China News Service, Chengdu, January 20 Title: Huo Wei: Why did the "Plateau Silk Road" accelerate the process of civilization on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau?
China News Service reporter He Shaoqing Yue Yitong Xu Yangyi
"The reason why the Tubo Dynasty of the Tang Dynasty was able to quickly cross its early stage of cultural development was closely related to its rapid integration into the most important Asian civilization system at that time through the Plateau Silk Road."
Huo Wei, distinguished professor of Sichuan University, director of the Sichuan University Museum, dean of the School of History and Culture, and director of the Chinese Archaeological Society, said in an exclusive interview with the China News Agency 'East and West Questions' a few days ago that the Plateau Silk Road is like a giant with open arms, embracing the Grassland Silk Road and the Desert Silk Road from the north to the Southern Silk Road and the Maritime Silk Road to the south, forming a transportation road network with a broader scope of time and space, and incorporating the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, which has always been regarded as a "forbidden area of life," into the Cultural Exchange System between China and foreign countries.
The interview transcript is summarized below:
China News Service: What is the relationship between the Plateau Silk Road and the desert, grassland Silk Road and maritime and southern Silk Road in the traditional sense of ancient China?
Huo Wei: Previous studies have rarely linked the Silk Road to the cold Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, believing that the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is not equipped to excavate the Silk Road. However, archaeological evidence and documentary data in recent years show that in the long history of history, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has never been a closed unit, and it has always maintained close ties with neighboring countries and regions.
The "Plateau Silk Road" does not refer to a specific road in a certain period, but to the transportation network and its main trunk lines that communicate with the East and the West, China and the outside world through the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Looking down at the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau from a high altitude, you can see that there are desert Silk Roads and grassland Silk Roads in the north of the plateau, and maritime Silk Roads and southern Silk Roads in the south. If there are still missing links in these Silk Roads in the past, the Plateau Silk Road is just filling in, linking multiple Silk Road trunk lines into a whole.
At an altitude of more than 5,200 meters above sea level, Tibet is the mouth of the Kongtangram Mountain. The winding mountain road in the picture is a section of the "Plateau Silk Road". China News Service reporter Jiang Feibo photographed
China News Service: How to prove that the "Plateau Silk Road" began to develop before the establishment of the Tubo Dynasty? Is the Tibetan Plateau a "cultural island"?
Huo Wei: The popular macaque decoration in the eastern foothills of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the bronze mirror with a handle found in the early metal age of Tibet, the "Scythian style" animal ornaments that appear in ancient rock paintings and artifacts on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and the archaeological evidence such as gold masks, silks and tea leaves found in western Tibet in recent years show that long before the establishment of the Tubo Dynasty, the ancient tribes of the Tibetan plateau had cultural exchanges with central Asia and the Eurasian steppe.
The most striking discovery in recent years has been the discovery by archaeologists of a number of important tombs dating around the 3rd to 4th centuries AD in western Tibet (formerly within the territory of Zhang-Zhung). The excavated funerary items include silk woven with the Chinese character "prince", tea residues contained in bronze vessels and wooden cases.
This kind of silk has also been excavated in many archaeological sites such as the Astana Cemetery in Turpan, Xinjiang, and the Yingpan Cemetery in Xinjiang, which also bears the words "Hu Wang" and "Wang Hou", and is generally considered to be made by the central plains officials or local weaving institutions, or as a reward for the local princes and tribal leaders of the frontier, or as a high-grade consumer goods specially made for the border areas; and Lü Houyuan, a researcher at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, believes that tea trees do not grow on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in the alpine environment. India also has only a history of more than 200 years of tea cultivation, and the excavated tea residue shows that tea was transported to the Ali region of Tibet at an altitude of 4500 meters through a branch of the ancient Silk Road at least 1800 years ago.
Tibetan Ali unearthed silk with Chinese characters. Courtesy of respondents
It can be seen that long before the Tubo Dynasty unified the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the ancient tribes living in the Ali region of the western Part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau chiseled passages, connected with the Silk Road, and transported luxury goods such as silk and tea from the Central Plains to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. The Plateau Silk Road was jointly created by the people of all ethnic groups on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and the Xianbei and Tuguhun from the northeast, the Qiangqiang in the east, and the Zhangxiong in the west all actively participated in the historical process of building the Plateau Silk Road.
The above research results provide a grand historical background for the observation and reflection of early human activities on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in the vast space where Eurasian civilizations meet, rather than as a closed "cultural island". The beginning of the Plateau Silk Road can be traced back to before the 7th century AD. Roughly in the Han and Jin Dynasties, the western and northern regions of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau established a considerable degree of contact and exchanges with Xinjiang, Central Asia, South Asia and other places in the western region, thus taking a historic step in which the ancient tribes of the plateau stepped out of the snowy plateau and integrated into the Eurasian civilization system.
China News Service: In different historical periods, what changes have taken place on the Plateau Silk Road?
Huo Wei: The available data can divide the history of communication and exchange between the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the outside world into three important stages: one can be called the "pre-Tubo period" (or the "ancient Tibet period"), which mainly refers to several signs of cultural exchanges between Tibet and the outside world that can be observed by archaeology before the formation of the Tubo Dynasty in the 7th century AD; the second is the Tubo Dynasty (western scholars call it the "Tubo Empire"), with the continuous expansion of Tubo power and the continuous expansion of the territory it controls, its communication with the outside world is broader. The traffic routes and networks formed were more formed and complex on the basis of the previous development; the third was the "post-Tubo period" after the fall of the Tubo Dynasty in the 10th century AD, some of which continued to play their role, and some of which gradually declined, and were later integrated into the transportation network across Eurasia across the emerging Yuan Empire in the 13th century.
The greatest contribution of the Tubo Dynasty to the Plateau Silk Road was the opening of the "New Road" from Chang'an to the Tubo capital (present-day Lhasa) after "peace" with the Tang Dynasty, and then along the Brahmaputra River and southward, all the way to Nibhara (present-day Nepal) in South Asia, and then into the ancient kingdom of Tianzhu (ancient India). Wang Xuance, the official envoy of the Tang Dynasty, sent many missions to India, taking advantage of this international route opened in the early Tang Dynasty. In 1990, I found in Jilong County on the China-Nepal border that the Tang Dynasty's "Tang Dynasty Tianzhu Envoy Inscription" Moya inscription is an extremely important archaeological evidence left by Wang Xuance on this ancient road.
Nepalese vans waiting for customs clearance at the Geelong border crossing between China and Nepal. China News Service reporter He Penglei photographed
Part of "Tang Dynasty Tianzhu Envoy". Courtesy of respondents
China News Service: How does the Plateau Silk Road accelerate the process of civilization on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau?
Huo Wei: The Plateau Silk Road is also an economic and trade road and a road to seek law. Newly unearthed data from Tibetan archaeology show that during the "Han and Tang Dynasties," the achievements of material and spiritual civilization in the Central Plains were continuously transported to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau through the Plateau Silk Road, which greatly promoted the development of local productive forces and social progress. In addition to tea, silk and other Han "luxury goods", the historical records and legends of Han Chinese documents, religious rituals, production tools, craftsmanship and inland species brought by Princess Tang Wencheng and Princess Jincheng into Tibet have far-reaching influence, and are also closely related to the opening of the Plateau Silk Road.
In 2013, the annual Tibetan Buddhist Geshe Lama Rangpa Ceremony was held in front of the main hall of Shakyamuni Shakyamuni at the Jokhang Monastery in Lhasa. The twelve-year-old statue of Shakyamuni at the Jokhang Temple was brought to Lhasa by Princess Wencheng of the Tang Dynasty to be enshrined here, and this Buddha statue is still the faith of millions of believers in Tibetan Buddhism. Photo by China News Service reporter Li Lin
During the Tubo Dynasty, many material civilizations and religious cultures from Central Asia, West Asia and South Asia not only introduced and influenced Tubo itself, but also continued to spread eastward along the Plateau Silk Road, such as gold and silverware, horse harnesses, polo, spices, jewelry, Spices and jewelry of the Sogdian and Persian systems, Persian and Large Food medicine, and clothing patterns and decorations with Sogdian and Persian characteristics. Buddhism, Bon religion, Zoroastrianism, Jingjiao, Manichaeism and other religious cultures have also left a number of traces on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
The Hu people on the Tibetan silver vase of the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa bounce pipa statues. Courtesy of respondents
In these vast fields and cultural exchanges at different levels, the Plateau Silk Road is like a "blood supply system", constantly injecting fresh blood into the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, accelerating the process of its civilization, and playing a role in linking the eventual integration of various ethnic groups on the plateau into the Chinese civilization system. During the Tubo Dynasty, it was deeply influenced by the Han culture of the Tang Dynasty in terms of philosophy, religion and ideological concepts, and incorporated several factors of the "Han Cultural Circle" into the "background" and foundation of its culture. This shows that from the beginning of the founding of the Tubo Dynasty, it has a clear tendency in cultural psychology, cultural identity and cultural choice. This objective fact reflects the convergence, integration and homogeneity between tubo culture and Tang Dynasty Han culture in terms of deep pulse, and is essentially different from the cultural exchanges between Tubo and other countries and regions.
The Plateau Silk Road is like an open-armed giant, embracing the Grassland Silk Road and the Desert Silk Road from the north to the Southern Silk Road and the Maritime Silk Road to the south, forming a broader traffic network in time and space, and incorporating the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, which has always been regarded as a "forbidden area of life", into the Cultural Exchange System between China and foreign countries. People can not only see China's friendly exchanges with Countries in South Asia and Central Asia through the Plateau Silk Road, but also see how different civilizations can learn from each other, each with its own beauty, and the United States and the United States, and have a deeper understanding of the formation of a community with a shared future for mankind. (End)
Respondent Profiles:
Huo Wei, Dean of the School of History and Culture (Tourism College) of Sichuan University and Director of the Museum of Sichuan University. China News Service reporter Zhang Lang photographed
Huo Wei, currently the dean of the School of History and Culture (Tourism College) of Sichuan University, the director of the Museum of Sichuan University, the director of the Institute of Chinese Tibetology of Sichuan University, the key research base of humanities and social sciences of the Ministry of Education, and the convener of the Archaeology Department of the Discipline Review Group of the State Council, the judge of the National Social Science Fund, the member of the Undergraduate Teaching Steering Committee of the Ministry of Education, the director of the Chinese Archaeological Society, the vice president of the Sichuan Historical Society, and the vice chairman of the Sichuan Museum Society.