Kizil thousand Buddha cave

Kizil thousand Buddha cave is located 7km southeast of Kizil Township, Baicheng County, 70km away from Kuqa County. It was first built in the 3RD-4TH Century (or earlier); it reached its peak in the 6th-7th century, and its history is even longer than that of the famous Mogao Grottoes (the park was excavated in 366).

There are 236 caves numbered in this thousand Buddha cave. At present, there are 135 caves with complete shape. It is known as "art treasure house". It is famous for its beautiful murals and is the representative of kuci grottoes. However, due to the long history, the destruction of murals by Islam's opposition to personal worship, and the plunder of Western explorers at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Kizil thousand Buddha cave has been seriously damaged. But only to appreciate the remains of the relics, the subtlety of its art has been amazing.

Like the Mogao Grottoes, only part of the caves are open for protection, and backpack cameras are not allowed in. After the visit, the nearby qianlei spring is worth seeing.

Kizil thousand Buddha cave

Kizil thousand Buddha Cave (Uighur: Qizil Ming Ö y), also known as Kizil Grottoes or heser grottoes, has 236 grottoes and more than 10000 square meters of murals. One of the first batch of national key cultural relics protection units announced in 1961 is located on the cliff of mingwutage mountain, 7km southeast of Kizil Town, Baicheng County, Xinjiang, and the Muzat River Valley is to the south.

geographical position

Kizil thousand Buddha cave is located on the river terrace 7 km southeast of Kizil Town, Baicheng county. It is backed by mingwudage mountain, adjacent to muzati River and queerdage mountain in the south, and meandering by Weigan River. It is about 69 km away from Kuqa County in the East. It is a famous tourist attraction of ancient cultural relics in Xinjiang with green trees and elegant environment.

Kizil Grottoes are located on the cliffs, stretching for thousands of kilometers. There are 236 grottoes, of which more than 80 have preserved murals, with a total area of about 10000 square meters.

It is the first large-scale grotto group excavated in China and located in the West. It was excavated in about the 3rd century A.D. and gradually stopped construction in the 8th-9th century A.D. it is also unique in the world for its long duration.

Grotto architecture

Kizil Grottoes is located in Baicheng County, Xinjiang, which belongs to the territory of ancient kuci. It is one of the birthplaces of kuci Grottoes art. Its architectural art, sculpture art and mural art occupy an extremely important position in the Buddhist art of Central Asia and the Middle East. Qiuci ancient country, located in the transportation hub of the ancient Silk Road, was once the political, economic and cultural center of the western regions.

Buddhism was first introduced into Xinjiang from India, then into the Central Plains. Because of its geographical location, kuci has become a center of Buddhism in the western regions and an important bridge for Buddhism to spread to the Central Plains. Grottoes are an important form of Buddhist art. They propagate Buddhist doctrines through buildings and murals.

Qiuci grottoes are relatively concentrated and rich in murals. There are not only murals showing Buddhist "Bensheng story", "Buddha story", "Karma Story", but also a large number of murals showing secular life scenes. Some experts on Grottoes point out that kuci Grottoes is an encyclopedia of ancient kuci culture. Among the Qiuci grottoes, the Kizil Grottoes are regarded as the top of the group.

Tunnel structure

There are two types of caves in Kizil thousand Buddha Cave: one is a monk's room, which is a place for monks to live and produce together, and most of them are rooms with passageways, with stoves, Kang and simple living facilities; the other is a Buddha's hall, which is a place for Buddhists to worship and preach scriptures.

The Buddha Hall is also divided into two parts: the large Buddha cave with high chamber, open door and standing Buddha on the main wall, the central pillar cave with rectangular main chamber and tower inside, and some square caves with regular chamber. Caves of different shapes have different uses. These caves of different shapes and different uses are regularly built together to form a unit. From the arrangement, each unit may be a Buddhist temple. It can be imagined that Kizil thousand Buddha cave was a place where Buddhist temples and monks lived together in Qiuci area.

Kizil Grottoes can best reflect the architectural characteristics of the central pillar grottoes, which is divided into the main room and the back room. According to the guide's introduction, the main wall of the main chamber of the grottoes mainly worships Sakyamuni, while the two walls and the top of the grottoes are painted with Sakyamuni's deeds, such as "Bensheng story". After watching the main room, you should enter the back room clockwise to see the Buddha's "Nirvana" image, and then return to the main room. Looking up, you can see the Buddha's view above the entrance of the grottoes.

cultural background

Kizil Grottoes, with its long history and profound cultural and artistic background, make people stop for a long time and think about it.

However, the grottoes are full of ruins, which is heartbreaking and appalling: the arch niche where Sakyamuni Buddha is placed is empty; the left half of the cassock of all the Buddha statues on the murals are stripped away ——Because it is made of gold foil; even the whole wall murals have been removed, leaving only the traces of chiseling on the cave wall - at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, a large number of exquisite murals were plundered from the Kizil Grottoes by Western expeditions.

In many museums and art museums in western countries, especially in the Museum of Indian art in Berlin, Germany, there are also a large number of Kizil Grottoes murals on display. Located on the hillside to the north of the wenguansuo, cave 76 is known as "peacock cave". The tall grottoes were famous for their numerous peacocks. But when I opened the cave, I was disappointed: not only did a standing statue in the middle of the cave collapse, but the peacock pictures on the four walls and the old cave were also scarred and scarred. But from the residual existence of a few peacocks on the top of the cave, all the feathers are gorgeous and lifelike.

It seems that as long as the slightest alarm, they will fly away. Staring at such a beautiful and messy peacock mural for a long time, it's like a thousand arrows pierce the heart. These works, which were soaked with the sweat and blood of the ancient kuci people, were stolen by foreign archaeologists and explorers in old China. Even when the "take" does not go away, these "civilized people" are still carrying out frenzied destruction.

Introduction to cultural relics

In Kizil thousand Buddha cave, they not only stole many sculptures, but also glued a large number of murals with adhesive tape. According to the relevant cultural relics department, in the early 1930s, lecock of the archaeological team of the Berlin folk custom museum stole hundreds of cases of murals, statues and other works of art, as well as handwritten or printed documents in Chinese, Sanskrit, Turkic and tuluoluo. Stein of England also came to Xinjiang to steal a large number of murals.

After stealing a large number of Chinese cultural relics and becoming a rich man, lecock was not ashamed to publicize that in his archaeological team, there was a man named Batus who "fully understood how to saw down the whole murals and how to package them so that they could be transported back to Berlin without damage".

The crazy plunder of foreign thieves destroyed the overall beauty of the murals in Kizil thousand Buddha cave, leaving a shocking regret. A western scholar laments that every kind of mural here is priceless; even if you pick up a tile here, it has a longer history than the United States.

artistic value

According to relevant experts, these masterpieces of ancient Kucha Chinese painters mainly record the historical and real life of Xinjiang from the third century to the 13th century. They provide valuable image information for the study of Ancient Xinjiang's politics, economy, culture, military, nationality, folk customs, as well as the economic and cultural exchanges between China and the West Learning and artistic value.

Kizil thousand Buddha cave is a collection of the most Buddhist stories of origin and marriage. Each diamond is a Buddhist story, which reflects the process of Buddhism spreading from west to East and is a rare source of information for the study of Buddhist history. The cave has been painted with the image of flying Apsaras with elegant posture. According to the introduction, this lute was introduced from Persia, then to Chang'an, the capital of the Tang Dynasty, and then to Japan. At present, the only real instrument in the world is regarded as a national treasure in Japan.

In the mural, the Buddha's lines are mellow and the expression is vivid. It can be seen from the clothing that under the influence of Indian painting style, the style of Kucha mural has been formed. The mural has reached a very high artistic level both in shape and color. The characteristic of this mural is the use of a kind of halo dyeing method, also known as concave convex method. This kind of thing was once popular in the Tang Dynasty when Yuchi and his son from Khotan took it to Chang'an. We can see that it has reached the peak state incisively and vividly. It is very mature. Some skin can feel elastic when pressed down, but now because of the lack of flexibility There are more visitors and some fading, so protection is very urgent now.

In the murals of Kizil thousand Buddha cave, we can also see the production and living conditions of multi-ethnic and multi-ethnic groups in kuci stone state at that time. Experts believe that it is precisely because of the collision and integration of various cultures and arts from east to West in the western regions that the artistic level of murals has reached such a brilliant level. Many well-known experts, scholars and artists at home and abroad have highly praised this witness of cultural exchange between the East and the West.

Cultural relics protection

In Western China, especially in Xinjiang, there are three kinds of cultural relics with distinct regional characteristics: ancient city sites, grottoes and tombs. As a complex of Buddhist art, grottoes integrate architecture, murals and sculpture. We feel that it is necessary to go through various news reports

Chinese PinYin : Ke Zi Er Qian Fo Dong