01
The Forest of Stone Steles Museum in Xi'an is a famous museum in China, and its collection of inscriptions and stone carvings is the largest in the country. The thousands of precious tablets from the Han Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty are carved like a forest, indeed just like the name of the museum.
Among the treasures of the town hall of the Forest of Steles Museum is the famous "Zhaoling Liujun". That is an outstanding representative of ancient Chinese stone carvings, and Mr. Lu Xun also called it the unprecedented ancients.
The so-called Zhaoling Six Horses are the six horses carved in stone in front of the Tomb of Zhaoling in the Tang Dynasty. In 636, Empress Changsun of Emperor Taizong of Tang died and was buried in Liquan, Shaanxi, and her tomb was called Zhaoling. After the death of Emperor Taizong of Tang, Zhaoling became an imperial tomb.
This mausoleum built on the mountain was originally very simple, but later when it was expanded, Li Shimin ordered the famous painters and builders Yan Lide and Yan Liben, who were excellent in painting and craftsmanship, to draw drawings of six horses, and then carved accordingly, and there were six bluestone relief stone carvings on the east and west sides of the altar.
The Zhaoling Liujun is beautifully shaped, with smooth lines, rounded and lifelike, which is a masterpiece of the world. Li Shimin also personally wrote a hymn for each horse, written by the calligrapher Ouyang Qian, and engraved on the upper corner of each relief, making this set of stone carvings complement each other and are more precious.
The Yan brothers were not mortal either, they were originally the grandsons of Emperor Wu of Northern Zhou. The two were not only good at painting and craftsmanship, but also in charge of building palaces and mausoleums and other projects in the Tang Dynasty, and also had a high level, and later both served as Shangshu of the Ministry of Works, and Yan Liben also became a minister.
02
The six horses of Zhaoling were actually the six horses that Li Shimin rode at different times, and they also symbolized Li Shimin's lifelong conquest experience.
The first horse on the east side of the corridor, named Teller, is a strong horse with a long belly and calves, and is a sweat-blooded BMW. "Teller" is the official name of the Turks, and this horse was most likely given by the son of a Certain Turkic Khan. In the battle with Song Jingang, the leader of the peasant rebel army at the end of the Sui Dynasty, Li Shimin once rode a Telesper and pursued the enemy for more than 200 miles a day and night, engaging dozens of battles, and finally completely annihilating the enemy army. In this pursuit operation, Li Shimin did not unark for three days, and his horse did not unload his saddle.
The second jun, named Qingxiao. The word "Qing" here does not refer to color, but to the harmonic pronunciation of the word "Qin", which comes from the Great Qin State, that is, the Roman Empire. When Li Shimin and Dou Jiande were engaged in battle at Luoyang Wugaoguan, he rode on a green horse and led an elite cavalry to rush into the opponent's 20-mile-long army, charging left and right. The Green Horse was hit five times in the chest and was seriously injured. The green horses in the stone carvings are galloping, showing the scene of charging into battle.
The third horse, named Shivachi. It means red war horse, from Persia. The Shivachi on the stone carving flew through the air and was hit by five arrows in the buttocks, all of which were wounded in the battlefield charge. After Qingxiao was wounded during the battle against Dou Jiande at Tiger Prison Pass, Li Shimin replaced him with the Persian name Offivachi and continued the fierce battle. Finally, he won a great victory, captured Dou Jiande, and initially completed the great cause of the unification of the Tang Dynasty.
The first horse in the west side of the corridor is named Salu Purple. Also a Turkic horse, meaning brave purple horse. During the Battle of Luoyang Mountain with Wang Shichong, Li Shimin was killed by an arrow on his mount. On the stone carving, in front of the horse, there was a samurai in a battle robe who was drawing arrows, which was Li Shimin's attendant Qiu Xinggong. Li Shimin rode forward single-handedly and fell into the enemy's encirclement, and Qiu Xinggong, who was brave and good at war, arrived, pulled out an arrow for Saluzi, gave up his mount to Li Shimin, and rushed out on foot. In order to honor Qiu Xinggong's loyalty and courage, he was also carved on stone carvings.
The second horse is called Fist Hair Horse, which is a yellow horse with curly hair, and the pronunciation of 騧 is the same as "melon", which means a yellow horse with a black mouth. This is a war horse that Li Shimin rode when he fought with Liu Heimin in Zhangshui when he was pacifying Hebei. In the fierce battle, he was killed by nine arrows in his body.
The third horse was named White-hoofed Crow, and it seemed that it should be a black war horse with all four hooves white. It was ridden by Li Shimin during the early Tang Dynasty when he quelled the rebellion of Xue Rengao in Gansu. It is also believed that white hoof is a Transliteration of the Turkic word, meaning Young Khan.
Today, only four of the Six Horses of Zhaoling in the Forest of Steles Museum in Xi'an are originals, and they are still broken into several pieces and broken and spliced together. The other two intact are The Purple And Fist Hair, but they are only imitations.
Why is this happening? This started more than 100 years ago.
03
In the spring of 1915, on this evening, an uninvited guest came to the Beijing Liulichang Yanguzhai Antique Shop. This is a French cultural relics dealer, he found the owner of Yanguzhai Zhao Hefang, mysteriously took out a few photos for him to see. Zhao Hefang took a look at it, and couldn't help but be shocked, the photo was actually the famous Zhaoling Liujun.
It turned out that this Frenchman had already set his sights on the Zhaoling Liujun. Three years ago, he sent people to sneak into Zhaoling in an attempt to steal this national treasure. However, the Zhaoling Six Horses were huge, and the thieves could not move them. These mercenary guys actually hired stonemasons to cut the two horses of the purple and fist hair into several pieces for easy transportation.
When they carried the cut stone carvings down the mountain, they were discovered by nearby villagers. They immediately reported to the local government. Angry villagers rushed up the hill to arrest the shameless thieves. The thieves saw that the situation was not good, and even pushed the stone sculptures off the cliff and fled in a hurry.
The French who covet all kinds of treasures at the Yanguzhai antique shop
Later, the broken stones of Salu Zi and Fist Mao Qi liangjun fell into the hands of Lu Jianzhang, the overseer of Shaanxi. This Lu Jianzhang is a native of Mengcheng and started from a small station to train troops. During the period of overseering Shaanxi, he wantonly extorted, snatched the people's fat and people's anointing, and killed innocents indiscriminately. Later, during his tenure as the chief of military and political law enforcement in Beijing, he also wantonly slaughtered revolutionaries and progressives, known as "Lu Tubo". In 1918, he was booby-trapped by Xu Shuzheng of the Anhui clan in Tianjin, which is an afterword.
Besides, Zhao Hefang, the boss of Yanguzhai, received this business and immediately started to think about it. He thought that Lu Jianzhang was a close confidant of Yuan Shikai and would inevitably listen to his greetings. So Zhao Hefang found Yuan Kewen, the second son of the Yuan family, and asked him to ask Lu Jianzhang for the stone carvings of the two juns. Lu Jianzhang then sold Salu Zi and Fist Mao for 240,000 silver dollars.
Kevin Yuan
When the stone carvings were sent to the Yuan family garden, Yuan Kewen opened it to see that the world-famous Zhaoling Liujun was already a pile of rubble. In addition to his regrets, he was very annoyed and refused to accept the deal. In desperation, Zhao Hefang found another family, a cultural relics dealer named Lu Qinzhai.
04
This Lu Qinzhai was originally a servant of Zhang Jingjiang, a fellow Huzhou native and early tycoon of the Republic of China, and was brought to Paris to sell porcelain and calligraphy and paintings in the Yuntong company opened by Zhang Jingjiang. He started as an apprentice in an antique shop, learned to master the antique business, and learned fluent English and French.
After the Xinhai Revolution, Lu Qinzhai returned to China to open his own Lu Wu Antique Company. He became a famous cultural relics dealer and a great antique dealer. He smuggled more than 8,000 cultural relics out of The Country, most of which are treasures. This time, Lu Qinzhai secretly transported the two stone sculptures to the United States and hid them in his warehouse.
At this time, the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania in the United States was completed, and it was urgent to collect the collection. The curator thought of Lu Qinzhai and wrote to him that he wanted to buy two stone sculptures, which were actually for Salu Zi and Fist Hair. So how did this American curator know about these two of the six horses of Zhaoling?
Zhaoling Liujun exhibited in the United States
In fact, as early as 1914, the Americans had their eyes on the Zhaoling Liujun. That year, an American antique dealer named Bisbo came to China in the name of an archaeologist. He had previously seen a European 19th-century publication of "World Famous Horse Map", and saw the photograph of the stone carving of the purple horse in the Zhaoling Six Horses, and he was attracted and moved, and the idea of getting this treasure was moved.
At that time, the director of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania knew through Bisbo that the two stone sculptures were in Lu Qinzhai's hands. So I wanted to mobilize him to take out the stone sculptures and put them on display in the museum. At the same time, it also explains the meaning of wanting to buy the stone sculptures with money.
Lu Qinzhai initially offered $150,000, but after bargaining, it was sold for $125,000, and Salu Zi and Fist Mao fell into the hands of the Americans.
The stone sculptures of the other four jun are also ill-fated. In 1918, in the process of another theft, it was smashed into several pieces in an attempt to be packed and shipped out of the box, but fortunately it was found and intercepted when passing through the northern suburbs of Xi'an.
About half of Lu Qinzhai's Chinese antiques, which were lost overseas, passed through the hands of this person
In 1961, The Chinese master of stone carving craftsmanship could only reproduce the purple and fist hair based on the photographs, and together with the remaining four jun, they gathered the six juns of Zhaoling and displayed them in the Forest of Steles Museum in Xi'an.
05
In the 1970s and 1980s, Salu Zi and Fist Mao, who had been living overseas for decades, had the opportunity to return to their homeland. In the 1970s, a U.S. delegation was preparing to visit China and wanted to send a gift to Chinese people.
At that time, a Chinese-American suggested that it should be a very meaningful thing to return the stone sculptures of Salu Zi and Fist Hair to China in the collection of the University of Pennsylvania Museum, so that they could return to their hometown and reunite the Six Horses of Zhaoling, which had been lost for more than half a century. However, at that time, the delegation ultimately did not adopt this opinion.
In the summer of 1986, the director of the Shaanxi Institute of Archaeology visited the United States. Meet the famous Chinese archaeologist Zhang Guangzhi to visit the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. After Zhang Guangzhi's matchmaking, the museum director said. Consideration could be given to returning the two stone carvings to China, but on the condition that several cultural relics would be exchanged.
Zhang Guangzhi
Hearing this news, the Xi'an Forest of Stone Steles Museum was very happy, and they immediately carefully selected two Buddhist stone sculptures from the Tang Dynasty and prepared for exchange.
However, at this time, the director of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania received a letter from a friend. The man recently visited China, during which he visited the Forest of Stone Steles Museum in Xi'an. There he saw the commentary board of the Zhaoling Liujun that read: Salu Zi and Fist Mao were stolen by US imperialists.
So in the letter, he said, "If this is true, I am ashamed, please return the cultural relics to China." If this is not the case, please tell the Forest of Steles Museum that you hope to stop such condemnations."
The American curator read the letter and was furious. He specially sent someone to Xi'an with the bill for the purchase of two stone sculptures that year, and asked for a revision of the commentary. The Forest of Steles Museum subsequently made changes to change "stolen by US imperialists" to "lost overseas" to solve this problem. However, in this way, the exchange of two stone sculptures was delayed, and there was no following.
Fortunately, the cooperation between the two sides did not stop, and in May 2010, three cultural relics restoration experts from Shaanxi Province went to the United States to carry out protective restoration of Salu Purple and Fist Hair.
Today, the two exquisite stone sculptures of Salu Zi and Fist Mao, China's national treasures, are still quietly staying in the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, waiting for the day when they can return and wait for the final reunion of the Six Juns of Zhaoling.