Author: Hu Xingjun
The beacon sites scattered throughout the north and south of the Tianshan Mountains are a continuation of the Great Wall to the west, and are the border memories of the home and the world, and the excavated documents and other relics provide physical materials for the study of the military system and life in the Tang Dynasty
Fragments of Tang Dynasty popular literature "Han Pengfu". (Courtesy of Hu Xingjun)
Mu Jian records the military information obtained in daily reconnaissance. (Courtesy of Hu Xingjun)
Fragments of soldier armor. (Courtesy of Hu Xingjun)
Ruins of the Flint in Kjak Kuduk. (Courtesy of Hu Xingjun)
In the desert beacons very far away from the Central Plains, what kind of literary works would the officers and soldiers of the Tang Dynasty read? Archaeology can tell you the answer.
Located in a desert no-man's land 90 kilometers southeast of Yuli County, Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the Site of the Kyak Kuduke Beacon has unearthed literary works such as "Han Pengfu" and "Youxian Grotto", which are popular popular reading materials in the Tang Dynasty.
Along the north bank of the Peacock River, there are 11 beacons distributed in a range of about 150 kilometers long from Korla City to Yingpan Ancient City, collectively known as the "Peacock River Beacon Group", which is a national key cultural relics protection unit, and the Keyak Kuduk Beacon Site is one of them. 47 kilometers away from Yingpan Ancient City in the east and 233 kilometers away from Loulan Ancient City in the southeast, located in the desert no man's land of Lop Nur Desert, the summer is hot and dry, the winter is cold and bone-chilling, and nearly 1/3 of the time during the excavation period is sandstorm weather, no electricity and water shortage, and no communication signal, the conditions are extremely harsh. Since the 1980s, cultural relics workers have repeatedly conducted archaeological surveys and studies on the Peacock River Beacon Group. In 2019, the Site of Keyak Kuduk Beacon was included in the major project of "Archaeology China", and from 2019 to 2021, the Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology excavated the site for nearly 18 months, and the harvest was gratifying. This is the first active archaeological excavation of the Tang Dynasty Beacon in China, which completely reveals the whole picture of the Beacon Site, and provides new reference materials for studying the layout rules and construction methods of the border military construction in the Han and Tang Dynasties.
It has been used for nearly 100 years
The excavated relics reproduce the details of Shubian life
The Kjak Kuduk Beacon was built on a red willow sand pile. With sand piles as the center, there are 12 relics such as beacons, houses, earthen mounds, steppings, ponds, wooden fences, and ash piles. When the shubian soldiers who live on the sand pile dump all kinds of domestic garbage from the top of the 9-meter-high sand pile downwards, they roll down the slope along the slope with the reeds, cattails and other plants that reinforce the edge of the sand pile, forming a ash pile. After years and months, the domestic garbage accumulates more and more, under the comprehensive action of gravity, wind, surface resistance and other factors, the light remains in the half slope of the sand pile, and the heavy rolls down to the bottom of the sand pile, forming a natural stratification. After the flint was abandoned, it was no longer inhabited, and the ash piles on the slopes were covered with natural wind-accumulated sand and sealed intact. In the extremely dry climate of the Lop Nur Desert, these precious relics have been preserved to this day.
All kinds of relics excavated from the Beacon site are typical Tang Dynasty artifacts, excavated documents, wooden jane with a clear chronology, has been found "congenital", "Kaiyuan" and "Tianbao" and other era numbers, while excavated Kaiyuan Tongbao, Qianyuan heavy treasure and other coins. The 8 carbon fourteen specimens collected from the relics such as the beacon body and the ash pile were tested in different laboratories around 700 AD. Combined with historical documents, we preliminarily believe that the construction time of the Keyak Kuduk Beacon was about shortly after the first year of longevity (692), and it was abandoned around the sixth year of the Zhenyuan dynasty (790) and used for nearly 100 years.
Although it has been around for thousands of years, the ruins are almost completely preserved as they were when they were abandoned. In the ash pile, more than 1,400 pieces (groups) of various relics have been cleaned and excavated, with a wealth of types, all of which are fragments of utensils used in the daily life and work of Shubian soldiers, with ceramic, copper, iron, wood (lacquer), stone, bone, horns, paper, leather, grass, textiles, etc., of which organic cultural relics are the mainstay.
Daily necessities are mainly woodware, which includes cups, bowls, chopsticks, spoons, buckles, knife handles and various wooden pieces of unknown use, as well as various wooden pillars, wooden planks and braided branches that have been cut down. The surrounding plants are also often used, of which hemp is the most frequently used, and a large number of clumped hemp skin fibers and twisted ropes have been excavated from the site. The excavated pottery is all fragments, and the recognizable types include cylinders, pots, bowls, plates, etc. Unearthed textiles are silk (silk, silk), wool, cotton, hemp, etc., due to serious damage, only hemp shoes can be recognized, more complete dozens of them, the shoe body is wide. Ink lettering can be seen on some textiles, one of which has a name and place of origin, and fragments of "cloth bags" that may have clothed soldiers. The discovery of syringe acid on the excavated gourd fragments, combined with the records of the excavation documents on "putao wine", proves that there is indeed wine in the site.
Due to the heavy task of defending, some of the beacon shops are too far from the cultivated land to be managed, some still lack water sources and cannot be cultivated, many cultivated land has been forced to give up, the food supply is often insufficient, the soldiers also need to hunt and fish to replenish their supplies, and the yellow sheep, red deer, wild boars, hares and various fish and water birds that are active around the beacon are the prey they like to catch. Several animal clips woven with grass and red willow sticks were found at the site, and a leg of lamb was still in the clip when it was unearthed. A large number of fish bones have been excavated from the site, some fish vertebrae are even as thick as adult thumbs, and wooden shuttles for weaving fishing nets have been unearthed, and the wooden shuttles are basically intact, and the shuttles are tightly wrapped with twine ropes that weave fishing nets.
Reveal the military system
A large number of Chinese documents and materials fill the gaps in history
The site unearthed 861 pieces of paper documents and wooden janes, which is the largest number of Tang Dynasty Chinese documents excavated from the domestic Beacon Site in recent years, with rich content, many aspects are new archaeological discoveries, filling the historical gap. According to the documents, the site of the Kyake Kuduk Beacon is a military early warning facility under Yanqi Town, known as "Sand Pile Beacon" in the Tang Dynasty, and it is also a place of guerrilla rule, which belongs to a grass-roots military management agency on the "Loulan Road", the military defense line in the eastern border of Yanqi Town. The newly discovered military facilities such as Yulin Town, Tonghai Town, Shelter Ear Guard, Hengling Beacon, and Wuquan Gupu, as well as new defensive routes such as Loulan Road, Maze Thief Road, and Yanqi Road, filled in the gaps in the historical literature about the defense system of Yanqi Town, one of the four towns in Anxi in the Tang Dynasty.
The soldiers who guarded the beacons in the Tang Dynasty were called beacons, and they had to wait for the beacons to be released, to know the documents, the symbols, and the transmissions, but also to guard the fortifications, fields, prepare beacons, and prepare grain and grass. Among them, the release of the beacon is a major task, the beacon needs to stand on duty at the top of the beacon every day according to the arrangement of the zhigen book, "the day is divided into five times, the night is divided into five times, the night is divided into five times, the day is smoke, the night is watching the fire" "Every night, the fire is raised peacefully, the police raise two fires, the smoke and dust are raised three fires, and the thief burns the wood cage"... According to different military information, light a fire and light a cigarette to alarm, in peacetime, in the morning and evening, light a cigarette and light a fire to report safety. Famous Tang poems such as "Wanli Hu Tian has no alarm, a cage of beacons reports peace" and "The sunset is not close, every day is safe", which is a depiction of the scene of the soldiers guarding the beacon reporting peace.
In the military system of the Tang Dynasty, there were two unique methods of reconnaissance, the game of wandering and the tuhe river, which were also one of the means often used by grass-roots military institutions such as Feng Flint to "guard the police.". The "General Code" records that you often trade cards with the Fengpu Plan, but there is no detailed record of how this system works. In the archaeological excavations at the site of The Kjack Kuduk Beacon, for the first time, a physical specimen of the Jihui card was unearthed, which unveiled the mystery for us. The so-called "card" is the wooden Jane that is passed daily. Between the beacon shops or between the beacon shops and the amusement center, it is necessary to exchange or report the military information obtained by reconnaissance every day in the form of "counting and handing over cards". Because some of the beacon shops are very far from the game house, they are limited to transmitting the results of reconnaissance between the neighboring two beacons every day, but after the "cards" have accumulated for a certain period of time, they need to be handed over to the game house, and the game officer must check and register into Tibet.
In addition to military documents, a large number of letters, literary works and traditional texts have been found at the site. According to the edicts issued by the imperial court, we know that the guards came from Hezhou, Luozhou, Ruzhou and other places in the interior of the Central Plains. The Western Regions and the Central Plains are thousands of miles away, and the letters have become the link with the family, and the letters mostly begin with the festival, such as "the winter scenery is over", "the spring scenery is gradually fragrant", "the midsummer is extremely hot", "peace", "Wanfu Jin'an" and other greetings, Yin Yin's concern is overwhelming. In an unsent letter, the husband also exhorted that "the woman should not be sorrowful, and she should collect the wheat and sheep, and do not let her fall." The discovery of traditional classics "Thousand Character Text", "Filial Piety Classic", literary works "Han Pengfu", "Youxian Grotto" and a large number of unrecognizable poems shows that the traditional classics and literary works of the Central Plains were introduced to the Western Regions along with the Central Plains soldiers who came here to defend and change their defenses, and were quickly circulated throughout the Western Regions.
The beacon sites scattered throughout the north and south of the Tianshan Mountains are a continuation of the Great Wall to the west, a frontier memory of the homeland and the world, and have played an extremely important role in maintaining the smooth traffic of the Silk Road, ensuring national unity and social stability in the western region. The ruins and excavated relics of the Keyak Kuduk Beacon vividly reproduce many details of the operation of the Border Plug Beacon System, providing physical materials for the study of the military system and the life of the Shubian Dynasty in the Tang Dynasty, and a large number of excavated documents will promote the research of Dunhuang Turpanology, Document Editionology, Calligraphy art history and other academic fields.
(Author Affilications:Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology)
Source: People's Daily