Silk road photography

Qizil Grottoes, an art treasure house on the Silk Road, is located in Qizil Township, Baicheng County, Aksu Prefecture, Xinjiang, at the southern foot of Tianshan Mountain. As far as the distribution of grottoes in the world is concerned, it is located between Bamiyan Grottoes and Dunhuang Grottoes.

There are 349 existing caves, with murals of nearly 10000 square meters and a small amount of colored sculptures, which are outstanding representatives of Qiuci Grottoes. Qiuci was a big country in the ancient western regions. In the long history, Qiuci was once an important town in the Xinjiang section of the Silk Road. At that time, religion and culture were extremely developed, and it went through a long spreading process from Hinayana Buddhism to Mahayana Buddhism. Therefore, the Qizil Grottoes precipitated the outstanding achievements of Qiuci Buddhist art from the 3rd century to the 9th century. It is the earliest, largest, longest-lasting and best-preserved Buddhist cave temple site in the Western Region, so it is also called Thousand Buddha Cave. It is particularly worth mentioning that its history is 300 years earlier than the Mogao Grottoes!

In terms of specific artistic forms, its cave shapes are unique and its mural styles are eclectic, which clearly reveals the historical trajectory of Buddhism's spread to the East through the western regions and is the crystallization of ancient cultural exchanges between the East and the West. In the process of communication, a unique Qiuci style was formed. From the grotto murals, we can see the process of the emergence, development, prosperity and decline of Qiuci Buddhist culture in this period.

In particular, the originality and diversity of murals have become one of the outstanding achievements of Qiuci's art and have outstanding historical and aesthetic universal value. They have a great influence on the art of Buddhist grottoes in Hexi, Central Plains and Central Asia east of Xinjiang. They are an indispensable part of the cultural heritage of the Silk Road and have outstanding value in the world. Therefore, from 2065438 to June 2004, Qizil Grottoes, as an important heritage of "Silk Road: Chang 'an-Tianshan Corridor Road Network", were listed in the World Cultural Heritage List.

In the square leading to the grottoes, a black statue is particularly eye-catching, which is the sitting statue of a generation of monk Kumarajiva. According to historical records, this famous monk in ancient China was born in Qiuci. He is a legend. He became a monk with his mother at the age of seven, and then went to Tianzhu to study, meet the famous teacher Dade, and study the wonderful meaning of Buddhism. He is proficient in Sanskrit and Chinese, and has profound Buddhist attainments. He is a top Buddhist monk, proficient in Buddhism, classics, laws and essays.

In 40 1 year, Molotov arrived in Chang 'an, and later Qin Wangzun made him a Buddhist. Since then, I have been engaged in the translation of Buddhist scriptures in Xiaoyao Garden of Chang 'an National Translation Center. He, Xuanzang, Bukong and Zhen Zhen are also called the four great translators of Buddhism in China. As the originator of translation studies and a master of linguistics, he and his disciples translated 74 Buddhist scriptures, totaling 384 volumes, which made indelible contributions to the spread of Buddhism in the Han Dynasty.

The story of monk Kumarajiva is the epitome of Buddhism spreading to the Central Plains through the Silk Road, which is the religious origin of Qizil Grottoes. It is precisely because of the cultural influence of Buddhist compassion that the Buddhist grottoes artists from the 3rd century A.D. have the creative motivation to advance wave after wave. With devout faith and spiritual concentration, they pursue and create day and night, avoid the cold and heat, and strive to carry forward the bodhicitta of Buddhism with their own understanding of the Buddha's teaching method. With their own artistic techniques, they hold a painting tray full of gold foil, lapis lazuli and malachite, and devote themselves to making murals, painting statues of bodhisattvas and arhats with gold powder or gold foil and flying into the sky.

When we step into the grottoes, we really realize what a shocking feeling is. The murals here are diverse in style and rich in content far beyond imagination. As a channel connecting Asia and Europe in ancient western regions, Qiuci is a place where various civilizations of the East and the West are intertwined, and the intersection of various ideas collides with splendid culture and art.

Specifically, the mural on the top of the main room of Cave 17-diamond Bunsen Story Painting: this is a very distinctive mural form. When we step into the grottoes, we will be attracted by the rhombic lattices painted all over the grottoes, that is, divide the whole grottoes into several rhombic lattices and draw the original story of Sakyamuni Buddha in the lattices. Usually draw a story in a diamond box. In this special continuous combination form, Qiuci's painter created a background with continuous mountains and rivers, ups and downs, lush trees and flocks of birds and animals, vividly portrayed the characters and plots in the story and touched the hearts of the viewers.

The murals in the grottoes spanned the long transition period from Hinayana to Mahayana in ancient Qiuci. In Qizil's early murals (3rd-4th century AD), the characters have obvious western imprints, especially the influence of Gandhara Buddhist sculpture art in Central Asia, which has a unique "Greek Buddhist art" style and three-dimensional relief.

From the 5th century to the 7th century, influenced by Gupta's Buddhist artistic style in India, the figures in murals were decorated with various exquisite headscarves, knots and collars, with thick dresses and delicate bodies, hands and feet. There are also different decorative patterns popular in the Central Plains since the Han Dynasty, and the decorative patterns of beads popular in the Sassanian Dynasty in Persia. These external influences objectively reflect that various painting styles on the Silk Road meet and merge in Qiuci area with Buddhist art as the carrier, creating and forming a unique Qiuci art model-Qiuci painting style in the golden age. Rich imagination and storytelling have a strong artistic appeal, and various images on the rock wall are vivid and vivid.

Although the grottoes have weathered through wars, disputes and looting, the erosion of natural disasters and the loss of time and space, the natural mineral pigments are still gorgeous. Standing in front of the incomplete murals, we seem to see the devout monks who used the grottoes as their practice places, painted in the form of paintings, and painted various Buddhist figures, stories and legends on the walls of the grottoes. We can only applaud for this: exquisite skills come from devout faith and spiritual concentration. Let's work together to protect, inherit and carry forward this outstanding cultural heritage of mankind.