Located in Weibei Mountain in the hinterland of Qinchuan, Shaanxi Province, among the towering peaks, there are dozens of Han and Tang emperors' tombs in China. Among them, the most famous cemetery at home and abroad is the cemetery where Gan Ling, Wu Zetian and her husband were buried together. Ganling covers an area of 20,000 square kilometers, which is grand and magnificent. There are Xuanwu Gate in the north, Suzaku Gate in the south, Qinglongmen in the east and Baihumen in the west. Four stone lions stand tall in front of the door. What is particularly striking is that there are two groups of stone statues on the east and west sides of Shinto outside Suzaku Gate, which are neatly and respectfully arranged in front of Yuling. There are 32 statues in the west and 29 statues in the east, ***6 1 statue. These residual statues of stone men are between meters high and meters high, and the size is similar to that of real people. People used to call these statues "Fan Xiang" and "Wang Bing". These life-size stone men wear different clothes, from robes and tunics to lapels and purple sleeves. But they all stood side by side, their hands arched forward, and their posture was extremely humble, as if they were lined up here to welcome the arrival of the emperor. But the strangest thing is that these stone statues have no heads, which makes people have many questions. Why did Ganling use these headless stone statues to guard the mausoleum? If you look at them carefully, you will find that the heads of stone statues can be seen from their necks. So, is the disappearance of these stone heads man-made or natural disasters?
There are different opinions about the reason why the stone statue has no head. One theory is that the heads of these stone statues were cut off by the Ming Dynasty. At the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, a foreign envoy went to Ganling and found that his ancestors actually stood here guarding the mausoleum for the emperor of the Tang Dynasty. He felt that this was not only detrimental to national dignity, but also degrading, and his self-esteem was greatly damaged, so he wanted to destroy these stone statues. But he was afraid of causing dissatisfaction among the local people, so he came up with a clever plan. Every night, he tramples on grain in the farmland near Ganling, and then the next day, just like fanning the flames, he tells the people that these statues are all made, and at night they become refined and begin to spoil crops. If you want to protect crops and food, you must destroy these stone statues and cut off their heads so that they can't hurt crops. The local people thought that what the foreign envoys said was very reasonable, so they cut off the heads of these stone statues in a rage.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, some poets described Ganling with the poem "The red horse was stripped from the side", which should mean that the horses and stone statues in Ganling fell to the ground one after another. The scene of the stone statue falling to the ground described in the poem seems to be similar to the folklore in time. There is also a saying that when Eight-Nation Alliance invaded China, he saw a group of foreign envoys standing in front of Tang Fuling, and he felt humiliated, so he cut off the head of the stone statue. But this statement is groundless, because according to the research of historians, Eight-Nation Alliance did not come to this place at that time. Where did he get the stone statue?
Although all of the above are folklore, which can't be used as a basis, archaeologists have further analyzed this phenomenon and found that natural disasters may have brought disasters to these stone statues. A large number of data prove that during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, that is, on the day of 65438+1October 23, 1555, a strong earthquake occurred in Huaxian County, Shaanxi Province, with a magnitude as high as 8- 1 1. As the earthquake happened at midnight, more than 800,000 people were killed in the earthquake. Ganling is only 100 km away from Huaxian County, which also belongs to the epicenter, and Ganling suffered a devastating blow, that is, the Guanzhong earthquake that shocked China and foreign countries. According to experts' inference, this earthquake is one of the main reasons for the fracture of the head of 6 1 stone statue. Coincidentally, many stone statues and horses in front of the mausoleum suffered head injuries. And the material of these stone statues is not very strong. Because the stone used at that time had some stone defects, when the stone statue was damaged, the head was the most prone to problems.
Through the inference of the researchers, they think that the 6 1 stone statue was probably partly destroyed by the earthquake at that time and partly by the war in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Although these stone statues have been severely damaged, we can still find the prosperous times of the Tang Dynasty from their images, which also shows that the Tang Dynasty is not only a Han regime, but also a multi-ethnic regime.