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In arukorqin banner, not far from Chifeng in Inner Mongolia, in the late 1990s, a Liao Dynasty tomb was discovered, and the protagonist of the khitan mural painted in the tomb was Yang Guifei.
What kind of Yang Guifei was painted by the Khitan people? Why paint her? Take a look at this "Yang Guifei Teaching Parrot Diagram".
The dimensions of this mural are 70 cm high and 2.3 meters long.
Yang Guifei sat in the middle of this painting. She wears a gorgeous red casual outfit, showing a bandeau, very sexy. In front of the noble concubine, there was a small table painted with red paint and gold, and on the table was a volume of the Heart Sutra.
In front of her was a small parrot, and the noble concubine was half-bowing her head, teaching the parrot to recite the Heart Sutra. The most beautiful thing was the chair she was sitting on. The legs of this chair are black, and the two ends of the back of the chair are upturned, and the shape is chic and beautiful.
Look at the upper right corner of the painting and write a few words.
Snow-clad Danzui Long mountain birds, each under the guidance of the palace deeply. Do not speak to people, the voice is a chanting sound.
This poem actually describes a very famous story in the history of the Tang Dynasty, which was recorded in a small book "Miscellaneous Records of the Ming Emperor" in the middle of the 9th century.
The story tells that someone gave Tang Xuanzong a white parrot and raised it in the palace, and the emperor and noble concubines called it the Snow Lady. The snow lady is particularly intelligent, can speak poetry and songs, and understands human nature.
Suddenly, one day, it flew to the dresser of the noble concubine and said to the noble concubine, I had a dream last night, and I dreamed that a very strong eagle had caught me, and maybe I was in a catastrophe and would not live long. When Tang Xuanzong knew about it, he said to Yang Guifei, "You teach it to recite the Heart Sutra." Later, it remembers what it is cooked, and it recites it day and night, and as long as there is a calamity, it will dissolve the past when it recites the scriptures.
So who is the owner of this tomb? It was very strange that it turned out to be a teenage Khitan aristocratic child. Why does such a painting appear in the tomb of the Khitan boy?
After the fall of the Tang Dynasty, these small dynasties that were later established did not create their own cultural language or identity signs, on the contrary, each of them regarded themselves as inheriting the authentic mantle of Tang Dynasty culture.
The same is true of the Khitans.
In 907 AD, when Yelü Abaoji unified the Khitan tribes, he already advertised to himself that I understood Han culture and knew how to interact with the Han people. Yelü Apaoji speaks Chinese very well, and it is said that he can recognize and write Chinese characters.
It is mentioned in the history books that the Khitans believed that they had obtained the true transmission of Tang Dynasty culture, but the Song did not.
Because when the Song Dynasty was founded, the Tang Dynasty had disappeared for more than 50 years. Judging from the records of the "History of Liao", the Tang Dynasty once gave princesses to the ancestors of the Khitan people, bringing them close to the Tang court.
After the fall of the Tang Dynasty, the Khitan people became bigger and established the Liao Dynasty, so they thought that they were inheriting the past and the future, and truly inherited the culture of the Tang Dynasty.
The statue of Yang Guifei may represent the way of life of the Tang Dynasty.
This unfortunate young man who died early may have eaten and wore the same degree as the Tang people before he died.
After his death, his family will go further, using the lifestyle of the Tang Emperor and the most famous noble concubine of the Tang Dynasty to accompany him to the funeral.
In this sense, this work once again shows that the Tang Dynasty culture is not only the pride of Han culture, but also the pride of all surrounding cultures.
After all these ethnic minorities entered the Central Plains and established their dynasties, the most important thing was to learn all the norms and models of the Tang Dynasty, and their dynasties were also established according to the Tang Dynasty.
Its picture is very beautiful, gorgeous, bright, at first glance it does look a bit like the style of the late Tang Dynasty, but the murals we see in the Tomb of the Tang Dynasty are really not so thick in color, and the Tang Dynasty murals are very elegant.
The style of the Tang Dynasty was more magnificent and generous, showing a broad mind everywhere. But this painting does not restore the momentum of the Tang Dynasty.
The Khitans are a very assertive people, and their cultural influence may be beyond your imagination.
The Khitans were different from other peoples: they did not want to be Sinicized.
The assertive Khitans exerted considerable influence on the Eurasian steppes that Europeans once thought that the Khitans were Chinese.
From this mural, we see both a magnificent and far-reaching Tang Dynasty and a Khitan nation that strives to build its own cultural self-confidence.
More importantly, it expands our understanding of ourselves. We are not only "Tang people", but also "Khitan people".