The deer in the frescoes sometimes serve as mascots and sometimes as mythical animals

Written by: Fu Hualin

Photo: Sun Zhijun

In the Dunhuang Grottoes murals, deer sometimes appear as a pictorial background, sometimes as an anthropomorphic, declaring Buddhist principles in the form of stories, sometimes as mascots and symbolic places, sometimes as part of the decorative pattern, and sometimes as a divine animal. This image of the double deer is derived from Cave 76 of the Mogao Grottoes, a pattern unique to the Song to Western Xia periods in the Dunhuang Grottoes. The overall appearance is very obvious in the Polo style, that is, in the 11th to 13th centuries, the Uighur region of Tibet in China was influenced by the Buddhist art of the East Indies Andrea Dynasty and mixed artistic characteristics. In the image, the Dharma wheel is painted on the front under the Buddha's seat, and two deer kneel on both sides of the inscription, showing the scene when the Buddha first spoke in Luyeyuan.

The image of the deer on the Grassland Silk Road, which has been concerned by scholars from many countries, is derived from more than 600 deer stones discovered at the end of the 19th century. Deer stone is named because most of them are carved with patterned deer patterns, most of the deer stone is rectangular erected stone stele, 2-4 meters high, the distribution area from Hulunbei in Inner Mongolia in the east, across the Mongolian plateau, west to The Russian Tuva and South Siberia, China's Xinjiang Altay region, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan steppe, Russia's Black Sea coast and South Ural Mountains are also sporadic distribution. It was made around the 13th to 6th centuries BC.

Scholars have different opinions on the meaning and function of deer stones, either believing that they are funeral monuments, totem poles, and sacrificial columns; or because the deer stones are facing east, they are the product of sacrifice to the sun. Coincidentally, ancient Greek mythology mentions that when the Mycenaean king Eurisius was in trouble with Hercules, he asked him to catch deer alive to prove that he was a hero. In the Sumerian civilization, the southern coastal city of Elidu in Mesopotamia was worshipped by Enki, who was both a god of water and a god of wisdom, and his ship was called "Azbu Buck".

The artwork based on the deer is a testimony to the exchange between nomadic and farming cultures. The wrong gold and silver bronze tiger deer eater seat excavated from the Warring States Tomb in Pingshan County, Hebei Province, the shape of the deer is very similar to the Ordos bronze ware on the grassland. Among the large number of Han Dynasty splendid fabrics excavated from the tomb of the Noyan Ula Xiongnu near Ulaanbaatar, there is a pattern of gods riding deer embroidered with colored silk. Unearthed in 1981 in Inner Mongolia under the Joint Banner of Maoming'an in Darkhan, Inner Mongolia, the Minotaur Antler Golden Horn resembles a ox-head mask used by shamans for sacrifice, but the upper part of the mask is a tree-like antler, and a gold leaf is attached to the top of each antler difference.

The grassland Silk Road and the Oasis Silk Road are abounding with deer-related items, such as the Han Dynasty Yuan and the First Year (84 AD) deer pattern brocade bag excavated from the Niya site. In addition, there are a large number of deer that appear on gold and silver utensils, and the antlers are "flower horns" and "meat mushroom tops". Unearthed in the Chifeng region of Inner Mongolia, the Tang Dynasty deer pattern gold and silver plate, its horn is the "meat zhiding", the same as the deer horn system on the gilded deer pattern three-legged silver plate treasured in the Shocangyuan collection in Japan, while the deer pattern gold and silver plate in the same period in Central Asia's Sogdian region is mostly used as flower horns, such as the deer on the OS136 Sogdian silver bowl published by Mr. Marsak, an archaeologist in Central Asia. It can be seen that the shape of the "flower horn" deer on the gold and silver ware belongs to the foreign import, and the "meat zhiding" is the embodiment of the localization of the Tang Dynasty, and spread to Japan with the gold and silver ware.

From Central Asia to qinghai Dulan hot water cemetery and even the Central Plains, tang dynasty deer pattern silk fabrics have been unearthed. Among them, the deer in the large deer pattern brocade of the Tuanqiao Lianzhu is small and strong, the limbs are slender, the antlers are huge and three-pronged, and the deer body has geometric markings - which is very similar to the red deer in West Asia.