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The ancient art of the Guzi area is of great significance to people's knowledge and understanding of the ancient cultural exchanges between the East and the West. The Guzi art style is very rich, with traces of many cultures, especially influenced by Greek art. Compared to the murals, not many of the sculptures have survived.
However, the sculptures in the Guzi area are relatively rich in genre in terms of styling style, production method, and subject matter. Moreover, multiple styles may appear in a single sculptural work. These have been widely discussed in the academic circles, especially the way portraits express clothing patterns and hair, which is also an effective way to identify and distinguish different styles.
In addition, the eyebrows, nose and expression on the statue, as well as the body form of the sculpture, are also the focus of style discussion. I won't repeat this wonderful study. This paper focuses on the eye shaping of statues in the Guizi region from the 4th to the 7th century, tries to sort out the evolution of eye shape, and combines the interrelationship between the Western Regions and the Central Plains to find out the historical reasons for the shape change.
The art of the turtle is based on Greek art, and the shape of the phoenix eye is rarely found in Greek art. Sculptures in the Guzi area have local characteristics, and Buddhist statues unearthed here usually have the following characteristics: "(Guzi style) round head, the forehead is flat and broad, the distance from the sideburns to the eyebrows is long, the two jaws are round, the lower jaw is short and deeply sunken into the two jaws, forming the so-called double chin, and the whole face is almost square." On such a round face, small and concentrated facial features are arranged, forming the characteristics of long eyebrows, large eyes, and high nose and thin mouth. ”
These artistic features are somewhat related to the facial features of the Kamezi people, such as the forehead. Xuanzang recorded in the "Records of the Western Regions of the Great Tang Dynasty", volume 1, "Quzhiguo (Guizi State)": "In its custom, the son who gave birth to a wooden head wanted his plaque. ”
The characteristics of the forehead are also corroborated by archaeological results, the female skull unearthed at the site of Subash, whose forehead was flattened, this change in shape is thought to be intentional, and confirms Xuanzang's claim.
Therefore, the human figures in the sculpture art of Guzi reflect the physical characteristics of the Guzi people to a certain extent. In addition, dating back to the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the depiction of the eyes of the Hu people in the Western Regions in the art of the Central Plains was mainly "oval" and "apricot shaped", and emphasized the characteristic of "deep eyes", which is consistent with the records of Han Dynasty historical books.
From the above aspects, Danfeng eyes should not appear on the appearance of the natives of Guzi. Danfengyan intervenes in the sculpture of the Guzi Buddha statue, which is largely influenced by the aesthetic changes of the locals. The factors for the formation of the aesthetic of Danfeng Eye in the Guizi area can probably be considered from the following three aspects: the influence of politics and culture in the Central Plains, craftsmen, and providers.
Generally speaking, the Western Regions play an important role in the eastern transmission of Buddhism, but it is undeniable that the culture of the Central Plains is fully capable of exporting to the west. After Guzixing Buddhism, he first believed in Theravada Buddhism, and by the time of the Tang Dynasty, he converted to Mahayana Buddhism. The Central Plains highly respected Mahayana Buddhism, and judging from this historical fact, the culture of the powerful Central Plains dynasty was enough to influence the official beliefs of the Guzi.
For the Guizi people, aligning their faith with such a powerful eastern power as the Tang Dynasty is an important means of consolidating relations between the two countries. In addition, in order to keep the Silk Road open, the Central Plains Dynasty almost did not give up its operation and control of the Western Regions since the Western Han Dynasty.
This control reached its peak in the Tang Dynasty, and in the twenty-second year of Zhenguan (648), Guo Xiao destroyed Guizi, and Tang moved the Anxi capital to Guizi City. Due to the rise of Tubo and Uighur, the four towns of Anxi were repeatedly contested. In the first year of his longevity (692), Wang Xiaojie "broke through Tubo, recaptured the four towns, placed the Anxi capital in Guizi, and sent troops to kill him".
From then until the end of the 8th century and the beginning of the 9th century, the Tang Dynasty maintained a military presence in the Western Regions, and for a total of more than 100 years, Guzi was the long-term seat of the Anxi Protectorate. Compared with the previous period, Guzi had become politically completely part of the Tang Dynasty's ruling system in the Western Regions, and was under the direct jurisdiction of the Central Dynasty. Generally speaking, the evolution of the Danfeng eye in the art of Kamezi can echo the history of the relationship between Guzi and the Central Dynasty.
There are two aspects worth considering the reasons for the emergence and formation of the Danfeng Eye structure in the Guzi area, that is, the relationship between the craftsman family and their creative style. Throughout the Xicheng, the group of professional artistic craftsmen may be mobile, generally organized by blood relatives, clans, and races, and the ethnic composition of craftsmen is also more complex, in addition to the locals and the Han people of the Central Plains, some craftsmen come from more distant west.
By interpreting the Baluvin inscriptions of the frescoes of the ruined temples in Milan, Stein found that some craftsmen may even have come from the Roman Empire; The inscription on the mural painting in Cave 212 of the Kizil Caves shows that the painter came from Syria.
From the point of view of sculptural creation, the Buddhist head of Tokuzsa is based on Gandharan art, or more precisely Greek art of the Hellenistic era, while the danfeng eye belongs to the visual element of the Central Plains. So, is Danfengyan an oriental element added to Greek plastic arts by craftsmen with Western backgrounds, or is it an oriental traditional shape expressed by Han craftsmen in the Central Plains after learning Greek methods?
Because art exchanges are basically two-way, we cannot rule out the above possibility: Han people practice Hufa, Hu people admire Han style. Artistic exchange is basically two-way, so the influence of the ethnic group of craftsmen in the Guzi area on the local aesthetic is difficult to estimate, and the root cause of the appearance of the eye shape of Danfeng eye should be found in the group of hired craftsmen.
Some cave Buddhist temples in the Guzi area were provided by local rulers, and Cave 69 of Kizil has images of the king and queen of Guzi, but the age is different, but it is certain that the craftsmen who built such Buddhist temples were generally requisitioned by the state; In addition, a certain number of dependents belong to the local powerful families. The relevant records of the Han people in the Western Regions of the Tang Dynasty are relatively rich, and the Han people who settled in the Western Regions in the 3rd and 4th centuries also have traces.
In the Gaochang area north of Guizi, such as the Astana ancient tomb group, there are a large number of Han cemeteries, from which Han Jian can be traced back to the end of the Western Jin Dynasty to the early years of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. In the fifteenth year of the former Liang Jianxing (327), Gaochang County was created by Zhang Jun and became the westernmost county in China at that time.
By studying relics such as tomb bottles in Xinjiang, Shiro Sekio argued: "The migration of Han ethnic groups from northern China to Hexi to the farther west was the premise for the establishment of Gaochang County. ...... Migration from the Hexi region is not only in Turpan, but even in Kuqa, Nya and other places farther west. ”
It should be a fact that the Han people settled in the Guizi area as early as the end of the 3rd century to escape the war, but the impact on the local population structure was not profound, far from the level of Gaochang area. From the 5th to the 7th century, Gaochang had four independent Han regimes.
It is conceivable that it is not a rare case for the Han people who settled in the Western Regions to become a local elite. The reason why the Han people are easy to become a powerful class in the Western Regions is that the productive forces and production system are advanced to a large extent. The Han people have a developed farming culture and are good at managing land; At the same time, they could also rely on the political advantages of the Central Plains Dynasty's border states to do business, and by the Tang Dynasty, these Han people who were doing business became a group of "travelers" that could not be ignored.
Mr. Ma Yong synthesized documents and inscriptions and other materials and said: "The ruling clique of Gaochang State, from the king to the local officials such as Qifu, all official positions and power were in the hands of a very small number of large families, which was exactly the same as the gate valve system that prevailed in the northern and southern dynasties in the mainland at that time, and almost all of these powerful clans who held a dominant position in Gaochang were migrated from the Liangzhou region. ”
The situation in the Guzi region may be similar to that in Gaochang, although the local kings are all from the local area, but there may also be some powerful Han Wangs in the Guzi region. Cave Buddhist temple sculptures generally have statues of patrons, and it is not surprising that the statues of the cave Buddhist temples are worshiped by the Han Wangs, and the Han characteristics of Danfeng eyes appear on their faces.
The family of the patrons may have had a significant impact on the application of Danfengyan in the Buddhist statues of Guizi, and the emergence of the politically and economically dominant Han Wangs in the 3rd and 4th centuries led to the new expression of Danphoenix in the sculpture art of the Guizi area. With the gradual strengthening of the political control exerted by the Central Plains Dynasty over the Western Regions, especially the Guzi, and the consequent sinicization, the Danfeng eye, a Han aesthetic element, was deeply implanted in the artistic genes of the Guzi.
The incongruity between the structure of the Danphoenix Eye on the statue and the whole may be attributed to technical and cost factors. Japanese scholar Hiroshi Haneda's discussion of Kamezi clay sculpture is worth referring to: "It can be seen that the root of clay image art is all in the mold, which must be noted, because this art has an important phenomenon, that is, it can preserve the ancient style for a longer time than painting." Comparing clay statues and paintings from the same time and place, the common painting style has changed, while the clay statues still have the old style, and the two are out of step. ...... Because the same mold can be made into many identical images, and it can be used for a long time. Even if it is broken, it is possible to turn a new mold from the already formed image, in which there is much less room for novelty than painting. ”
Hyung Haneda explained the problem of the asynchrony of Kamezi sculpture and painting styles. From his discussion, we can also make the following inferences: before the formation of the Guzihan people, the local style of statue was based on the Greek art model; When the Han people had the strength to worship or even excavate caves and Buddhist temples, the craftsmen in charge of making the statues faced two problems: first, the image of the patron should reflect the characteristics of the Han people, and second, the cost of re-molding.
Therefore, from the point of view of practice, the craftsmen adopted a compromise method, that is, on the basis of the original mold, the eyes were changed to the most characteristic Danfeng eyes of the Han race. The clay style update was relatively lagging behind, and after Danfengyan intervened in the Guzi sculpture, there was a long-term incongruity of the head, face and facial features, and a series of subsequent adjustments