Among the many museums in Xi'an, in addition to the Provincial Museum, the Forest of Steles Museum is my favorite museum.
"The sea is dry and rotten" was once our longest imagination of time. When the ancients carved words into stone, when people hoped that their stories would be remembered forever, traveling through time seemed to become a "breeze".
The Forest of Steles Museum in Xi'an preserves thousands of rare stele stones since the Eastern Han Dynasty, and each stele here is like a door to time, and the sounds of thousands of years ago are heard in the ears, including the clanging of chisels and the sound of pleasant poetry chanting.
There is the exquisite art of calligraphy, but also the aesthetic charm of stone carving, is China's ancient stele time of the earliest, the largest number of art treasure house, but also the earliest museum created in Shaanxi, to collect, display and study the historical inscriptions, epitaphs and stone carvings.
Yesterday's everyone, today's art, Xi'an Forest of Steles is undoubtedly a calligraphy and cultural edification, attracting many calligraphy lovers. But today it is not the original calligraphy of Yan Zhenqing, Ouyang Qing or Liu Gongquan that I want to share today, but the Six Juns of Zhaoling.
Zhaoling Liujun, presumably everyone will stop to watch, taste, and trace back to the history of the stone carvings, they are like a monument to the galloping, through the millennium, galloping to the present, leaving us unlimited reverie, but also let us have a deeper thinking about history.
The six horses of Zhaoling were named "Qingxiao", "Shivachi", "White Hoofed Wu", "Teller", "Salu Purple", and "Fist Hair". Among them, the two horses of "Salu Purple" and "Fist Hair" were lost overseas and are now stored in the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania in the United States.
Zhaoling is a joint burial mausoleum of Emperor Taizong of Tang and Empress Wende's Eldest Sun, and the six horses of Zhaoling were originally symmetrically arranged in the eastern and western corridors of Xuanwu Gate at the northernmost point of the mausoleum, with the horse's heads facing the altar to the south. Their owner was Emperor Taizong of Tang, Li Shimin.
The war horses followed their masters on the battlefield, and the Teller Horse was taken by Li Shimin when he pacified Song Jingang; Qingxiao, Shivachi, and Saluzi were all mounts and warhorses when Li Shimin fought in luoyang tiger prison. The fist was used by Li Shimin when he pacified Liu Heimin; the white hoof was also the warhorse used by Li Shimin in the southern conquest of the northern war.
In order to commemorate his closest partner and most loyal comrade-in-arms in the past, when Li Shimin built the Zhaoling Tomb for himself, he was said to have ordered Yan Liben to paint the image of a war horse, and ordered Yan Lide to carve it, hoping that the BMW would accompany him throughout the ages.
The stone carvings of the Six Juns of Zhaoling are all bluestone textures, using high relief techniques, with simple lines and accurate shapes, vividly showing the posture and personality of the warhorses and the scenes of arrows and arrows in the war, and also fully displaying the prosperous style of the Tang Dynasty.
Quietly staring, time and space traveled, the battlefield battle seemed to be in front of me, these six warhorses were born and died with the emperor, flew across the mountains and seas of the empire, crossed the wilderness of time, and stood in front of my eyes. Each stone carving is about 204 centimeters wide, about 172 centimeters high and about 40 centimeters thick, and is one of the important cultural relics of the Forest of Steles Museum.
In 2013, the four horses of "Qinglu", "Shivachi", "White Hoof" and "Teller" were listed by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage in the "Catalogue of Cultural Relics Prohibited from Exporting for Exhibition". Reuniting with Sijun also makes our history and time more complete.
According to the data, in 1914, when the Frenchman Golanz was preparing to strip and smuggle, he was found and stopped by local farmers. But the two horses still fell into the hands of the warlords, shipped to Lu Qinzhai, an antique dealer in Beijing, and sold abroad for $125,000.
This famous cultural relics dealer of the Republic of China sold more than 500,000 pieces of treasures, including portrait bricks from the Han Wudi period, bronze Buddhas from the Sui Dynasty Emperor period, stone lions from the Tang Gaozong period, and handmaiden stone carvings from the Tang Xuanzong period, which made people today regret and hate. Ironically, he also became the "internationally renowned" antique dealer of the 20th century.
In addition to "Salu Purple" and "Fist Hair", the other four Juns also almost lost overseas. In 1918, the American Bi Shibo carved the four stones into several pieces for easy transportation, and was found and intercepted by the local people during transportation. This time, the four juns did not fall into the hands of others, but were transported to the Shaanxi Library for preservation.
In order to reunite the "Six Juns", in April 1961, the stone carving craftsman Xie Dade copied the "Salu Purple" and "Fist and Hair" based on photos and rubbings, and together with the existing Four Juns were displayed in the "Xi'an Stone Carving Art Room" of the Forest of Steles Museum.
If you go to Xi'an in the future, you must go to the Forest of Steles Museum to see, while appreciating the calligraphy of the saints, this group of Zhaoling Liujun is also worth stopping and appreciating.