Kuqa is a national historical and cultural city, with more than 195 cultural relics such as grottoes, ancient castles and beacon towers in Kuqa, and has been listed as 2 world cultural heritage sites in the "Kuqa section of the Silk Road", 10 national key cultural relics protection units, and 41 autonomous region-level cultural relics. Famous tourist attractions include the mysterious Grand Canyon of the Tianshan Mountains, the Kyzyl Grottoes, the Thousand Buddha Caves of Kumutula, the Kucha Wangfu, and the Ancient City of Subash. Located in the middle of Urumqi to Kashgar, Dushanzi to Hotan, National Highway 314 and Line 217 intersect in the county seat, the Southern Xinjiang Railway crosses the county, and civil aviation goes directly to Urumqi, becoming a passenger and freight distribution center intertwined with aviation, railway and highway in southern Xinjiang. Kucha is a Turkic transliteration, uyghur place name, meaning hutong. "Because its place is an important street in the hinterland of southern Xinjiang, it is named." "Kucha" has been written in a variety of ways since ancient times, including "Qiu Ci", "Qu Zi", "Qu Xian", "Jiu Zi", "Ku Fork" and so on. In the 23rd year of the Qianlong Dynasty (1758), it was named Kucha. It is said that "Kucha" is an ancient Guizi language, which means "the city of the Guizi people".
Guizi Guo (pinyin qiū'cí, Sanskrit Kucina), also known as Qiu Ci, Qiu Zi, Qiu Zi, is one of the great powers of the Western Regions in ancient China, one of the northern provinces of the Western Regions during the Han Dynasty, and one of the four towns of Anxi in the Tang Dynasty. It is a place where iron is produced in the western region of ancient Times.
The ancient inhabitants of Guizi belonged to the Indo-European species. After the arrival of the Uighurs, the race and language were gradually Uighurized, and the Guizi State centered on the Kuqa Oasis, and at its peak its jurisdiction was equivalent to the six counties and cities of Luntai, Kuqa, Shaya, Baicheng, Aksu, Xinhe in present-day Xinjiang.
Duyan City, known in the Tang Dynasty as Yiluolu City (present-day Pilang Ancient City, the eastern suburb of Kuqa, Xinjiang). During the Western Han Dynasty, it belonged to the Xiongnu. In 77 BC (the fourth year of Emperor Yuanfeng of The Han Dynasty), Guizi submitted to Han. In 60 BC (the second year of shenjue), the Han court set up the western capital of The Eastern Wulei Inguizi. Wang Mangshi was again subordinate to the Xiongnu.
In the early 5th century, Guizi was once controlled by Rouran. In 448, Northern Wei captured Guizi. At the end of the 5th century, it was once subordinate to the Western power. After that, Guizi sent envoys to The Western Wei, Northern Zhou, and Southern Dynasties. During the Sui Dynasty, Guizichen belonged to the Northern Western Turk Khaganate. In 615 (the eleventh year of the Sui Dynasty Emperor's great cause), he sent envoys to the dynasty. In the fourteenth year of Zhenguan (640) of the Tang Dynasty, the Tang army attacked Gaochang, set up Xizhou (present-day Turfan, Xinjiang), Tingzhou (present-day Jimsar, Xinjiang), and set up the Anxi Capital Protectorate, and in 648 (zhenguan twenty-two years), the Tang army attacked Guizi and brought Guizi under its rule. In 658, the Tang Dynasty moved the Protectorate of Anxi to Guizi.
In the long river of history, Guizi is the important town of the Taklamakan Desert North Province in the Xinjiang section of the Silk Road, with extremely developed religion, culture and economy, Guizi has a grotto art with a longer history than the Mogao Grottoes, and it is called the "Second Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes" by modern grotto artists. The Kamezi people are good at music, and the Kamezi music dance originated from this. In addition, there is still an iron smelting industry, which is well-known, and the iron tools of many countries in the western region are mostly given to Guizi.
Guizi, once one of the great powers of the Western Regions, was located in kuqa county in the Aksu region of Xinjiang. As an important part of the Guizi culture, the murals of the Guizi Grottoes have quietly recorded the fusion and collision of Eastern and Western cultures for thousands of years.
The Guizi Grottoes were built in the 3rd century AD and ended in the 12th century AD, more than 200 years before the famous Mogao Grottoes. The existing Guizi Grottoes include the Kyzyl Grottoes, Taitaier Grottoes, and Wembash Grottoes in Baicheng County, the Kumutula Grottoes, kyzylgaha Grottoes, Senmusem Grottoes, Mazatobohe Grottoes, Subbash Grottoes, Aai Grottoes in Xinhe County, and the Shairamu Grottoes and Karayur Rolling Grottoes in Wensu County, which historically belonged to Guizi.
These grottoes of different sizes are a paradise of Buddha's country under the pen of the Guizi painter. They used the color of every brush and painting in their hands to inject life into the lifeless walls, creating a variety of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, bhikkhus, Lux, and flying heavens.
The art of Guizi murals began around the 3rd century AD at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty and continued to the Song Dynasty in the 11th century, experiencing seven or eight centuries of development. The mural paintings of the Guizi Grottoes arose with the spread of Buddhism in the Guizi area and also declined due to the decline of Buddhism. Due to the severe damage of the sectarian forces opposing idolatry, coupled with the damage caused by natural factors such as floods, most of the murals of the Kamezi Cave Temple that have survived to this day have been mottled and mutilated. And that's not even the tragic plunder of history! From the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, Western expeditions from Russia, Japan, Germany and France came to the Guizi Grottoes to investigate, and a large number of precious cultural relics such as murals, sculptures and documents were lost abroad. Among them, the most exposed frescoes in the Guizi Grottoes are Germans. Even more distressing is the destruction of part of the Guizi murals that lost germany to World War II. At present, most of the lost guizi artifacts are hidden in the Indian Art Museum in Berlin, Germany, and some are scattered in New Delhi, Tokyo, Seoul, St. Petersburg, London and Oxford, Paris, New York, Boston, Washington and San Francisco. After the founding of new China, the government strengthened the protection of the Guizi Grottoes and Buddhist temples, surveyed and numbered the caves, installed doors and windows, built roads leading to the caves, organized professionals to copy the murals and protected and repaired them many times.
Although the Guizi Grottoes have been seriously damaged by various factors such as nature and man-made, on these damaged pictures, the mural art images with colorful jumps and lively and joyful images can still be seen. These murals are unique and gorgeous, graceful and elegant, which are not only very different from the murals of Dunhuang, the pearl of the Silk Road, but also quite different from the painting styles of neighboring Gaochang and Khotan. Western academics agree that the Guizi murals are deeply influenced by Indian, Persian, Greek and other civilizations, but compared with the painting styles in these areas, the Guizi painting style is also distinct and unique. The cultural information and historical value carried by the Guizi murals have long been integrated with their aesthetic values.
Mural paintings are the most important aspect and richest content of the art of the Guizi Grottoes, and the themes mainly include statue paintings, Buddhist scripture story paintings, portraits of offerings and decorative patterns. Statue paintings are figure paintings of the Buddha's kingdom world, there are all kinds of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, disciples, heavenly kings, Lux, Tianlong Babu, Qile Feitian, etc., these Buddha portraits basically appear at the same time as sutra paintings, Buddhist historical site paintings, Buddhist story paintings and Dharma drawings, which are the main contents of Buddhist murals. In the Guizi murals, statue paintings also appear in large numbers, forming a colorful Buddhist world in Guizi. Buddhist scripture story paintings, including Bunsen stories, karma stories, and Buddhist stories. Bunsen Story Painting depicts the deeds and good deeds of Shakyamuni Buddha when he endured humiliation and burdens and saved the world and saved people when he was a bodhisattva in his past life. There are more than 130 kinds of Bunsen stories in the Kamezi murals, and the number of them ranks first in the continental grotto murals. The story of Buddhahood tells the biographical story of Shakyamuni Shakyamuni's deification from birth, birth, growth, monasticism, asceticism, enlightenment, demon surrender, enlightenment, and nirvana. The karma story is to tell the story of Shakyamuni Buddha's enlightenment after his enlightenment, and these stories also occupy a considerable place in the Guizi murals. In addition, there are also portraits of the devotees of the caves funded by faith, as well as eye-catching decorative patterns, especially the diamond lattice patterns that line the roofs of the caves. There is also a fairly popular motif in the Guizi murals, the celestial phase diagram, which is usually painted on the top of the arch or the yongdao to symbolize the sky. For example, Cave 38 of Kyzyl, located in the middle of the middle ridge of the main room ticket, the part of the symbolic heavenly character, with dark blue as the background, is arranged vertically on the image of the moon and the sky, the wind god, the standing Buddha, the golden-winged bird, the moon-day and other images, the golden-winged bird is the image of the double-titled snake, the shoulders and body of the Standing Buddha spew out flames, the wind god is half exposed to the clouds as a blowing wind, the image shaping has an exotic color, and the whole arrangement and combination are decorative.
Although the Guizi murals have a wide range of contents, the overall arrangement of the murals is closely related to the shape of the grottoes, and it is not difficult to find some laws if you look closely. Its frescoes are mainly concentrated in caves where worship can be performed, such as the Great Statue Cave, the Central Pillar Cave, and the Square Cave. The murals of the great statue cave are generally painted on the left and right walls, and the top is painted with the trick le fei tian; the center pillar cave and the square cave back room (the front room has now collapsed) The mural content is basically the same, most of the four walls paint bunsen stories, karma stories, Buddha stories, etc., the dome top paints lotte people, bodhisattvas, and the four corners paint the heavenly king, the flying sky or the thousand Buddhas. In terms of content and form, such a meticulous arrangement of the Guizi mural is also quite painstaking in the overall composition, and the diamond-like composition is particularly unique and novel, which has become a major creativity in the art of the Guizi mural. This neatly arranged cell composition resembling fish scales and brocade paints the Buddhist scriptures bunsheng and karma stories in the grid, combining movement and static, and complementing each other perfectly. In particular, the space on the limited wall is maximized, so that many Buddhist scripture stories can be displayed to the greatest extent possible, which is really a divine craftsman. In order to break the rigid limitations brought by the diamond grid, the painters also adopted the curve outline of the diamond grid edge, the contrast of color cold and warm, etc. to coordinate, in addition, countless strange flowers and trees, animals and birds were interspersed between the diamond grid, so that the picture was intertwined, and the birds and birds were interdependent, more interesting and endless.
Source: Ancient Villages Alliance