Khitan script, "resurrected" by tomb robbery
When it comes to tomb robbery, especially foreigners robbing tombs in China, many people hate it to the bone, scold it quickly, a large number of national treasures are lost overseas, and a large number of high-quality genes of Chinese culture are destroyed... However, if you think about it from another angle, sometimes you think that the tomb robbers are quite cute. Because, while destroying cultural heritage, tomb robbery has also done a lot of "good things".
In terms of cultural relics protection, if it were not brought overseas by foreign thieves, it might have been "broken and old" in China; many ancient tombs may not have been patronized by stolen tomb thieves, and may have been destroyed by excavators in today's modern urbanization development, and I am afraid that nothing will be left.
In addition, in the current museums at home and abroad, especially in the domestic museums, a large number of cultural relics are left by ancient tomb robbers, if they do not risk digging out, they have been eroded in the ground for a long time, decayed early, and will no longer have.
Pictured: The tomb was stolen, the coffin was stolen outside the cave where the tomb had to be dragged out, and the robbery was hateful
Pictured: Even if it is not a tomb robbery, the act of grave picking is not understood by society
How do you view tomb robbery? This is indeed a paradoxical question. This problem was more common for foreign tomb robbers during the Republic of China period. Many vanished cultural relics and dead cultures have been valued and preserved because of their tomb robbery. For example, as I mentioned in the "History of Tomb Robbery in the Republic of China, The Inside Story", the Khitan script that disappeared for 800 years was "resurrected" by tomb robbery.
As we all know, the Khitans were an ethnic minority that had lived in northern China for a long time. In 916, the Khitans established the Great Liao Dynasty, which was equal to the Central Plains Zhao surnamed Great Song, and even forced the Central Plains people to become khitan "child emperors". Soon after the establishment of the Liao Dynasty, Taizu Yelü Abao was determined to create his own history of the Khitan people, and in the fifth year of the Divine Book (920 AD), he ordered the creation of the Liao state's own script, the Khitan script, which was responsible for Yelü Tulu Bubu and Yelü Lu Bugu, and created about 3,000 Khitan characters with reference to Chinese characters.
Pictured: Khitan silver medal
Later, Liao Taizu's younger brother Yelü Dila created a Khitan glyph that took advantage of the characteristics of the Uighur script to transform the formed Khitan script — the Khitan script thus had two glyphs — the former called "Khitan Big Character" and the latter called "Khitan Small Character".
After the Liao dynasty was destroyed by the Jin Dynasty established by the Jurchens, the Khitan script continued to be used and popular for a period of time, and promoted the creation of the Jurchen script. In the second year of Emperor Mingchang of Jin Zhangzong (1191 AD), he "abolished the Khitan characters", and the Khitan script was no longer used. With the demise of the Western Liao (1124-1211 AD) founded by the Khala Khitan (also known as the "Black Khitan"), the Khitan script died completely, becoming a dead character. As a result, all Khitan books were annihilated, and only a few Khitan characters could be seen in the notes of the ancients such as Song Wangyi's "Records of Northern Yan" and Yuan Tao Zongyi's "Book History Huijiao".
The disappearance of the Khitan script has become a major suspense in the great Chinese cultural circle. However, no one thought that at the beginning of the Republic of China, a Belgian missionary named Kelvin accidentally appeared in front of the world. Kellwin was able to discover the Khitan script because of one of his tomb robberies, and he patronized the Liao Dynasty Imperial Tombs in present-day Chifeng.
Pictured: Khitan stone carvings
Kelvin, born in Hugler, Belgium, came to China and was named "Mei lingrui". Kelven studied theology at the University of Leuven in 1902, became a priest after graduating in July 1905, and in September of the same year was sent to the Diocese of China as a missionary, mainly in northeastern China. The area around present-day Chifeng, where the Liao Emperor's mausoleum is located, is the range of Kelvin's activities.
In 1919, Kelvin was sent to the northernmost and remotest part of the diocese under his jurisdiction, the Catholic Church called The Catholic Church in the small village of Haopodu (now the Catholic Church in Dayingzi Township, Linxi County, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, see the picture below), to preside over missionary activities, and his theft of the Yongqing Tomb in the Imperial Tomb of the Liao Dynasty occurred during this time.
Pictured: Catholic Church in Dayingzi Township, Linxi County
In the end, Kelvin was a learned foreign tomb robber, not as uneducated as some local Chinese tomb robbers, who only coveted yellow and white treasures such as gold, silver, pearls and jade. Kellwin attached great importance to the text on the stele, and although he could not understand it, he still felt that it was an important cultural relic, so before throwing the stele away, he hired the Chinese to spend five days copying the full text of the Khitan "Lamentation Book of Emperor Xingzong", "The Book of Lamentations of Empress Renyi", and the Chinese character "Book of Lamentations of Empress Renyi" word for word. If it could have been made into a rubbing at that time, the true appearance of LiaoXingzong's mourning book could also be glimpsed.
Picture: Liaoqing Tomb unearthed Daozong Xuanyi Empress Dowager Mourning Book Cover (Khitan small characters)
However, Kelvin was not a Chinese expert in the end, and he used the transcribed Liaoxingzong lamentation text as the Liao daozong lamentation text. In 1923 (the twelfth year of the Republic of China), Kelwyn published the hand-copied Liaoxingzong Lamentation Book Khitan small characters as the "Daoist Lamentation Book" in the "Beijing Catholic Church Journal", along with the "Lamentation Book of Empress Renyi".
Later, after the Khitan language expert and professor of ethnology, Mr. Liu Fengyi [zhù], the "Daoist Lamentation Book" published by Kellwin was exactly the liaoxingzong mourning book that had been lost in the original stele, and he mistakenly regarded the Yongxing tomb of liaoxingzong as the yongfu tomb of liaoxingzong, and the lamentation book of liaoxingzong was mistakenly transmitted.
Pictured: Empress Dowager Liao's Lamentations (partial, Khitan small characters, copied by Liu Fengyi)
At that time, Bo Xihe, a French sinologist who had stolen a large number of Chinese cultural relics in the western region, immediately added and deleted this report and reprinted it in the 22nd volume of the French "Bulletin" magazine that year, and added a note and annotations. The German Fu Kesi and the Chinese Shenyang qi Jingli excerpted the article in the Bulletin and published it in volume 6 of the First Collection of Research works on the Khitan Script in China, the Liaoling Stone Inscription, under the title "The Khitan Script of Liaoling".
The Khitan script, which has disappeared for nearly 800 years, suddenly appeared in front of the eyes of modern people, and Chinese and foreign scholars were surprised.
Later, another Belgian missionary, Min Xuanhua, published the article "LiaoQingling" in French in 1933 (the twenty-second year of the Republic of China) on the 30th volume of the "Bulletin", which also published the Khitan script. The discovery of two Belgian missionaries immediately triggered a boom in the study of Khitan characters in the 30s of the Republic of China period, and Chinese and foreign scholars competed to verify that the "dead script" Khitan language was "alive" again, and important results have been achieved so far. From this point of view, although the entry of two Belgian missionaries into Liaoling was illegal tomb robbery (they themselves do not think so), their contribution to the spread of Chinese national culture is still worthy of recognition.
Pictured: Khitan versus English
Kelvin also became the first person in the world to discover the Khitan script because he was the first to publish the Khitan lamentation book, and wrote it into his life history as an "academic achievement" in China, becoming the most glorious page in Kelvin's life. And this "first" may have belonged to Min Xuanhua who first entered the mausoleum, and Min Xuanhua had already copied it at that time, but unfortunately he only published his discovery 10 years later, and Min Xuanhua may have "regretted dying"!