wall of the tunnel. Wang used Achnatherum splendens to explore in the cracks and finally found the secret. So he opened the broken wall and found the secret door of cave 17. When I opened the door, I saw rolls of coarse cloth wrapped from the ground to the top of the cave.
There is also a saying that Wang Daochang hired a man named Yang to copy scriptures in the tunnel of 16 hole. Yang lit a cigarette with a straw stick, then accidentally inserted the straw stick into the cave wall, and found that the smoke generated by the straw stick was sucked into the gap in the cave wall, and then found the Tibetan Sutra Cave. This story has no reliable written source, but a folklore.
In any case, the Sutra Cave was discovered by accident in the summer of 1900. The Taoist king opened the small cave of Tibetan scriptures, and the cultural relics sealed in the grottoes for nearly 900 years were rediscovered.
The origin of the Tibetan Sutra Cave is not recorded in history, and it is called the eternal mystery. Experts and scholars in Dunhuang studies have inferred from other historical materials and put forward various hypotheses such as "refuge theory" and "abandonment theory", which are different opinions. According to the analysis of Dunhuang suicide note, the Tibetan Sutra Cave was closed in the middle and late period of 1 1 century.
Daoshiwang
Embarrassment of the Tibetan Sutra Cave
The day when the Tibetan Sutra Cave was discovered was June 16th, the 26th year of Guangxu, which was supposed to be an auspicious day, but it was the beginning of disaster for the Dunhuang suicide note. This year, the Qing government was in turmoil, and two days after the discovery of the Tibetan Sutra Cave, Eight-Nation Alliance invaded China, and Guangxu occupied Beijing on June 18th, 26th.
It's a pity that the Tibetan Sutra Cave was born.
Road flyover Wang wanted to think, these antiquities are very old and should be valued by the government. If he is reported, he may get a certain reward, which can alleviate his financial difficulties in repairing the Mogao Grottoes.
As soon as he set out, Wang Daochang walked five miles excitedly and rushed to the county seat to find Yan Ze, the county magistrate of Dunhuang, and presented two volumes of scriptures taken out of the Tibetan Sutra Cave. The purpose of the Taoist king is clear, that is, to attract the attention of this official. It's a pity that this magistrate Yan is ignorant and only treats these two volumes of scriptures as yellow waste paper.
Road flyover Wang came home dejectedly and put the matter aside for the time being.
1902, the new magistrate Zonghan Wang came to Dunhuang. Wang Zhi Xian is a scholar who is proficient in epigraphy. The Taoist king rekindled hope in his heart. He reported the situation of the Tibetan Sutra Cave to Wang Zhifu. Magistrate Wang immediately took a group of people and personally visited the Mogao Grottoes. Grateful, I wrote a report, attached the Buddhist scriptures sent by Taoist Wang, and presented them to Ye, a scholar in Gansu.
Ye was a famous bibliophile and engraver in the late Qing Dynasty, and he was the first person to confirm the treasure value of Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes. Ye suggested to Pan Tai in Gansu that all these ancient cultural relics and documents should be transported to Lanzhou, the provincial capital, for preservation.
But Dunhuang is far from Lanzhou, and the freight alone costs five or six thousand two hundred pieces of silver. At that time, there was nowhere to implement the funds, so we had to ask Wang Zhi to order Taoist Wang to seal up the cultural relics and documents found at the scene and wait for processing.
After two unsuccessful attempts to find the magistrate of a county, Wang Daochang was still unwilling. Then he picked out two boxes of scriptures from the Tibetan scriptures cave and drove the donkey to Suzhou (Jiuquan). He camped out in the wind, single-handedly, risked being robbed by wolves, and trudged more than 800 miles to find the Daotai Pavilion Cave, a military artery in Gansu at that time. Who knows, this Tingdong man glanced through it in a hurry and finally came to a shocking conclusion: the words on the scroll are not as good as his calligraphy, that's all.
The Taoist king was rejected again and was disappointed. This was also the embarrassing situation faced by the Tibetan Sutra Cave at that time.
It was not until1May, 907 that Stein, a Hungarian-born Englishman, learned from a businessman that a large number of ancient scripts were accidentally discovered in the Tibetan Sutra Cave. So he took a package named Jiang Xiaowan and rushed to Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes.
The cultural relics in the Tibetan Sutra Cave have been targeted by foreigners.
1908, pelliot, a Frenchman, is in the Tibetan Sutra Cave.
The disaster of the Tibetan sutra cave
Stein first sent Master Jiang to negotiate with Taoist Wang, demanding to read through all the manuscripts of the Tibetan Sutra Cave, but Taoist Wang refused. Stein decided to personally deal with Taoist Wang accompanied by Master Jiang.
Because of this, Stein made a careful observation of Taoist Wang, and recorded his impression of Taoist Wang guarding Buddhist scriptures in Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes in his notes: "Wang is an arrogant and loyal person. He looks a little strange. He was shy and nervous when he met strangers, but from time to time there was a sly and alert expression on his face, which made people unpredictable. " An investigation by Stein's master, Jiang Xiaowan, found that Taoist Wang had a clear account and a simple life, and never used the funds raised to repair the temple. Stein realized that it was not feasible to buy the Taoist king with money.
In order to gain the trust of Wang Daochang, Stein tried his best to fabricate lies. Stan knows that in China, the story of Xuanzang's Buddhist scriptures is well known to all women and children. It happened that there were murals of Buddhist scriptures by Xuanzang in the Mogao Grottoes, so he used this as an excuse to let Jiang Xiaowan tell Wang Daochang: Stan in front of him was a disciple of Xuanzang, a foreign monk who crossed the snow-capped mountains from India to learn Buddhist scriptures; India's native Buddhism is declining, and foreign monks will come to Dunhuang to learn from the scriptures and return to the hometown of Buddha to preach again. Xuanzang asked him to guard the Tibetan scriptures cave in the spirit of heaven, just to wait for foreign monks to learn the scriptures. In a word, Wang Daochang opened the door to the Tibetan Sutra Cave for Stan. However, when picking up silk paintings, Taoist Wang saw it in his eyes: he specially selected those worn-out paintings and sold them to Stan. He wanted to exchange these rags for some money to repair the cave, but Taoist Wang never thought that shabby paintings might mean older and more valuable paintings.
Stein took thousands of scriptures, silk paintings and silks from Dunhuang, which were collected in the National Museum of India, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the British Library and the British Museum.
Later, explorers from France, Japan, the United States, Russia and other countries came to Dunhuang to steal and plunder. Unfortunately, most of the cultural relics are scattered all over the world, and only a few remain at home, which has caused unprecedented havoc in China's cultural history.
Nowadays, the Tibetan Sutra Cave is empty, only the statues of monks are still sitting in the grottoes, watching the tourists coming and going, and thinking about the Millennium storm that happened in the Tibetan Sutra Cave.
Author/Huang Tu/Profile Picture