▲Yungang Grottoes statue
When visiting the grotto,
We always look or lens at beautiful statues,
And ignore the broken, unfinished parts.
The giant Buddha did not speak,
How do you know the process of carving these statues?
Unfinished niches,
It is a key to decryption.
What is launched in this issue is,
President of Yungang Research Institute,
Mr. Hang Kan, Professor of the School of Archaeology and Archaeology of Peking University, wrote:
Silent Buddha:
Statues of the Lord and Servants in the Yungang Grottoes
An archaeology classmate once sent me a text message, to the effect that she took a class in the history department when she was an undergraduate, and a teacher directly said that archaeology is to work for history, which caused an uproar in the classroom, so she remembered this matter very clearly, and she asked art history not to regard archaeology as a part-time worker, right?
I didn't reply to her text, but kept thinking about how to answer her questions. Because this is not a question she would ask alone. Until recently, when I took students to survey and map the Yungang Grottoes, because the central cave group of the Yungang Grottoes was being repaired, we had the opportunity to investigate some unfinished cave niches, which reminded me of the student's question.
I think we can answer this question with the example of the Yungang Grottoes Survey.
Yungang Grottoes is located on the north bank of the Shili River, 15 kilometers west of Datong City, Shanxi, on the cliff face of the south side of Wuzhou Mountain, stretching for about 1 kilometer from east to west. Most of the grottoes were excavated in the middle and late period of the Northern Wei Dynasty, and their "niches are large, more than 20 feet high, can withstand 3,000 people, face statues, poor and beautiful, niches are different, and terrifying people".
▲Cave No. 20 of Yungang
The Yungang Grottoes were the earliest royal grottoes excavated in the eastern region of Xinjiang after the introduction of Buddhism to China, and were large grottoes excavated by the Northern Wei imperial family that ruled Northern China at that time and concentrated the manpower, material and financial resources of the whole country. The new model it created and continuously developed, the scope and length of its influence in Northern China, is unmatched by any other grotto, and is of great significance in the process of the eastern transmission of Buddhist art and the sinification of grotto art.
Therefore, the academic circles at home and abroad have paid great attention to the Yungang Grottoes. Through years of efforts, scholars have established the basic framework system for the staging of the Yungang Grottoes.
At present, the consensus view on the staging of the Yungang Grottoes is that it can be divided into three phases, the first of which is the so-called Tanyao Five Caves. The second phase of the cave is generally believed to have been excavated before Emperor Xiaowen moved the capital to Luoyang. The third phase of the cave was excavated during the period from the relocation of the capital Luoyang to the Zhengguang period of the Northern Wei Dynasty.
The five phase II caves in Yungang Central District, numbered 9 to 13, are heavily carved and decorated, and are known as "Wuhua Cave". The outer walls of these five caves are heavily weathered, the front cornices of Caves 9 and 10 are exquisitely carved, the south-facing side of the front cornices is weathered, and the north-facing (facing inward) side is much better preserved.
When we were in Yungang, one day there was heavy rain, and the rain flowed down the front eaves of Caves 9 and 10, and the dividing line formed was exactly the dividing line between the broken side facing south and the well-preserved side facing north, indicating that the damage caused by natural factors such as wind and rain to the Yungang Grottoes was obvious.
In order to alleviate the natural erosion of "Wuhua Cave", the state decided to build a protective cave eaves in front of the cave, and the scaffolding erected in front of the cave for the implementation of the protection project gave us the opportunity to carefully observe and record some relics that had not been noticed before.
▲Yungang Central District maintenance project construction photos
The small cave numbered 13-29 on the east side of the open window of Cave 13 is a niche from below, but it is actually a square flat-roofed cave, and a small part of the front wall that remains in the southwest corner above the cave can still be seen. There are altars on the three walls of the cave, and there are five statues in high relief on the altars. The main wall is a seated statue, and only a rough billet has been chiseled out.
The east and west walls are one Buddha and one bodhisattva, and the two standing Buddhas near the cave gate are slightly taller and have been completed. The two bodhisattvas near the lord have their body contours and clothing patterns chiseled out, and their faces are still rough. The Lord's degree of completion is the worst, and only the outline is chiseled out.
▲Statue on the west wall of Cave 13-29
Yungang also has some unfinished niches, and the degree of completion varies. Through the statues of these cave niches, we can basically restore the excavation process of the Yungang Grottoes. These processes are very important for us to understand the problems related to the excavation of grottoes that have attracted little attention from the academic community in the past, as well as to re-understand the repair and modification of the Yungang Grottoes, and then to understand their original layout and design.
Caves 13-29 reproduce the carving method and statue order of the time more completely, and the degree of completion of the statue in the cave is gradually reduced from the mouth of the cave to the main wall. At the door, the two figures stand in high flesh buns, the face is oval, wearing a belt-style robe, and the shoulders are relatively thin. The right hand casts the Fearless Seal, the left hand casts the Wish Seal, and stands on the low altar, and the statue has all been carved and chiseled.
The most information about the process of preserving the statue is the two bodhisattvas at the inner end of the side wall, which are divided into six parts, such as the crown, head, neck, upper body, lower body, and base altar, and the components of each part, such as the forehead hair and ears of the head, the arms, palms, and draperies of the upper body, the necklace on the chest and the outline of the skirt on the lower body have been carved out, and the traces of engraving are regularly distributed.
Combined with the completed statues of the same kind in the same period, it can be judged that the original plan here was to carve a statue of a bodhisattva with a high crown, a collar, a dust in the left hand, and a drapery crossed in front of the abdomen.
What is particularly rare is that the high crown of the bodhisattva statue, the face and body still retain the vertical central axis and the horizontal line that is almost perpendicular to it, and the crown of the bodhisattva and several horizontal lines on the face are used to control the position of the bun, eyes, and nose tip.
▲ Cave 13-29 West Wall Bodhisattva
Schematic diagram of control lines and sections of the head
This line of control is found on the faces of both bodhisattvas and seated Buddhas, especially the bodhisattva statue on the west side wall, and is exactly the same as the surveying and mapping line we set up when mapping Buddha statues in the past, thus answering the question of how the Yungang Grotto statue controls the proportions of each part.
▲ The control line of the bodhisattva's head on the west wall of Cave 13-29
The worst degree of completion is the sitting Buddha on the front wall, which is only chiseled out of the blank shape, and the whole is divided into three sections: head, body and seat (including legs). Among them, the head has left an oval stone block, which has not yet been carved; the body has been chiseled out of the contours and gestures, and the stone material attached to the Buddha's robe has been reserved for the arm; and the seat has roughly chiseled the boundary between the Buddha's legs and the base. The chisel marks on the stone blank are 3 cm apart, oblique, rough processing, and the components of the statue have not yet been distinguished.
▲The statue of the main statue on the main wall of Cave No. 13-29
The faces of the main statue of the main wall of Cave No. 13-29 and the statues of Buddha and Bodhisattva on the east and west walls reflect the different processes of facial processing of the Yungang statue.
Only one rough blank is chiseled out of the face of the main figure on the front wall, and this rough blank should be what the literature calls "face pu".
Liu Xun described the excavation process of maitreya buddha in the "Stone Statue Stele of Shicheng Temple of King Jian'an of Liang Jian'an" in Zhejiang Province, saying that in the fourth year of Qi Yongming in the Southern Dynasty (486 AD), senior monks and monks traveled here and saw that there was a buddha flame on the north stone wall of the temple, so "I wish to build Maitreya, respect a thousand feet, so I sit in the shape of ten zhang... Be diligent, allow for persuasion, and accumulate years, and only become a face."
It can be seen that the excavation process is carried out from top to bottom, and the first chisel is the "face pu". From the processing of the "face pu" of the main deity to the completion of the face carving of the Buddha, the process of carving the face of the bodhisattva has been experienced in the middle.
The head of the bodhisattva is processed into an egg-shaped blank with an upper part slightly smaller than the lower part, and compared with the completed Buddha's face, it can be found that it has a cross-sectional outline from the forehead to the center of the eyebrow and the bridge of the nose, and the position of the bottom edge of the chin has also been determined. The longitudinal and horizontal auxiliary lines on the round blank define the proportion of each detail of the face, and the next step is to refer to these auxiliary lines and chisel the excess stone on the stone blank. The facial features are carved by subtraction.
▲Schematic diagram of the control line and section of the Buddha statue on the west wall of Cave No. 13-29
That is to say, the Unoka statue does not use the raised facial features to represent the face, but the outer contour line from the forehead to the chin is roughly designed in an arc, and then the facial features are expressed by subtracting the facial stone.
This kind of statue face made of straight knife method can be described as "cutting gold and cutting jade", which is significantly different from the Buddha statue carved by the round knife method in the Tang Dynasty.
The Buddha and Bodhisattva statues on the west wall are not far apart, and when you touch the face of this completed and processed statue with both hands, this concave and convex processing technique can be clearly conveyed to the human senses, and this carving technique cannot be seen when changing from a three-dimensional three-dimensional statue on the spot to a two-dimensional picture.
There is also an interesting phenomenon in the process of carving the head of the Statue of Yungang, that is, the heads of many of the main figures are actually carved and chiseled at the end. For example, in the main statue of the west wall of No. 13-30, the double-collar drooping robe has been carved, but there are still regular chisel marks above the neck. From this trace, it can be seen that the face of this Buddha statue was not destroyed later, but was planned to be left behind after the engraving of the cloth pattern was completed and then carefully carved.
Similar cases are not isolated, such as the Buddha statue on the front wall of Cave 5-36, the clothes have been polished, but the hands and head have not been processed; for Example, Cave 40-4, only the head of the lord and the attendant in the cave is not completed.
The head directly shows the image of the statue, which is the most difficult to carve in the statue, and the person who is qualified to carve the head of the lord should be the most skilled craftsman.
From the above information, we speculate that the time when the head of the cave master is completed may be the time when the entire cave is completed. Specific to the Yungang Grottoes, the time recorded in the literature for some emperors to visit the Wuzhou Mountain Grotto Temple is related to the final completion of the statue of the main body of a large cave.
The unfinished niches preserved in the Yungang Grottoes, together with the re-chiseling of the ruins and the breaking of the relationship, provide us with a lot of useful information for in-depth research on the Yungang Grottoes. For example, in terms of the size of the main figure of the Yungang Grottoes, the largest statue is not in the five caves of Tanyao in the middle of Yungang, but in the 5th cave. Cave 5 and Tan Yao Five Cave are close in shape, both are horseshoe-shaped caves, the main figure occupies most of the area of the cave, the theme is mainly the Three Buddhas, such a large statue of this scale must have been excavated by the royal family.
In the Yungang Phase II Grottoes, only the above characteristics of Cave 5 can be connected with the Five Caves of Tan Yao in the first phase. The problem is that whether from the main figure or from the two Buddha statues on the east and west walls, the Three Buddha statues are all late in Yungang, so in the past it was generally believed that Caves 7 and 8 were the earliest, Followed by Caves 9 and 10, and Caves 5 and 6 were close to the time of moving the capital to Luoyang. However, the flame pattern on the backlight of the 5th Cave Lord still belongs to the typical style of the first period.
▲Cave No. 5 of Yungang
Judging from the carving process of the Yungang statue seen in the current investigation, the statue in a cave is often completed first with decorative patterns and secondary statues, and then the main statue is completed, and the main statue is the final completion of the face of the lord.
Therefore, the current appearance of Cave 5 to the world may be left over from the time of the re-excavation after the suspension of work for some reason. Cave 5 was excavated early and was not consistent with the completion time. Therefore, it is speculated that the 5th cave was a grotto excavated for Emperor Xianwen, but due to the rapid failure of the Xianwen group in the political struggle with the Feng Empress Group, it was stopped again, and it was completed again in the later period of Emperor Xiaowen's JupingCheng.
How a grand project such as the Yungang Grottoes was excavated at that time is not clearly documented in the literature. Due to the ancient Chinese contempt for craftsmanship, the records of grotto excavation in the literature are sketchy, but by conjugating these fragments, we can still know the approximate process of ancient grotto excavation.
The first thing to do to excavate the grotto is to "cut the mountain", that is, to trim the sloped natural mountain into a flat cliff surface. The Wei Shu Shi Lao Zhi, when recording the excavation of the Longmen Grottoes, said:
"At the beginning of the Jing Ming Dynasty, sejong zhao grand chancellor Qiu Qing Bai Zhen Zhun Dynasty Jinglingyan Temple Grottoes, in Luonan Yique Mountain, for Gao Zu and Empress Wenzhao Empress Dowager Camp Grottoes No. 2. At the beginning of the initial construction, the roof of the cave went to the ground three hundred and ten feet. In the first two years, the mountain was cut twenty-three times. To the great Chang QiuQing King's hostage, it is said that the mountain is too high, it is difficult to work hard, and it is difficult to move down, and it is one hundred feet to the ground, one hundred and forty feet north and south. In Yongping, Zhongyin Liu Teng played the first grotto of Sejong Restoration, and all were three. From the first year of Jing Ming to June of the fourth year of Zhengguang, it has worked hard for 82,366. ”
Due to the height difference, the "chopping mountain" also needs to build scaffolding similar to the boardwalk.
Liu Xun described the excavation process of the Xinchang Giant Buddha in the "Stone Statue Stele of Shicheng Temple of King Jian'an of Liang Jian'an": "Construct the boardwalk ... The vertebrae chisel on the xia, the cutting stone sprinkled on the cloud table, the grandeur of the fate, the great work of the progenitor. It is explained that the tools used to excavate the grottoes are traditional tools such as vertebrae and chisels, which require "cutting stones" and "constructing a boardwalk" for construction.
The remains of the "chopping mountain" in the grotto project are generally easy to be noticed on the cliff wall that opens the cave, in fact, along with the "chopping mountain" work, three "chopping mountain" wall surfaces will be formed, which are the "chopping mountain" side wall on both sides of the main wall, and the "chopping mountain" platform on the lower edge of the main wall. The "Chopping Mountain" platform provides a basic working surface for further opening of the cave, and some "Chopping Mountain" platforms become the ground for later visitors.
▲ Traces of "chopping mountains" near Cave 16
Schematic diagram of the relationship with cave excavation
In previous work, researchers have paid attention to the more exquisitely made caves, but paid less attention to the broken caves, the large number of broken relationships in the grottoes, the unfinished niches and the construction ruins.
In fact, the complete recording of all the cave information makes the study of the cave temple on a scientific basis, which is neither completed by a simple literature study, nor is it different from the analysis of previous art history.
Wenbo Shanxi Hangkan Professor special article
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About the Author
Hang Kan, born in May 1965, is a doctoral supervisor. He has worked for the Shanghai Museum and the Shanghai Municipal History Museum, served as the dean of the School of Archaeology and Literature of Peking University, and the vice president of Shanxi University. He is currently the president of Yungang Research Institute.
His research interests include Song and Yuan archaeology, Buddhist archaeology, and cultural heritage. He has published more than 40 papers such as "Local City Sites in the Song and Yuan Dynasties", "Re-study of the Map of the Upper River of the Qingming Dynasty", "The Time of the Collapse of the West Wall of the 20th Cave of Yungang and the Initial Layout of the Five Caves of Yungang", and published "Tokyo Dream of the Qingming Upper River Map", "Fax of Chinese Civilization", two Song scrolls and Liaojin Yuan volumes, "Forever Three Gorges" and so on.
BY| Meicheng for a long time
Wen | Hangkan
Picture | Yungang Research Institute Misei Inuyaku
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Edited | Shanxi Evening News All-Media Editor Nanlijiang
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