In 1955, archaeologists found the tomb of a Tang Dynasty official in Xi'an, and two epitaphs were unearthed in the tomb. One of the epitaphs has become illegible. Another epitaph, however, shows that this tomb was a joint burial tomb of Su Yu and his wife Ma Shi of the Tang Dynasty.
What is even more surprising to scholars is that this epitaph is not only in Chinese, but also has an ancient Persian script, Pahlavi. After interpretation, the Chinese character part of the inscription has about forty-four characters, which translates into the vernacular as:
Ma Shi, the wife of Su Yu, died in the fifteenth year of Xiantong (874 AD) at the age of 26.
Later, scholars interpreted the Pahlavi script and found a slight discrepancy with the Chinese text:
The tomb of the deceased of this royal family and the daughter of Su Yu, the chief of the cavalry of the Zuo Shen Army, the 26-year-old, may you return to the arms of the angel of light, Ahula Mazda, and enjoy peace and tranquility in heaven.
First, scholars concluded that the tomb owner Su Yu and his wife Ma Shi were not Han Chinese, but descendants of the Persian royal family. If you want to say, Su Yu may still be a Persian prince. Some Western scholars believe that Su Yu is a transliteration of the name "suren" of the Sassanid royal family.
During the reign of Emperor Taizong of Tang, the Sassanid Persian Empire, a great power in Western Asia, was attacked by the Arabs and was repeatedly defeated and almost destroyed. For this reason, the King of Persia appealed to Tang Taizong Li Shimin for help, but Tang Taizong did not agree because of the long road.
(Thanks to actor Jin Liang for playing the Persian prince Belus in the CCTV documentary "The Great Wall")
After that, the Persian prince Belus went to Tang three times to ask for help, but the emperor at the time, Emperor Gaozong of Tang, chose to refuse, but only crowned him as the king of Persia, turning the Persian region into the Persian governor's palace of the Tang Dynasty. However, by then the Persian homeland had been occupied by the Arabs, and Belus was no more than a light rod commander. Eventually, Belus had to return to Chang'an from the Khorasan region and became a vassal of the Tang Dynasty.
Since then, the last Persian royal family and its followers have begun to live and multiply in Chang'an, forming a unique Persian community and forming strange customs. One of the most unique is their Zoroastrian beliefs.
Zoroastrianism, also known as Zoroastrianism, believes that the world is made up of both light and darkness, so they worship Ahula Mazda, the god of light, and also worship his symbol, the holy fire. The Ming Religion as we know it is a branch of Zoroastrianism.
After Belus entered the Tang Dynasty, he established a number of Zoroastrian temples in Chang'an and passed them on. However, during the reign of Emperor Wuzong of Tang, these Zoroastrian temples were implicated in the "Extermination of Buddhism" and almost all of them were closed. However, judging from the text of Su Yu's epitaph, the descendants of these Persian remnants still retained their Zoroastrian faith and still worshipped the god of light, Ahula Mazda.
However, it is worth mentioning that scholars have also interpreted a rather heavy message from the inscriptions in both languages.
According to the above bold characters, we should find that the Han and Pahlavi inscriptions are not very different, and the biggest difference between the two is that the Chinese part says that Ma Shi is Su Yu's wife, while the Pahlavi part says that Ma Shi is Su Yu's daughter, what is going on?
At first, Chinese scholars thought it was the inscription that was written incorrectly. However, ito Yoshiki, a Japanese scholar familiar with Persian history, believes that the inscription is not wrong: according to Zoroastrian customs, Ma shi is likely to be both Su Yu's daughter and his wife.
In Zoroastrianism, there is a very peculiar custom called holy marriage. Zoroastrianism believes that marriage between close relatives helps to ensure the nobility of the bloodline. The closer you are by blood, the more religious your faith becomes. In the case of the Sassanid Persian emperors, Ardashir I married his own sisters, while Shapur I and Shapur II both married their own daughters. According to the Chinese history book "History of the North", there are also records that "(Persia) mostly took sisters as wives and concubines, and married themselves".
Therefore, we can boldly assume that even after living in the Tang Dynasty for nearly 200 years, the descendants of the Persian royal family in Chang'an still maintained the tradition of internal blood marriage.
Some people have to ask, since Su Yu and Ma Shi are father and daughter, why are they not the same surname? Scholars say that MaShishi is actually a transliteration of the common Persian female name "masis", and she is not surnamed Ma!
It is worth noting that in the Tang Dynasty, which advocated etiquette, the marriage of father and daughter and other close relatives was an extremely serious crime, known as "civil unrest", which was one of the traditional "ten evil" crimes. The "ten evils" are major crimes that are often forgiven, so there is a saying that "the ten evils are not forgiven".
Therefore, in order to hide their eyes, Persian descendants wrote two written epitaphs for Su Yu and his wife Ma Shi, after all, few Tang Dynasty people knew Pahlavi. If it is found that he has married his daughter, Su Yu may not be able to eat and go away, and the light will be exiled and the future will be ruined; the heavy will be beheaded, and the small life will be finished.
Therefore, Su Yu must be thankful, fortunately the Tang Emperor did not understand Persian.