Kaladun ancient city

Kaladon site

synonym

The ancient city of kaladun generally refers to the kaladun site

Karadun site is located in Yutian County, Hotan Prefecture, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, also known as karadun ancient city. It is a site from Han Dynasty to southern and Northern Dynasties, and is the earliest Buddhist temple site in China.

Karadun site covers an area of about 500000 square meters. The center of the site is kalaton castle, surrounded by a number of buildings, including pagodas, farmland, channels and other relics, and unearthed relics such as Jiasha red, gray pottery, wooden artifacts, stone fragments, glass fragments and coins.

In May 2013, it was announced as the seventh batch of national key cultural relics protection units by the State Council

Historical evolution

In 1901, led by the local Uygur guides, Stein broke into the desert around the Hotan River and Keriya River in Taklimakan. Here he found an ancient site called "Dandan Urick". After a series of archaeological excavations, he "staggered eastward across the sand dunes". He split a road with an axe on both sides of the ancient trees in the lower reaches of the Keriya River and among the disordered reeds. He took three days to reach another ancient site on the Bank of the Keriya River, which is called "kaladon" locally, meaning "black sand dune".

In September 1959, eleven people, including Li Yuchun, Kelimu Huojia, ahemati Aji, from the southern Xinjiang cultural relics survey team of Xinjiang Museum, found the kaladon site. This is the first time that archaeologists have come here since the founding of new China. It is half a century since the last archaeological visit. They excavated and cleaned up two groups of house sites here, and found that there were low pits, fire stoves, and some pottery, wood and textiles.

In 1993, the research team of Xinjiang Institute of cultural relics and Archaeology visited here again. Karadun gave the archaeologists a great reward for their unremitting efforts: some broken murals appeared on the collapsed wall of a Buddhist temple with the oldest architectural style.

Cultural relics

Karadun, which means "black sand dune" in Uyghur. Karadun site is located in the northwest of Daheyan township government, Yutian County, Hotan Prefecture, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, with a straight-line distance of 24 km, in the hinterland of the desert. The site covers an area of about 500000 square meters. The center of the site is kalaton castle. There are many buildings around the castle, most of which are dwellings and temples. There is a pagoda. There are farmland and canal relics near the buildings.

According to the unearthed cultural relics, the ancient city was one of the "dozens of small cities" in Khotan during the Han Dynasty to the northern and Southern Dynasties. With the desertification of the land, it is gradually engulfed by the desert. The site is 300 km away from the residential area of the oasis, from which we can infer that the desert intruded into the South and the oasis changed.

In the ancient city of karadun, there are the earliest Buddhist temples in China. They are in the shape of "Hui". The Buddha statue is in the center of the Hui. Believers worship along the corridor. The walls of the Hui are painted with murals.

Ancient city structure

Kalaton Castle covers an area of 5625 square meters. It is square with a side length of 60 meters, a wall height of about 8 meters and a top width of about 8 meters. There is a door to the north of the east wall. The houses and buildings in the castle are all wooden structures, and most of them collapse. On the surface of the site, there are pieces of red and gray pottery, wooden artifacts, stone fragments, glass fragments and coins. Wooden boards with ancient Khotan characters were collected. The city wall is built with a layer of branches and a layer of soil, which is very resistant to wind erosion. There are six buildings and an ancient kiln site in the South and northeast of the ancient city. Many pieces of pottery mixed with sand have been found, and there are also five coins of Han Dynasty.

After the founding of the people's Republic of China, blue and white calico and girdle cloth of the northern and Southern Dynasties were excavated from the ancient tombs here. There are small iron knives, arrowheads and iron swords in the southern suburbs.

Site protection

In May 2013, it was announced as the seventh batch of national key cultural relics protection units by the State Council.

Historical story

The lost horouloka: stories written by Xuanzang

In the first century A.D., the place where the Buddha first came to China was kaladun, the earliest Buddhist temple in China.

In the 7th century, Tang Xuanzang wrote this story into the records of the western regions of the Tang Dynasty.

The cause and effect of this story is so mysterious that for a long time, it is difficult for people to identify its authenticity.

This is also the story that Xuanzang heard. Because he believed that Buddhism was boundless, Xuanzang reserved a place for this story in the records of the western regions of the Tang Dynasty, which recorded more than 100 countries.

In 643 ad, after traversing India, Xuanzang set out on his way back to China. He crossed the Pamir Plateau, took the South Road of the Silk Road, and stayed in Khotan, which is today's Hotan in Xinjiang, on the southern edge of Taklimakan for a long time.

Xuanzang seems to like this place very much. In his book, he said that the state of Khotan "has harmonious Qi sequence, flying wind, common knowledge of etiquette, warm and respectful human nature, good at learning classical arts and broad skills. The common people are rich and happy. Music is popular in China, and people like singing and dancing. "

As for Shule (today's Kashgar), which is adjacent to Khotan, Xuanzang's impression is that "human nature is violent, vulgar and deceitful, courtesy is frivolous, and learning skills are superficial.". He had a vulgar son, a box of plaques on his head, a coarse face, and a green tattoo. "

Although there are many derogatory words in just a few dozen words, we can also see the distinctive characteristics of Kashi people: children here like to flatten their heads, like tattoos, and people here have green eyes.

Nowadays, it's hard to see the difference between Hotan and Kashgar. If we have to say the difference between the two regions, Kashgar is more prosperous than Hotan.

Perhaps it is because in the year when Xuanzang arrived in Khotan, the Buddhist atmosphere was deeper and the people were more devout than Shule, and because he believed in Mahayana Buddhism (Shule is Hinayana), which is the same as Xuanzang's doctrines, Khotan in Xuanzang's works is a peaceful and beautiful place.

Xuanzang said that when he came to the city of Bimo in Khotan, he saw a statue of Buddha carved in tanli, more than 20 feet high. He heard the local people say that the Buddha statue is very effective. For those who are in pain, just stick a "gold sheet" on the corresponding part of the Buddha statue according to the pain of their own body, and the pain will be removed.

The lost city of horologa

The local people told Xuanzang that the statue was not originally in the city of Bimo, but in the city of horaloka in the north of Khotan. After the death of the Buddha, the statue of the Buddha flew to the city of horaloka, but the people in the city did not believe in Buddhism at that time. Later, a foreign arhat worshiped this statue. The Chinese were so frightened that they ran to report it to the king. The king ordered the arhat to be sprayed with sand, so the arhat "covered himself with sand and made a living without food.".

When people were crazy, there was only one person in the city of horologa who had compassion. When he couldn't bear it, he would worship the Buddha and give it to arhat quietly.

One day, Rohan decided to leave here, and said to this man, on the seventh day after that, when the dust storm will fill the city, all living creatures will be destroyed, you should have made plans to leave the city. With that, Rohan suddenly disappeared.

This man was busy telling his relatives about Rohan's prophecy, but all those who heard this did not believe it and laughed at him. The next day, a strong wind suddenly blew away the accumulated soil on the ground. Suddenly, jewelry began to fall in the sky. People were even more disbelieving. While robbing the jewelry one after another, they also cursed the man.

Only this person understood that things were not good, so he secretly opened a channel and went out of the city to find a hole to drill in. On the seventh day, as expected, "the city was full of rain and sand," and the city of horologah was buried in sand overnight. The man who escaped by chance came to the city of Bimo, and the Buddha statues in the city of horologa also came with him. From then on, people offered the Buddha statues and did not dare to move any more.

After that, the city of horologa became a large sand dune. The kings of various countries and the heroes of different countries, many people want to get close to the site of the city to excavate the treasures inside, but every time they get close, they will "storm, smoke and clouds, and lose their way".

The city of horaloka, a non Buddhist city, was forever buried in the desert, and no one was able to get close to it.

This fable like story has been written for more than a thousand years, and no one has ever verified whether it really exists. Is it just a story telling people to believe in Buddhism? If the city of horologa, full of treasures, really exists, then where is it? What leads can people find it?

It sounds strange that dust falls from the sky and a city is buried overnight, covering all people and lives. But if we compare this amazing story with the one that happened in Taklimakan today, maybe it's not an exaggeration.

This story happened more than 1000 years ago in the northern part of Khotan. Open the map, we can see that in the southern margin of Taklimakan, under the mountains of Kunlun Mountain, there are many rivers down the mountain, but most of these rivers are swallowed by the desert soon after they flow out of the mountain, only forming a small oasis in front of Kunlun mountain. Because of the weakness of the rivers, the oases they raise are also very small. In front of the huge desert, they are just small green enclaves, which are divided and fragmented by the desert.

But there are two rivers in these short desert rivers, which can be called "big rivers". They start from the ice and snow of Kunlun mountain. The water just born in the glacier is as bright as silk and as cold as sword.

Chinese PinYin : Ka La Dun Gu Cheng