We photographed the ruins of the Uighur capital city with a drone, and the jade book was found in a well on a high platform in the southeast corner of the city.
Above: The Fragment of "No Qi in the Sky" published by the Mongolian-German Archaeological Team, which is the first jade album we see.
Shortly after I returned home, the Mongolian-German archaeological team published their latest archaeological findings on the website, including fragments of the jade book we saw. But in the latest briefing, these archaeologists still don't realize the value of these findings.
The nine Uighur Khans near the site of Harabaragas.
Photos of wells in the jade book released by the archaeological team.
In the summer of 2019, I took advantage of my summer vacation vacation to go on a short trip to Mongolia to investigate the area of my thesis study, the mobei region. Since my research direction is the history of the relationship between the Tang Dynasty and the northern steppe peoples, the main purpose of this trip is to find the ruins related to the Tang Dynasty on the Mongolian plateau.
Harabaragas unearthed tang dynasty jade books
From an outsider's point of view, road traffic in Mongolia is not yet convenient. When searching for ruins, most of the time you have to drive around the grassland, there are very few bridges, and sometimes you can only sigh when you face the ruins close to the other side of the river. Without locals leading, it is difficult to find ruins scattered deep in the vast grasslands. Therefore, we contacted the scholar Batu Baoli of the Mongolian Archaeological Research Institute in advance, and he led us to the search.
The jade book is a kind of ancient book in China, the form imitates the Jian Mu, and the book text is directly engraved on the marble or Han white jade booklet compiled into a book. The jade books of the Tang Dynasty were mostly used by the emperor for zen, sacrifice, burial, and canonization. The Six Classics of Tang records that the book "Li Hou Jian Concubine, Seal the Tree Fan Ping, Favor the Noble Ancestors, and Use it for Linxuan Beili", indicating that the Tang Dynasty used the book of the Crown Prince, The Empress, the Prince, the Noble Lord, and the Foreign Emperor. Therefore, the jade book is undoubtedly a precious material evidence to examine the relationship between the Tang Dynasty and the surrounding tribes.
Previously, I had traveled with my mentor Li Jinxiu to the city of Abakan in the Republic of Khakas, Russia, to investigate the jade book of the Khan of Tang Xiantong in the seventh year (866 AD). On the way to the trip, I mentioned the experience to Batuu. Unexpectedly, this reminds Batuu. He told me that similar artifacts seem to have been found at the site of the Uighur capital city of Halabaragas. I had a hunch that there should be new discoveries.
On August 18, we arrived at the ruins of the Uighur capital of Halabaragas near Hala and Lin, thanking Batu for contacting the archaeologists who were excavating here. The site was excavated by a joint Mongolian-German archaeological team. Archaeologists have been working here for several years.
The newly unearthed jade book was found in a well on a high platform in the southeast corner of the city. As early as 10 years ago, in the palace-temple complex in the north of the site, a fragment of a broken jade book was found, and there were 3 characters on the fragment, which could only clearly identify a Chinese character "cloud". Because the amount of information transmitted was so small, the fragment did not receive attention. But this time is different, a large number of fragments of jade books have been unearthed from the well. We were impressed by the first piece of jade that we saw: there were Chinese characters "Yu Tianxia Qi Wu" on it; the remaining fragments also had the words "Bao Li Yuan Nian" and the honorific title "Wu Mi Shi" representing the Uighur Khan. This should be a jade book related to the Uighur Khan! I suppressed my excitement, recorded some of the words on the jade book, and after obtaining the consent of the experts of the archaeological team, I immediately sent it back to my mentor who was far away in Beijing, and everyone began to study it on the spot.
The jade book is written by Bai Juyi?
However, according to the Tang Dynasty system, the author and writer of the jade book were often not the same person, but had a special handwriting, and the person who carved the jade book was responsible for engraving the characters. Therefore, the handwriting on the jade book should not be Bai Juyi's calligraphy.
However, the fragments of the "First Year of the Bao Calendar" that we see do not appear in the Baiju Yiwen. Experts analyze, is this batch of things we see originating from multiple jade books?
Batuu quickly contacted the archaeologists and determined that the handwriting on the jade book was not the same. The tang dynasty history books record that in the fourth year of Changqing (824 AD), "the Uighur Chongde Khan died, and the younger brother Yusa was appointed to the throne". That is to say, this batch of jade books may belong to two khans. In the first year of Changqing (821 AD), Chongde Khan was added to the book of Vijaya Khan for "sounding in the world, and invincible in the wilderness". In the first year of the Bao calendar (825 AD), Tang also "recorded uighurs and issa special services for the Aeden Li Lama Michi vijayān khan".
The jade book with the inscription "The First Year of the Treasure Calendar" may be the jade book of The First Jade Book lord of Tang Feng, Yu Sa Teqin, as khan.
Value needs to be further studied
Of course, these preliminary judgments will wait for archaeologists and historians to interpret the true age of these cultural relics in detail in subsequent in-depth research, and gradually restore the original appearance of historical events.
During the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, the Hui (later uighur) khanate arose and ruled the northern desert region. Hui Hui has always had his heart set on the Tang Dynasty. Not only that, Hui Hui also reached out to help the Tang Dynasty quell the Anshi Rebellion. Together with the jade albums found in the city in 2009, dozens of jade albums have been excavated from the site of the Uighur Khanate's capital, Halabaragas, which belong to at least 3 sets of jade books. The discovery of the jade book proves that although the Tang Dynasty was no longer in its heyday after the Anshi Rebellion, the Hui Khanate had always been enfeoffed to the Tang Dynasty; the jade book embodied the Tang's management system for the northern desert region. Prior to this discovery, Mongolia discovered the Han Dynasty's "Yanran Mountain Inscription"; the discovery of the Tang Dynasty Seal uighur Khan Jade Book, which aroused enough attention to be compared with the "Yanran Mountain Inscription". Bai Juyi's poetry has endured for thousands of years, and the cultural relics directly related to him have reappeared in mobei this time, and in the field of literature, it should also be counted as a good story.
(The author is a doctoral candidate of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)