One
"The River of Theory, under the Yin Mountains." The sky is like a vault, and the cage covers the four fields. The sky is clear, the wild is vast, and the wind blows grass low to see cattle and sheep. ”
According to the Northern History of Emperor Wu of Qi, in the fourth year (546) of the Eastern Wei Dynasty, "Gengzi of November, the master of the public opinion class ... At that time, the Western Wei Yan Shen Wu Zhong crossbow, the Shen Wu heard it, and nai Mian sat down to see the nobles. Make Huo Lu Jin sing, god and martial self-harmony, and mournful and weeping." Huo Lujin (斛律金), also spelled A Liu Dun (阿六敦), was also a heavy vassal of Qi Shenwu at the time, attacking Yubi. After the defeat of the Qi army, "the army returned, and Gao Zu made the viceroy of Jin, from the return of Jinyang." Because he was a member of the Shule tribe, the song "Shule" should be a popular folk song in the ministry. The Biography of Huo Lujin in the Northern History does not record the "Shenwu Envoy Shule Song", while the Shenwu Ji does not record the song of Huo Lujin, but does not record the content of the lyrics. It can be inferred from the account of "divine martial self-harmony, mourning and weeping" that this must have been a humble folk song known to everyone at that time, which could arouse the national feelings of the audience.
Fortunately, this folk song, which was originally sung in the Xianbei language, was preserved by the Southern Dynasty people who confronted the Northern Dynasty. The lyrics we see now are recorded from the Lefu Poetry Collection. The Collected Poems of Lefu Yun: "The Lefu Guangshi (樂府廣題) says: 'Northern Qi Shenwu attacked Zhou Yubi, and the soldiers died fourteen and fifteen, and Shenwu was indignant and sick. The King of Zhou ordered: Gao Huan rat, personally committed a crime against Yubi, a sword and crossbow, the culprit killed himself. The gods heard of it and sat down in peace. The nobles were quoted, so that Huo Lujin sang "Shu Le", and the gods and martial arts were self-reconciled. Its songbook is humble and easy to speak in unison, so the length of its sentences is uneven. Although it is easy to change from "Xianbei language" to "Qi yan", the majesty of the original poem has not diminished, and it can also show the nostalgia of the Xianbei people for the original nomadic life in the steppe. In the poem, the "vault" where he usually lives is used as a metaphor for the heavenly dome, which shows the true color of the steppe people.
Two
What does the "vault" of the Xianbei clan look like? Historians do not elaborate, but are generally considered to be a domed tabernacle used in steppe nomadism. Later scholars also roughly believed that its morphology may be similar to the yurts inhabited by mongolians in later generations. In the tenth year of Southern Qi Yongming (Northern Wei Taihe sixteenth year, 492), Emperor Wu sent Situ to join the army of Xiao Chen and Fan Yun on an envoy to Northern Wei, and saw That Emperor Wei worshipping the heavens at the Temple of Heaven on the western outskirts of the capital, using a large dome that could accommodate a hundred people to feast, the structure of which was "intersected with ropes, new wooden branches, covered with green threads, shaped flat circles, and seated with a hundred people under the roof, called 'silk', a cloud 'hundred children's tent'." Feast here.". This shows that the walls of the humble vaults are made of "new wooden branches". Looking up in a large vault that can accommodate a hundred people, it is easy to feel like being under the heavenly dome. However, based on poetry alone, it is difficult to understand the shape of the Xianbei "Vault". To find out its true face of Lushan, the only way to find out is to explore the specimens obtained from archaeological excavations. Among the new archaeological discoveries, the first information obtained is about the components of the "vault".
In the 1950s, tombs from the Northern Qi period were discovered in the Taiyuan area of Shanxi. In 1958, the Shanxi Provincial Museum (now the Shanxi Museum) compiled the relics excavated from zhang Su's tomb into the first catalogue of cultural relics from the Northern Qi tomb. I wrote a review of the book in 1959. After the book review was published, Xia Zuoming said to me: "You corrected the misreading of '碓' and 'mill' in the catalogue in the book review, but did not pay attention to the carry on the back of the pottery hunchback, which should be the parts of the Xianbei felt tent, including the dome of the tent, the fence of the wall, and the rolled up curtain." "Since then, I have learned that I must carefully observe the various animal models and carrying items in the Northern Dynasty tomb burial figurines (Fig. 1).
According to the epitaph, Zhang Su was buried in the tenth year of Northern Qi Tianbao (559), which shows that when people traveled far, they also carried felt tents with the traditions of the Xianbei ethnic group. The binding method of the pottery camel felt tent of Zhang Su's tomb is to place the fence fence on both sides of the camel body, the curtain is rolled up in a barrel shape, the two ends are knotted, placed horizontally between the two humps, and the circle-shaped tent roof is placed in the central position above the curtain. Later, felt tent parts of this method of bundling were constantly seen on the backs of pottery hunchbacks in the Northern Qi period, such as two standing camels (figs. 2-5) buried with Lou Rui's tomb in the first year of Wuping (570) and two felt tent parts carried by lying camels (fig. 6-9). On the pottery hunchback buried with Han Zunian's tomb in the fourth year of Tiantong (568), in addition to carrying the parts of the tabernacle, there is also a statue of a riding camel figurine (fig. 10).
The above tombs were all found in the Jinyang area, but in the Eastern Wei-Northern Qi tombs in the Yicheng area, there is no circle-shaped tent roof on the felt tent carried by the pottery camels, such as the tomb of Princess Ruru of The Eighth Year of Eastern Wei Wuding (550), the Tomb of Gao Run in the Seventh Year of Northern Qi Wuping (576), and the Tomb of Wan Zhangda (Figures 12 and 13) excavated.
Retrospectively, before the Eastern Wei Dynasty, after the Northern Wei dynasty moved the capital to Luoyang, there were already pottery camel models carrying parts of the tent, such as the pottery camel buried with the yuan shao tomb in the first year of Jianyi (528), carrying the fence of the tent and the bundled curtain on its back, and there was no circular tent roof on it (Figure 14). The same is true of the pottery camels buried in the tomb of Gao Shi, the fifth year (524) of The Han dynasty's bribery wife, Gao Shi, was also buried. Perhaps this was an early practice, which was still used in the Eastern Wei-Northern Qi dynasty, but it was only in the Northern Qi tombs in the Jinyang area that the new fashion of placing a circular tent top on a curtain between the camel peaks is unknown.
In the Western Wei tombs in the Guanzhong area, the burial pottery camels with the parts of the tent are still in accordance with the old system after the Northern Wei moved the capital Luoyang, and the circular tent roof is not placed on it, such as the specimen excavated from the tomb of Hou Yi (Hou Sangjia) in the tenth year of the Western Wei Dynasty (544) (Figure 15).
Also in the tomb murals of this period, such as the tails of the traveling and returning queues painted on both sides of the tomb road of Northern Qi Lourui, there are images of camels carrying a tabernacle (Fig. 16).
The above-mentioned tomb example from the Northern Wei Dynasty after the relocation of the capital Luoyang to the Eastern Wei-Northern Qi period clearly shows that the pottery camel model at that time belonged to the carriage of livestock in the travel ritual guard figurine group, and the load on the back was the parts of the tent used when traveling, which was opened and supported during the rest of the journey, and became the traditional felt tent of the Xianbei people - the vault. This also clarified the misunderstanding of some people about this model of ming ware in the tombs of the Northern Dynasty, and when they saw the pottery camel, they thought that it was related to the caravans that walked the trade route, and the goods they carried were all goods. The actual situation is that by the Sui and Tang dynasties, the burial system changed, the Northern Dynasty travel ritual guard figurines were no longer popular, and although some of the camel models buried with them were still in accordance with the Northern Dynasty tradition - carrying the parts of the tabernacle, more specimens appeared in new shapes, or there were various figures on the back, or even carrying dance bands, or carrying various goods, which were associated with caravans walking on the trade route. But that is the last word, according to the burial customs of the Northern Dynasty period, the camel model buried with the tomb should belong to the livestock in the caravan group.
In tombs in the Yicheng and Taiyuan areas of the Eastern Wei and Northern Qi dynasties, camel models of tent parts commonly found in the travel ritual guard figurines showed the customs of the time. At that time, the Xianbei people had been integrated into the big family of the Chinese nation, especially through the vigorous reforms of the Northern Wei Xiaowen Emperor, from surnames to clothing and even living customs, there were complete changes. The Xianbei people, who live in vast urban and rural areas, have long abandoned the traditional felt tents used in the original nomadic life, and together with the Han and other ancient ethnic minorities, they live in the palace houses, but when traveling long distances, they still carry felt tents that are easy to set up anytime and anywhere. However, out of nostalgia for the original national traditions, folk songs use the traditional felt tent - the dome to compare the heavenly dome, grazing on the boundless grassland under the heavenly dome, heroic and majestic, which stimulates the national feelings of the Xianbei people. Just as the Qi Shenwu Emperor was frustrated on the battlefield, after returning to the army, he ordered Huo Lujin to sing "Shu Le", and he himself was also "weeping with sorrow" and was extremely excited.
Three
Although we have learned about the components of the Xianbei Vault from the carryings of the pottery camel model, it is still difficult to restore its full picture. However, it can be seen from the circle-shaped tent roof and the fence of the wall that its shape is not the same as the tent used in the army since the Zhou and Qin dynasties.
Among the excavated relics of the Eastern Zhou Tombs, there are bronze tent roofs, such as the tomb of Zhao Qing of the Spring and Autumn Jin Dynasty in Taiyuan, Shanxi, and the tomb of the Zhongshan King of the Warring States of Pingshan, Hebei, which are roughly the same shape. Specimens unearthed from Zhao Qing's tomb are 17.6 cm high, with cylindrical columns underneath, a dome on top, and 11 flat rings around the dome for tying the tabernacle (Figure 17). The diameter of the dome is 18 cm, and the diameter of the columns is 7.6 cm, indicating that in the center of the tabernacle there are columns with a diameter of slightly less than 7.6 cm and the top can be incorporated into the brass, which resembles the columns of the temple building at that time. After this kind of tent is set up, there is no vertical wall around it, and the whole is roughly in the shape of a bowl, which is used for temporary camping in marching operations and is not suitable for long-term living.
Until the Han and Wei dynasties, the wartime army marched and camped, still following the old custom and using a tabernacle in such a shape. In the murals of the tombs of the Wei and Jin dynasties in Jiayuguan, Gansu, images of such military tents can also be seen (Figure 18). In ancient times, the Xianbei people, who were nomadic in the grasslands, migrated to the pastures by water and grass, but generally had a long residence period according to the seasons, so the tabernacle should be suitable for people's home life in a period of time, and its structure is naturally different from that of military tents. From the tent parts carried by the pottery camel model, it can be seen that it has a fence structure of the wall, and from the length of the fence placed horizontally on the side of the camel, the wall height should be more than 1 meter. The walls should be connected to the dome-like roof, hence the folk song called the "vault". The circular tent roof is placed in the center of the dome, and the surrounding round hole is used for the tug of the closing curtain. However, this can only be a rough inference of the morphology of the vault, or the lack of archaeological specimens that can really express its exact morphology. This deficiency was finally made up in 2000, when the Datong Archaeological Research Institute excavated the Northern Wei tombs of the Yanbei Normal Academy in Datong City, and obtained a pottery model of the Dome, which finally allowed us to see the true appearance of the "Qionglu" lushan.
In Tomb No. 2 of the Northern Wei Tomb Group of the Yanbei Normal Academy, three pottery accounting house models were excavated, of which 2 were square in plan and 1 was circular in plan. Specimen M2:73 (Fig. 19), flat square, 23.4 width, depth 25.3, height 26.1 cm, roll-up roof, with two skylights, and floating out of the rope to open the adjustment skylight hanging on the rear wall. There is a door in the front wall, a window on each side of the door, and a window on the left and right walls. The skylight and door have holes in the opening, and there are protruding lintels on the doors, and there are three red door hairpins on them. The remaining square windows are only carved out of the wall and painted with a red border. The specimen M2:82 is the same as the previous one, only slightly smaller in size, with a width of 21.2, a depth of 23.1 and a height of 26 cm. Specimen M2:86 (Fig. 20) is different from the previous two pieces, with a circular plan, a diameter of 24.6 and a height of 18.2 cm. The upper part is a circular dome, and the lower part is a circular wall with a height of 10.4 cm, and the wall has a door with a width of 6.2 cm and a height of 8 cm, and the door is convex with two door hairpins. The center of the dome is a circular tent with an outer diameter of 6.9 cm, and 13 arc-shaped traction cables are connected downwards around the perimeter of the roof, indicating that there is a corresponding curved tent rod on the inside of the roof, forming the support of the dome. The outer surface of the dome is painted black, the traction cable is painted red, and 9 of the lower parts are painted with flower-shaped knots. The circular accounting model of this dome should be a model of the vault of the Xianbei tribe at that time. Not only that, out of love for the vault, the roof of some of the ox cart models excavated from the tomb group also changed the popular roll shed roof since the Western Jin Dynasty (Figure 21) and became a dome (Figure 22), so that the overall carport formed the shape of the vault (Figure 23, 24), which can also be said to change the ox cart into a dome with wheels.
Five years later, in 2005, the tomb of Taiyan's parents was excavated in Datong Shaling in the first year (435), and the mural on the right wall of the tomb was based on the theme of a kitchen feast, which also painted an image of the dome (Figure 25), deepening our understanding of the shape of the dome.
Four
After learning about the true shape of the Xianbei tradition of the vault, I found a new way of thinking about an academic problem that has existed in my mind for more than half a century. That is the cave shape problem of the early caves of the Yungang Grottoes in Datong, Shanxi.
The creation of the Yungang Grottoes began at the beginning of the Northern Wei Dynasty's Wencheng Emperor Tuoba Mao and the Beginning of the Peace. "Wei Shu Shi Laozhi": "At the beginning of peace (460 years of the first year of peace), Shi Xian was a pawn. Tan Yao replaced it, renamed Shamen Tong... Tan Yao Bai Emperor, in the capital city of Xiwu Prefecture Sai, chiseled the mountain stone wall, opened five caves, and engraved one Buddha statue each. The tall one is seventy feet, the second sixty feet, carved with Qiwei, and crowned in the first world. ”
At that time, the important statues of the Buddhist temples in Pingcheng City were built for the emperor, such as the year of Emperor Wencheng's restoration of the Fa (Xing'an Yuan year, 452), "Zhao Yousi is a stone statue, so that the emperor is a body." Completed, yan up and down, each with a black stone, the same as the emperor's body up and down the black son. The commentators think that it is pure sincerity. Also: "In the autumn of the first year of Xingguang (454), in the five-level great temple, Taizu had laid down the five emperors, and cast the statue of Shakya Li five, each one foot long and six feet long, and 250,000 pounds of red gold. Therefore, the Buddha statues in the five caves built by Tan Yao in Wuzhou Sai should also be the five emperors below Taizu, namely Taizu Daowu Emperor Tuoba Jue, Ming Yuan Emperor Tuoba Si, Taiwu Emperor Tuoba Tao, Jingmu Emperor Tuoba Huang and Wencheng Emperor Tuoba Mao.
The five grottoes excavated by Tan Yao should be the 16th to 20th caves of the Yungang Grottoes in Datong, Shanxi (Fig. 26). These five large grottoes are all oval in plan (or horseshoe-shaped) (Fig. 27) and are topped by a dome. They are arranged in the middle and west of the Yungang Grottoes district, mostly carved in the cave three Buddhas, the main image of the main wall is huge, 13.5 to 16.8 meters high, and the statues on both sides are smaller, and the main statue is tall and majestic (Figure 28). Except for the main statue of Maitreya Bodhisattva in Cave 17, the rest of the main statue is Shakya. The highest statue of the lord in the cave is the seated Buddha statue in Cave 19, which is 16.8 meters high (Fig. 29). Among them, the 20th cave, because the front wall and the front of the left and right walls have collapsed in the early years, so that the large statue in the cave is in an open-air state, so when the future generations come to Yungang, the first thing that catches their eyes is the magnificent posture of this big Buddha, and therefore this big Buddha continues to appear in Chinese and foreign books and periodicals, becoming a symbol of the art of the Yungang Grottoes (Figure 30), in fact, his height ranks second from the bottom among the five cave masters of Tan Yao, only 13.7 meters.
The appearance of the Buddha statue, some people think that there is a possibility of imitating the appearance of the Tuoba people and even the Northern Wei emperors, but the oval plane and the shape of the dome are mostly thought to be "imitating the Indian grass lu" in the past. But in ancient India, there were no caves of the caolu style. Looking at the grottoes in China from Xinjiang to Hexi that were built earlier than the Yungang Grottoes, from the Guizizier Grottoes to the Wuwei Tiantishan Grottoes (Liangzhou Grottoes), as well as the 169 Caves of Bingling Temple in the Western Qin Jianhong Era, there is no precedent for such oval dome caves. Looking back at the Buddhist scriptures, Shakya's teachings from asceticism, enlightenment, and the first turn of the Dharma wheel were all carried out in the forest and under the trees in the garden, and there was never any record of preaching in the grass hut. When Tan Yao presided over the repair of the cave for the emperor, how could he come up with the idea of cultivating the cave shape into an "Indian grass luff" style? This is the academic problem that has plagued me since I listened to Yan Shuzu teach the "Art of the Cave Temple" class in the 1950s.
When excavated in Taiyuan, Shanxi, CiXian, Hebei, and Luoyang, Henan, the northern dynasty tombs with burial pottery camel models, identify the parts of the dome, especially after seeing the pottery dome model excavated from the tombs of the Northern Wei Pingcheng period in Datong, Shanxi, plus the group of dome portraits painted in the murals, and then in connection with the heroic song "Heavenly Dome, Cage Cover Four Fields" sung by the Tuoba Xianbei people in xianbei language, it can be seen that the cave shape of the oval planar dome of the five caves of Tanyao is not imitating the grass outside the territory that the Xianbei people do not know. Instead, the Buddha statue symbolizing the emperor is enshrined in the traditional apartment of the Xianbei people in the long-term nomadic life, the vault. The dome also symbolizes the heavenly dome, which means that the Buddha statue is enshrined between heaven and earth, showing a strong national cultural characteristic. Therefore, the new style of the Five Caves of Tanyao "should be a new model created by the monks and craftsmen of Pingcheng in the middle of the 5th century" in Yungang, which can be called the beginning of the "Yungang model".
The use of the shape of the national traditional living room dome to chisel the grotto, and then led to the thinking about the artistic modeling of the Buddha statue in the early Yungang Grottoes, popularly speaking, that is, where did the "powder book" on which the statue was based at that time come from? This in turn led to reflections on how Buddhist art was introduced to Middle-earth.
The artistic shape of the Five Caves of Tan Yao is characterized by its majestic and magnificent momentum, first of all. The main Statues of Buddha in each cave show the supreme authority of the emperors of the Northern Wei Dynasty with their huge size and majestic posture. The Buddha's face is broad in the forehead, straight nose, curved eyebrows, large ears drooping, lips tightly closed and slightly smiling (Picture Trinity), and his face is majestic and kind. The buddha's robe is thick and thick, which increases the strength of the statue's grandeur. Combined with the rugged felt tent dome cave shape, a song was composed to praise the unstoppable development momentum of the emerging Northern Wei Dynasty.
Buddhism flourished in the Northern Wei Dynasty, ruled by the Xianbei emperor, and the reason for this should also be the same as that of Later Zhao, which created a grotto shape in the shape of a dome in the traditional architectural form of the people, which in a certain sense narrowed the distance between Tuoba Xianbei and the Hushen Buddha from the west, and had a more intimate feeling. As for the original origin of the Buddha's artistic modeling in the Five Caves of Tan Yao, it is naturally from the homeland of Buddhism, ancient India. However, Buddhist artistic modeling was not directly imported from India at first, but tossed and turned through Central Asia, into the territory of present-day Xinjiang, China, and then along the Hexi Corridor, continuing to the northern region of the Central Plains. Buddhism began to enter the territory of China, and as it gradually penetrated into the interior, it began a process of continuous sinicization.
It should also be noted that as the Northern Wei Dynasty gradually controlled the north, the people, monks and craftsmen in the areas occupied one after another were migrated to the Pingcheng area, and the monks and craftsmen from Qingzhou, Liangzhou, Chang'an, and Dingzhou should all gather in the engineering team commanded by Tan Yao, bringing powder and craft skills from different sources. Therefore, the carving of Buddha statues at that time should be a recreation of the strengths of all the families at home and abroad, and the re-creation of artistic modeling, thus forming the characteristics of the Northern Wei Dynasty itself. This also makes some art historians who only pay attention to stylology explore the influence of Gandhara art from the Yungang statue, or notice the style of Mosu luo art, and even pay attention to the radiation of the civilizations along the Mediterranean coast (Greece and Egypt); or rigidly divide the unified works of art into Western and Chinese traditions, and so on. However, the creation of a modeling artwork with artistic shock and era style such as the Five Caves of Yungang Tanyao must not only be considered a platter of art from different sources. "It should be a matter of course that the Northern Wei imperial family, with the boldness of its emerging peoples, integrated the techniques of the East and the West to create a new grotto model."
Five
The rough and majestic momentum of the artistic modeling of the Five Caves of Tan Yao gradually faded with the passage of time, starting from the early days of Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty, replaced by a new elaborate and rich wind. At this time, when Tan Yao presided over the construction of the grotto, he was invited into the Buddha's cave that simulated the shape of the "vault", and was in turn enshrined in the Buddhist cave that simulated the traditional Chinese style of the temple. During this period (around the time when Emperor Xiaowen succeeded to luoyang, 471-494), the caves carved in Yungang were represented by several pairs of double caves such as Caves 5 and 6, Caves 7 and 8, and Caves 9 and 10; there was also a group of three caves in Caves 11, 12 and 13, which were gradually excavated on the cliff surface by extending eastward from the Five Caves of Tanyao (Figure 32). At present, in addition to the 5th and 6th caves in front of the four-story wooden pavilion built in the Qing Dynasty, the appearance of the rest of the caves can also be observed, but the rock weathering is serious, the details of the carving have been blurred, suddenly, some like a rather exotic column corridor, but careful observation, they are not connected together corridor, but the cave in front of the caves in front of their own group carving, due to excessive weathering, like connected into one.
From 1972 to 1974, in order to cooperate with the repair work of the Yungang Grottoes, the bedrock surface in front of The 9th to 13th Caves was cleaned. After removing the soil of the roof plate of the front room of Cave 13, the original carved ridge ornaments and remnants of the tile ridge (Fig. 33) were found, and combined with the columns below, the original appearance of the whole cave should be carved into a four-pillar three-bay Front Porch (Fig. 34) with a tile roof, the top is the roof of the cylinder tile hall, the main ridge is about 3.6 meters long, 9 meters from the ground, there are bird-shaped remnants at both ends of the ridge, and there are bird-shaped remnants in the center; the lower part is four pillars and three bays, the column height is 3.4 meters, the section octagonal, and the column base is 1.5 meters high. The eaves are weathered and eroded, and the contours are unclear, but the reliefs on the side walls of the front chamber and the inner side of the column head can also be inferred that the front wall of the cave is a column head carved plate, the forehead of the bucket is supported, the column head is three liters, and the style of the tween herringbone arch is tweened. Its appearance is exactly the same as that of the Buddhist shrine carved on the east wall of the front room of Cave 12 (Figure 35).
This kind of hall with four columns and three bay front porches in front of it should be a popular architectural style of that year, and it was also imitated by the new hall shape sarcophagus in the tombs at that time, and the most typical archaeological specimen is the sarcophagus of the tomb of Song Shaozu in the first year of the Northern Wei Dynasty (477) excavated in Datong, which shows the three-dimensional shape of this kind of hall (Figure 36 to 38). The sarcophagus of Song Shaozu's tomb simulates a four-pillar, three-bay room, with one deep front porch and two deep naves, or a building with a wall bearing load and a wooden beam frame and tile roof. This kind of hall architecture is likely to be a new style popular in the capital city of Pingcheng in the early years of the Northern Wei Dynasty, because of the fashion, it affected the change of the grotto to the shape of the temple.
Different from the carving of the five caves of Tan Yao, in the Taihe period, in addition to the royal family, officials and upper-level monks and nuns also participated in the excavation of the grottoes, the most typical example is the construction of the eighth year of Taihe (484) when the empress dowager of civilization was castrated, and the 9th and 10th caves were completed in the thirteenth year of Taihe (489), which was "built for the blessing of the country", which should be built for the second saint, Empress Feng and Emperor Xiaowen, so it is a double cave. It was also completed in Cave 6 before the relocation of Luo in the eighteenth year of Taihe (494), which best shows the exquisite and gorgeous scene of grotto art at this stage (Figure 39). In addition to the stone carvings of the cave shape of the dome into imitation wooden buildings that imitate the Chinese style, there are also Buddha statues with beautiful faces draped in wide Han-style Buddhist robes, and the costumes of the Buddha statues are wide and wide, and it is generally believed that they have the interest of the Han-style robes "Chu Yi Bo Belt" (Figure 40), showing an emerging plastic art style that is obviously different from the previous grottoes. Is this sudden change only due to the subjective changes made by the monks who guided the construction of the grottoes and the craftsmen who carved the grottoes in that period because of the inheritance of teachers and the school of art? The answer is no. Because it was not the monks and craftsmen in front of the curtain who determined the carved appearance of the Buddhist grottoes, the real decision was in the hands of the meritorious lords behind the scenes, the royal family and courtiers of the Northern Wei Dynasty, in their minds, religious behavior was subordinate to the general political direction of the time.
In the early years of Emperor Xiaowen's reign, until the death of Empress Dowager Feng in the fourteenth year of Taihe (490), the actual empress dowager of civilization who presided over the administration of the government was the empress dowager of the Dynasty, and the main problem facing the supreme ruling group of northern Wei at that time was precisely how to consolidate the northern half of China that had been unified by the Tuoba Xianbei regime, as well as the people of all nationalities, mainly the vast Han nationality. The political framework originally formulated in the tradition of Tuoba Xianbei was already difficult to maintain, and in order to achieve long-term peace and stability, it was necessary to carry out thorough reforms at the political level, which is also simply called "Sinicization" in some history books. Empress Feng, the civilized empress dowager with Han cultural attainments, used Han officials Li Chong, You Minggen, and Gao Lu to reform the old habits of Xianbei and Ban Qilu, rectify the rule of officials, implement the equalization system, and constantly carry out political reforms. In this context, the momentum of "Sinicization" in living customs and burial rites is also increasing, and the plastic arts related to them naturally take on a new look.
Taking the burial tools in the tomb as an example, the burial tools in the tomb of Song Shaozu in the first year of Taihe (477), which has been mentioned earlier, are sarcophagi with imitation wooden structures, and there are also cornices and porches in front of the three-bay hall. In addition to the sarcophagus in the shape of the temple, the stone bed enclosed on three sides by a wooden screen painted with stone foundation paint in the tomb of Sima Jinlong and his wife from the fourth year of Yanxing (474) to the eighth year of Taihe (484) is also a typical archaeological specimen that attracts attention. In lacquer painting, the faces, postures, and costumes of the figures are similar to those in the later facsimiles of the paintings of the Eastern Jin Dynasty painter Gu Kaizhi, with beautiful faces and wide clothes, female portraits with flying belts, and male portraits with belts and high crowns, which are obviously influenced by the new style of Jiangnan painting art at that time (Figure 41). The Sima Jinlong family was originally a royal family of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and fled to the north at the beginning of the establishment of the Liu Song regime, so it was introduced to the north when the Northern Wei was anxious to obtain a new style of southern painting.
At that time, the Northern Wei court also used people from the Qingzhou region (which had been ruled by the Eastern Jin Dynasty and Liu Song for half a century before it was incorporated into the Northern Wei territory), and the representative figure was Jiang Shaoyou. At that time, in order to obtain advanced Han culture and art, the Northern Wei court on the one hand tried to inherit the Han cultural tradition from the analysis of the old Han and Wei systems, and on the other hand, it tried to go to the south to obtain new cultural and artistic information there. Jiang Shaoyou played a great role in both aspects, for example, the Northern Wei court specially sent him to Luoyang to "measure the Wei jinji toe" in order to build the Taiji Hall of the Taimiao Temple in Pingcheng; on the latter hand, when Li Biao was on an envoy to the Southern Dynasty, he was sent as a deputy envoy and secretly ordered him to look at the "palace style" in the south to obtain new achievements in the architecture of the Southern Dynasty. This also aroused the vigilance of the southern scholars, and Cui Yuanzu of Qinghe suggested to Emperor Qiwu that Jiang Shaoyou be detained, saying: "Shaoyou, the nephew of the subject, has the special idea of losing the public, the Song Dynasty has been captured, and the official who is a master is punished, and now as a deputy envoy, he will want to model the palace." How can we make the felt country despise and take the image of the Heavenly Palace? From this, we can also glimpse the urgent mentality of the Northern Wei court at that time to obtain the advanced civilization of the Han people in Jiangnan. In such a big historical background, in the early years of Emperor Xiaowen's reign, the Yungang Grottoes began the second boom in cave-making.
Although only one-fifth of a century has passed since the early years of Taihe and the peaceful years of Tan Yao's statue in Yungang, the landscape of Northern Wei Pingcheng has changed greatly, and the traditional felt tents of the Xianbei ethnic group have been preserved in the countryside, and the palaces and ceremonial buildings in the capital city according to the old System of Han and Wei are becoming more and more complete, and the construction of the palace strives to be gorgeous, and the architectural decoration is more exquisite. The above-mentioned sarcophagus of the tomb of Song Shaozu in the first year of Taihe was made of the hall shape with cornices and front porch in front, which is exactly the shape of the temple on earth. Similarly, when the Buddhist grottoes were chiseled, the shape of the traditional Xianbei house felt tent vault was abandoned, and the shape of the four-pillar three-bay hall with a front porch with a front pillar supported by a huge cornice (Figure 42), and the top of the interior simulated the flat algae well in the hall, and even many Buddhist niches were carved into the roof of the temple with a ridged partridge, and the lower four-pillar three-bay hall with a front porch was the same as the shape of the sarcophagus of Song Shaozu's tomb. The layout of the interior of the cave also broke the "three Buddhas" layout of the original Five Caves of Tanyao only placing the main figure on the main wall and placing the Standing Buddha on both sides, but instead chiseled a square tower pillar directly to the top of the room in the center of the room, opened a niche on the three walls of the tower pillar and the two sides of the room, and left a passage for the Buddhist spin pagoda to pray between the tower pillar and the back wall, which obviously learned from the mature experience of the indoor layout of the central tower pillars from Guizi to Liangzhou in Hexi. Because of this layout, the main figure in the front niche of the tower pillar is reduced in height and volume compared with the five caves of Tan Yao, so that the carving is delicate and beautiful, but it lacks majestic momentum. In addition, the walls and the algae well are full of carvings, in addition to the niches and flying tricks, there are also many new themes with quite storylines, such as Manjushri and Vimalakirti sitting against each other (Fig. 43), especially the Buddhist story carvings in Cave 6 occupy most of the wall, forming a continuous process of Shakya from reincarnation to enlightenment (Fig. 44), vivid and concrete.
What is more noteworthy is that the artistic shape of the Buddha statue in the cave has also undergone great changes. The Yungang Buddha statue during the Taihe period not only lost its previous huge size and majestic posture, but also changed its appearance to the majestic form of a straight nose and fangyi, but turned to a beautiful and kind face. The texture of the Buddhist robe (robe) worn by the Buddha's body has also been changed from simulating heavy wool fabric to simulating gentle silk. The cloaking method excludes the old pattern of oblique bare arms, and changes to the sagging from the shoulders and then wrapping the body, the appearance is similar to the Double Collar Drooping Chinese robe, and the Buddhist robe is sagging wide and wide, similar to the shape of the Han costume Doctor 's "Chu Yi Bo Belt" (Figure 45).
The changes in the shape, interior layout and shape of the Buddha statues in the Yungang Grottoes strongly show that with the intensification of the Sinicization of the Northern Wei Dynasty, the influences from Qingqi in Shandong, Xuzhou in Jiangsu, and even Liangzhou in Hexi were further gathered and integrated, forming the characteristics of the era of statues in the Pingcheng Grottoes in the early years of the Taihe Dynasty, reflecting that Buddhist art modeling has taken a big step forward towards sinicization, and also reflects that the steps of the Xianbei ethnic group into the big family of the Chinese nation have taken a big step forward.
When the Yungang Grottoes entered a new artistic climax during the Taihe period, the political life of the Northern Wei Dynasty took a new turn, and the empress dowager of civilization died in the fourteenth year of Taihe (490), and Emperor Xiaowen finally got rid of the shadow of his grandmother. After only three years, Emperor Xiaowen used the pretext of Fa Qi to lead a million troops to the south, in fact, he began the journey to move the capital Luoyang, and after two years, in the nineteenth year of Taihe (495), the Northern Wei Six Palaces and civil and military officials moved to Luoyang, and Pingcheng lost its status as the capital. With the departure of the royal family and dignitaries, the large-scale construction activities that lasted for more than 30 years in the Yungang Grottoes came to an abrupt end. The remains of the unfinished engineering in the forecourt and forecourt of today's Yungang Cave 3 are physical testimonies of that period of history. However, until the early years of Xiaochang due to the six-town uprising caused the ruin of Pingcheng, Yungang also had small-scale cave opening activities, and what continued to be chiseled was concentrated in some small and medium-sized caves in the west of the cliff, and the statues were more beautiful, and there were some new initiatives ahead of Luojing, such as the three-wall altar, forming a combination of Buddha statues with three walls and three niches, that is, indiscriminately visiting Yungang, and later popular in the Central Plains Grottoes.
In the early years of Taihe, the yungang grottoes appeared in the artistic style of beautiful appearance and light and thin flowing Buddhist clothes, indicating that the plastic arts of Pingcheng in northern Wei had caught up with the artistic level represented by Gu Kaizhi to Lu Tanwei in Jiangnan. However, at that time, there was already a new style of art in Jiangnan, and the character shape shifted from a skinny and clear statue to a new style with a short and colorful face, and in the history of painting in later generations, the representatives of the new style of art were attributed to Zhang Shengxuan, in fact, this style of Buddhist statues had appeared in the Southern Qi Yong next year. The appearance of the stone statue of Maitreya Maitreya Buddha made by the monk Shifa Hai in the eighth year (490) of the Southern Dynasty Buddha Statue excavated from the Southern Dynasty Buddha Statue on Xi'an Road in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, has already shown this new artistic style, and the Statue of Shudi will lag some time behind the capital City of Jiankang, the center of southern Dynasty rule, compared with the Northern Wei Dynasty, when the Fourteenth Year of Taihe, the Statue of Yungang is still in a new fashion with a Beautiful Face. When the influence of the new style of art represented by Zhang Shengxuan was presented in Luoyang, Northern Wei, it was already a statue in the pagoda of the Yongning Temple of the Great Imperial Temple, which was shaped from the second year of the Xiaoming Emperor Shengui (519) to the first year of Zhengguang (520). At that time, the Lord ana of Rouran became increasingly powerful, invading the old capital (Pingcheng) of the Northern Wei Dynasty, and the Yungang Grottoes completely declined and disappeared from historical records for a long time.
Six
Looking at the transformation of the shape of the Yungang Grottoes from the "vault" to the "hall", it can be clearly seen that this is not only a change in Buddhist art modeling (that is, the "stylistics" of art history), but also a change that is not only dominated by religious behavior, but also has profound historical reasons, reflecting the historical process of the Xianbei Tuoba clan's accelerated integration into the Chinese nation. In the field of Buddhist plastic arts, it reflects that Buddhism has taken a key step forward in the process of sinicization and nationalization.