Text: Xinglan Shi said
Edited |
Combined with the latest research results of the cliff statue of Kongwang Mountain, the contents of the two niches K3 and K5 are analyzed, and it is believed that there is a close relationship with the main portrait X73, which reflects the content of early Taoist preaching, sacrifice and worship.
They are not consistent with the characters and stories of Buddha and Tao in the entire statue group, and they are typical depictions of urban life, and they are also an attempt to apply the stone carving and chiseling techniques of Han portraits in the late Eastern Han Dynasty to new materials and new themes.
In 1980 and 2000, there were many studies on the description of the clothing and household utensils of the portraits in the niche of Kongwangshan statue group, but there is still room for further discussion on the nature of their content and their internal relationship with the whole statue group.
K3 Image Contents
In the hall of the lecture K3 niche, the indoor mural depicts a scene of three people sitting under a tent (also known as a curtain and a drapery) to lecture and listen to the scriptures.
"Lianyungang Kongwang Mountain" describes this as follows: in the picture, a person on the west side is slightly eastward, sitting, exposing his right ear, wearing a martial crown, a needle-like beard on his chin, wearing a robe on his right hand, his right hand on his chest, and his left hand holding a hand.
The two people on the east side of the picture are basically dressed in the same posture, with their bodies and faces slightly facing west, their left ears exposed, their heads wearing scarves, and their right robes, with their hands folded in front of their chests.
The depiction of a tent shows that the three sitters are speaking in the hall, and the right robe is the style of Han (as opposed to the left jacket of the Hu people in the Western Regions). A person on the west side holds a toilet noodle in his left hand, which is a portable thing used by people in the Han Dynasty to screen the surface.
"Hanshu Zhang Chang Biography": "There is no prestige in the open, when the court will be dismissed, cross Zhangmatai Street, so that the imperial envoy will drive, and he will face the horse." Yan Shi's right note: "Noodles, so obstacles, cover fans and the like."
I don't want to see people, so I use this obstacle to get his face, so it is called a barrier, and it is also called a screen. "Figures holding casual faces are a common motif in Han portrait stones. The identity of the characters, judging from the "Hanshu Zhang Chang Biography", may have been used by the upper class officials in the early days, and the later it was, the more popular it became to the lower classes.
Mr. Tang Chi believes: "The fashion of holding noodles and Jinwu originated in the Western Han Dynasty and flourished in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties have come to an end. "In the Han portrait stone, many chariots and horses, worship, lectures, feasts, cooking, music and dance, the Queen Mother of the West, etc., are not uncommon to see the noodles and Jinwu.
The identities of the characters include noble people such as commanders, etc., as well as ordinary officials, samurai, honor guards and other lower-class figures. For example, there are 17 guards on the second layer of the portrait stone of Huangjialing in Teng County.
The samurai in the scene of the Yinan portrait stone octagonal bucket and the east side of the column body depicting the fight between man and beast, and the samurai in front of the car guided in the north wall riding in the middle room are both holding the face; The Hu figurines unearthed in Hengyang, Hunan Province also hold the noodles.
It can be seen that the face of the executive face in the late Eastern Han Dynasty portrait stone can not show the dignity of status. However, in K3, the figure on the west side wears a military crown, and the two people on the east side wearing a scarf on their heads, so it is certain that their status is higher than that of the two people on the east side.
The figures on the west side seem to be gesturing and speaking, and the two people on the east side are listening respectfully, so this scene can be called a "lecture map". "Lectures" is a common theme in Han portraits in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, and the images of Figure 50 "Lecture Notes" and Figure 59 "Lectures on the Scriptures" in the "Weishan Han Portrait Stone Anthology".
However, what kind of "scripture" is this figure on the west side talking about? This needs to be grasped from the overall picture of the cliff statue group. K3 is adjacent to X73, which is the largest and centrally located in the cliff statue group, and is slightly lower on its west side.
"Lianyungang Kongwang Mountain" believes that the combination of the Buddha statue X77 on the east side of X73 and the Hu statues X78 and X84 is not a symmetrical combination of the Buddha statue as the center and the two sides of the Hu people, which is not a worship relationship, but a primary and secondary relationship.
The combination of the Buddha statue and the Hu figure is not the central position, but around X73, scattered between the Hu people's figures, they are not the object of worship but subordinate to the main image, which is the description of the main image.
Confirm that X73 is Lao Tzu, and the image of K3 will become clear. The so-called preaching of the scriptures is to talk about the "scriptures" of Lao Tzu's Westernization of Hu. Know.
Lao Tzu's status in Taoism was gradually enlarged until he became the leader, which is related to the propagation of Huang Lao's doctrine since the Western Han Dynasty and the proliferation of the idea of longevity and immortality preached by Fang Xian Taoists.
The concepts of nobility and softness, truthfulness, negative yin and yang, and purity and non-action in the Tao Te Ching have been used and transformed by Taoism. Although Lao Tzu did not see any praise in the Taiping Sutra, some important Taoist ideas in the Tao Te Ching were absorbed by early Taoism.
The subsequent Zhang Daoling's "Lao Tzu Xiang'er Note" followed Lao Tzu and flaunted Lao Tzu as respect. At this time, the first spread of Buddhism to China will inevitably collide with China's newly founded indigenous religion, Taoism.
Chinese culture, which has strong vitality, adopts an attitude of tolerance and absorption towards this collision. Taoism realized that Buddhism's "saving desires and eliminating luxury" and "benevolence and generosity" have something in common with the self-advocating Lao Zhuang's learning, "taking weakness as the surface, and emptiness not destroying all things as the truth" ("Zhuangzi, Miscellaneous, Tianxia").
Buddhism's theory of "the rise and fall of spirits" and "reincarnation" and Taoism's propaganda of "Tao becomes biochemical and cicada metamorphoses and lives" (Bian Shao's "Lao Tzu Ming") can be integrated in the face of human life and death.
As a result, Lao Tzu sent a letter to the west of the valley "without knowing what to do", and in the early theoretical system of Taoism, he was finally able to "connect" with Buddhism from the West and the East. Therefore, in the late Eastern Han Dynasty when the "Huang Lao Futu and Ancestral Hall" was combined, the Buddha in the West was regarded as one of the Chinese Taoist gods, and it was the result of Lao Tzu, the "Oriental God", going to the West to turn into a Futu.
A brief review of the history of the early spread of Buddhism and Taoism in the late Eastern Han Dynasty shows that the story of "Lao Tzu Huahu" finally deduced from the fusion of these two religions has been known to believers as a kind of "common sense".
It is only natural that it is portrayed as a subject matter of preaching Taoism. The western figure in K3 holds a toilet face and raises it in the direction of X73, and its meaning is self-evident. His preaching is actually a scripture that tells the story of Lao Tzu's transformation into Hu.
The three people in the K3 niche are dressed in Han costumes, apparently to distinguish them from the many Hu people around X73 (excluding X74, which is also Han-style), and are represented as Han people from the Central Plains. Although the picture is not the content of Buddhism, but the scene of urban life, it is all a respect for the main statue of X75 Lao Tzu.
K5 content
After entering the altar, the scene of retreating from the banquet hall will look at K5. With the above inference, the content of the depiction on the back wall of the K5 niche chamber is easy to understand. "Lianyungang Kongwang Mountain" describes it like this:
The K5 stone wall is carved with a group of portraits with yin lines. Seven figures can be identified on both sides, and they are divided into two groups, east and west, with the plate placed in the middle of the figure as the boundary. There are 3 people in the western group.
The central figure sits on his knees, with a tall figure, wearing a three-beam Jinxian crown, his body and face are slightly eastward, with a needle-like beard under his chin, and he is wearing a robe with his right hand, his right arm slightly bent, and his left arm stretched forward, and his hand is exposed outside his sleeve.
Behind him are two small statues, both of which are slightly tilted to the east, wearing scarves and robes. The person in front of him has his right hand extended to his chest and his left hand is holding a stool. The latter is placed with his hands folded in front of his chest. There are four people in the eastern group.
The central figure is tall, with his left ear exposed, his head wrapped in a scarf, the corners of which are placed on both sides of the head, and he is dressed in a robe with a collar, and his hands are folded in front of his chest. Behind him sat a man, with an unrecognizable headdress, dressed in a robe with his right hand, his hands folded in front of his chest, his face slightly facing east, and his right ear exposed.
The figure on the east side of the figure is slightly westward, and the crown on the head is indistinguishable. Dressed in a collared robe, his hands are held in front of his chest, and the lower half of his body can no longer be distinguished.
The body and head of the easternmost figure are slightly tilted to the east, the crown is no longer visible, and he is dressed in a collared robe, with his right hand stretched out in front of him, and the lower part is indistinguishable except for some clothes.
There should still be an image of a person on the east side of the image, but unfortunately it is no longer recognizable. In the upper part of the figure is carved a curtain. The disc under it is three-legged, and a crank ladle is placed inside the statue. The characters in the two groups seem to be talking, while the characters in the east group are listening intently.
In the description of the people and objects mentioned above, it is clear that a canopy-like object in the upper right corner of the east side is missing, and between the object and the easternmost figure in the east group, it is possible that "there should not have been an image of the person, and it is now unrecognizable."
It's never portrayed. The "Grip of a Halve" mentioned in the description was previously considered by some researchers to be "Holding Jingo". Judging from the numerous pictures of portrait stones in the late Eastern Han Dynasty.
Yu Wen believes that it is appropriate to use the "holding Jinwu", and the three-legged plate, the three-legged statue and the inner ladle in the picture are also a common combination of utensils in the stone banquet and drinking scenes of Han portraits.
The K5 is located below and in close proximity to the X73, which is a very special location. Like the many Hu figures around X73 and the various characters that reflect the content of Buddhism, they are all interpreting the story of "Lao Tzu turning into Hu".
K5 is undoubtedly the city life of the Han Dynasty from the perspective of the characters' clothing and clothing, as well as the combination of banquet and drinking utensils. Like the meaning of K3, this kind of picture of urban life is not unrelated to the depiction of religious content around X73.
It is no accident that the picture of Lao Tzu's Hu story deducing into the integration of Buddhism and Taoism appears in the cliff statue of Kongwang Mountain, which should be analyzed in conjunction with the historical and cultural background of the late Eastern Han Dynasty.
Yu Weichao and Xin Lixiang pointed out: "Kongwang Mountain, where it is located, was the center of Taoist activities in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, the birthplace of the Taiping Sutra, the earliest program of Taoism in China, and the Taiping Taoist activity center that flourished in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. ”
They deduced that the carving time of the cliff statue group can be traced between 155 AD, when the Donghai Temple was repaired, and 184 AD, when the Yellow Turban Rebellion failed.
The Donghai Temple is dedicated to the Taoist temple of the Donghai Shenjun, a Taoist deity who ruled the East China Sea at that time. Judging from the existing rubbing fragments of the "Donghai Temple Tablet", it was engraved by the "Manjun" who was the minister of the East China Sea in the first year of Xiping in the Eastern Han Dynasty (172 AD).
The inscription designates the beginning of the construction of the Donghai Temple, and the altar and the auditorium are facing each other, and the temple is a kind of pious and reverent mentality that must be upheld in engaging in religious rituals, and the ritual is the procedure and order. It is further presumed that the central figure of K5 has a crown of Jin Xian Guan, indicating that his "status is at least not lower than that of a chief, or an ordinary nobleman".
K5 actually depicts the scene of retreating into the "auditorium" in the Donghai Temple after the ceremony of worshipping Lao Tzu at the shrine. The master talked eloquently and waved his hand; The listener sits on his back, intently poured. The other characters are also portrayed to set off this atmosphere.
epilogue
The market customs picture of the Han Dynasty portrait stone reflects the style of thick burial in the Han Dynasty, and the prominent figures carved the scenes of the city's customs life such as riding in the stone tomb and other places in the stone tomb wall after their deaths.
The K3 and K5 depictions of Kongwangshan statues are used to express the piety of Lao Tzu and serve the theme of "explanation for the main image", and the common powder of Han portrait stones with "iconological" significance is used.
This method of "carving" according to the aptitude is not only the need of actual construction, but also an innovation and breakthrough in the traditional techniques of Han portrait stone to deal with new themes, new materials and new picture layouts.
bibliography
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