Restoring the scene of Tang poetry creation from archaeological sites： literary historical materials in Turpan documents
Tomb archaeology and documents in Turpan
Archaeology of the Silk Road in Northwest China has a long history. Among them, Dunhuang and Turpan, because of the discovery of new materials, have formed an international outstanding school of "Dunhuang Turpan Studies" for a century, leading the coquettish for a hundred years. Because of the drought, the local paper documents buried for thousands of years have been preserved, which has become the legacy of the original appearance of historical documents that have not been edited by later generations. This is the most important cultural heritage left by Dunhuang and Turpan to later generations.
On June 22, 1900, Taoist Wang discovered the Cave of Tibetan Scripture by chance, and since then, Cave 17 in Dunhuang has been recorded in history, which is also regarded as the starting time of Dunhuang studies. According to scholars’ research, the main body of more than 50 thousand documents collected in 17 caves in Dunhuang was originally the Tibetan scriptures and assets of Sanjie Temple in Mogao Grottoes. Presumably, when the neighboring Kingdom of Khotan, South Silk Road, was attacked, Sanjie Temple sealed the goods in the cave shortly after 1002, out of fear of the looting fate of Dunhuang. Since then, with the departure of the parties concerned, the secret of the Tibetan Sutra Cave has been forgotten for a long time. The discovery of a large number of books written in the Tibetan Sutra Cave provided texts for the history and culture of China in the Middle Ages. The study of Dunhuang literature has also produced important achievements in the study of literary history for more than a century, especially the study of folk popular literature works, which has enriched our understanding of the occurrence of literary style and literary expression in the Middle Ages.
Relatively speaking, due to the similarities between Dunhuang and Turpan documents, many values of Turpan documents were often concealed by Dunhuang’s reputation in the past. As far as Turpan is concerned, a large number of documents come from the burial utensils in tombs, such as paper shoes and paper hats, which have been cut out, so they are broken. However, Turpan’s documents show more sociality, secularity and contingency, so they have the "fragmentation" effect of social history research: in Turpan, where paper is scarce, a Turpan document from a tomb may have been used as a carrier of words in social communication at that time and was abandoned after a few years because it lost the value of file preservation; The blank space on the back of it is reused; Until there is no blank for writing, the other party is taken as garbage, cut into uppers and soles by the fierce company and glued together, and put on the feet of the deceased for final waste utilization. The local arid environment enabled Turpan documents to survive in just visiting for thousands of years, so the process of social inheritance at that time was random and objective. The history embodied in Turpan documents is no longer a subjective compilation of traditional historians criticized by some historians, nor is it just a conclusive static narrative of the historical process; It highlights a real and flowing historical detail in the social process of Turpan.
If the tomb archaeology obtained by Turpan documents is divided into stages, it can be divided into three stages according to the time sequence and the place where the documents are collected.
In the first stage, Turpan documents were scattered all over the world. Archaeology in Turpan has gone through the early stage of excavation by the great powers, which, like the scattered documents in Dunhuang’s scriptures, led to Turpan documents scattered in Germany, Britain, Russia, Turkey, the United States, Japan and other places. Due to scattered information and delayed publication, the research in many fields has not been fully carried out. During this period, China scholars participated in the archaeological activities in Turpan. Only Mr. Huang Wenbi participated in the scientific expedition to the northwest of China from 1927 to 1930, and did investigation and excavation work in Turpan. Later, he wrote monographs such as Gaochang Pottery Collection, Gaochang Brick Collection and Turpan Archaeology Record.
In the second stage, after the founding of New China, from 1959 to 1975, there were 13 excavations of tombs in Turpan, among which more than 2,000 documents were sorted out by the cooperation of China Institute of Cultural Relics, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Museum and Wuhan University History Department, and the final result was four volumes of "Unearthed Documents in Turpan" published by Cultural Relics Publishing House. Turpan documents in the second stage are mainly collected in the Museum of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
In the third stage, after 1978, especially in Turpan archaeology in the new century, ancient writing documents were discovered in some new places, such as Munar, Badamu and Yanghai cemeteries. Chinese Buddhist Classics Unearthed from Baizi Creek Grottoes in Turpan and Newly Unearthed Documents in Turpan are important representatives of document arrangement in this period. Turpan documents in the third stage are mainly collected in Turpan Museum.
Using abandoned secular documents as funeral utensils, a unique custom in Turpan Basin, is bound to make documents emerge continuously with new archaeological excavations. At the same time, the unique geographical location of Turpan Basin makes it "in the east and west cultures", and the preserved documents also reflect the diversity of civilization and historical continuity. The sustainability and diversity of document discovery should come from behind in the field of unearthed documents.
Ancient Poems in Turpan Documents
As for the most meaningful spiritual aspect in the spread and acceptance of Chinese culture-the medieval literature in Turpan, the research results are far less than Dunhuang literature because of the relative scarcity of materials.
According to my personal research, there are only more than 60 historical documents of Turpan literature unearthed in the Middle Ages. Before the documents of Turpan were excavated, the literary development of Turpan in the Middle Ages (Gaochang County-Gao Changguo-Xizhou Period, 327-803) for nearly 500 years has been difficult to be confirmed in handed down documents. The so-called "Gaochang Nursery Rhyme" is the only literary representation of Turpan in the Middle Ages that we can find in the official history:
??"Old Tang Book": (fourteen years of Zhenguan, Wen Tai) and when I heard that Master Wang was in the mouth, I was afraid of nothing, and I fell ill and died. His son Zhi Sheng Si Li. ….. First of all, the country’s nursery rhyme says: "Gaochang military forces are like frost and snow, and Han military forces are like the sun and the moon. The sun and the moon shine on the frost and snow, and they will be destroyed by returning their hands. " Wen Tai had his first singer arrested, but he couldn’t.
This song "Gaochang Nursery Rhyme" appeared in Gaochang City, where the kingdom was about to collapse at that time. It was not necessarily created by children in Gaochang, and it was speculated that it was probably a means for the siege of the Tang Dynasty army to disintegrate Gaochang. However, it is recorded in the official history that this song "Gaochang Nursery Rhyme" was sung and caused the panic of King Wen Tai of Gaochang, which undoubtedly reflected the widespread spread of Gaochang folk Chinese literature and the public’s acceptance of it to some extent at that time. This nursery rhyme was also included in the later Tang Poetry.
In addition, in recent years, from the records of Lei Yao quoted by Yan Shu in the Northern Song Dynasty and A Brief Account of Daye, Bi Boya’s Song of Giving Music from Shengming was also found:
??Thousands of winters meet in spring, and thousands of nights see the morning sun. When you meet a wise king in your life, you will be happy and worried.
This was written by Bi Boya who attended the Lantern Festival held by Emperor Yangdi in Luoyang, the eastern capital of the Sui Dynasty (610), and it is also a unique literary historical material about Turpan in the handed down literature. However, according to scholars’ research, this work was actually copied from Bao Zhao’s "Zhongxing Song" in the Southern Dynasties (453):
??Every winter meets a spring, and every night sees the morning sun. When you are born, you will be happy.
At the lantern festival in the Sui Dynasty, Mi’s lost poems imitated the performance of poems in the Southern Dynasties, which also revealed the influence of literary fashion in the Southern Dynasties on Gaochang.
In addition, it is extremely difficult for scholars to obtain more materials for literary research from the handed down materials, and then restore the development of Turpan literature in the Middle Ages. Until with the unearthed documents and materials in Turpan, the rich and diverse historical features of ancient Chinese literature in Turpan finally came to the fore.
What kind of literature materials have we found on the archaeological site in Turpan?
First of all, a number of classic literary works-referring to the works of previous generations and contemporary literati popular in the world-appeared in the documents. In October, 2006, in No.4 cemetery in Yanghai, Shanshan County, the tomb of Zhao goods in the second year of Beiliangyuan (433) was discovered. Among them, the cloth paper shoes were disassembled, and the Analects of Confucius was copied on one, and Mao Shi Da Ya was copied on the other.
In the collection document of Turpan in 2006, on the back of a case of a collection for Lv Xianhuai in Tangxi Prefecture, we saw a piece of Chinese calligraphy that was written three times every word:
??1. The hook of the curtain hook has not fallen or fallen.
2. Inclined buildings are still open.
3. Why do you have to be tall and tall?
4. Go up and clear the scenery and wander around night and night.
5. Wandering □□□□□ Cen Cen Dede Run Run Yong
6. Chant about the fish □□□□□□□□□ Shadow Shadow Invasion
7. Bobo [
8. Water with water [
9. East is self-sufficient [
10. Use Shanglong [
11. Night after night, the old friend [
12. Come and visit [
After removing the repeated words, we got an ancient poem:
??□ The curtain hook has not fallen, and the sloping building is still open. Why go upstairs and wander in the clear night?
After this five-character poem, the word "Cenderun" is repeated, which suggests that he may be the author of this poem. By searching the ancient books handed down from ancient times, we can know that Cenderun was a poet of Sui Dynasty, and then compare this poem with the few poems under Cenderun’s name in Poems of Sui Dynasty before Qin, Han, Wei, Jin and Southern Dynasties, and we find more information about this fragment of Chinese calligraphy in Turpan, which is just behind the word Cenderun, and the original fragments of "wave", "water" and "east self" are not connected because of the incompleteness. Now the whole poem is recorded, and the essay is supplemented by Poems of Sui Dynasty in the Pre-Qin, Han, Wei, Jin and Southern Dynasties:
??[Sword] shadow invades wave [combination], [pearl] brings water [new]. Lotus] East can [play, security] use Dragon [Tianjin].
The poem before the word "Cenderun" did not appear in the literary classics handed down from generation to generation. From the content point of view, this poem is obviously the same as the poem "Ode to Fish" by Cenderun, and it is also a poem about objects. Although the first word of the work is hard to make up, it does not prevent us from judging the content of the whole poem-this is a poem about the moon, which we drafted as "Poem about the Moon in the Southern Dynasties or Sui Dynasty". Therefore, this is a piece of calligraphy with two poems, namely, the five-character poem chanting the moon, the five-character poem chanting the fish by Sui Cenderun, and the incomplete words of ancient poems that cannot be combined. It should be an exercise book for children to practice new words in Xizhou (the state name established by the Tang Dynasty in Turpan) in the Tang Dynasty.
It provides a lost poem that has not been included in the classics, which is not the whole value of "ancient poetry learning". The fragments of the two poems themselves provide first-hand information for us to understand the literary composition of Turpan in Xizhou period, and even provide important evidence for us to understand the literary and cultural development in the early Tang Dynasty.
First of all, this is the first document that has been found in the unearthed documents in Dunhuang and Turpan so far, which uses ancient poetry as a model for learning Chinese characters. Among the documents found in Dunhuang and Turpan, except for a few miscellaneous words, the templates used for learning Chinese characters are mostly official textbooks for learning Mongolian, such as Urgent Chapter, Thousand-character Text and Enlightening the Enlightenment. This document uses ancient poetry as a post for learning Chinese characters repeatedly, which can fully show a new trend in an era, that is, the love of poetry became the daily form of children’s learning at that time. In addition, the tradition of writing each word three times also helps us to understand that the repetition of Chinese character learning is a long-established law in the history of education (of course, there are exceptions, for example, sometimes it is repeated four times because of poor writing or rising writing, such as the word "He" in the fragments of Chinese characters unearthed in Turpan, which is also a normal psychological performance of Chinese characters learning).
Secondly, and more importantly, it is the content of "learning from ancient poems", which gives us a chance to observe the style advocated by poetry in the early Tang Dynasty and its development process in detail, and makes us realize that the "Southern Dynasty" style of literature and art spread all over the border States during this period, and the characteristics of Turpan culture and Central Plains culture are also highlighted.
The above two documents belong to the newly unearthed Turpan documents. Looking back, we also found more classic literary works. For example, in the western documents that Stein took from Turpan and is now in the British library, there are such fragments of words:
??Qianque
]□ New (? )
]□ Two Beijing and Spring Go [
??]□（？ ) poor grass [
Houque
In the same year, the Japanese publication "The Integration of Non-depreciating Tibetan and Yuyu Ink Books in Nakamura, Taitung District Lishudao Museum" also appeared a piece of page in the No.130 document entitled "Moon Order":
??] □□□□ Fang□ Shadow Tianjin Ba ‘an
] □ I don’t know if I am happy.
]□ Early dawn
Houque
By combining the handwriting, paper and words of these two fragments, it is found that they are copied from the same Tang Xuanzong poem "When I first entered Qinchuan Road, I met cold food":
??Luochuan Fangshuying Tianjin, dominating the bank and weeping for the new land.
I don’t know how to waste my time in Beijing and Spring.
Last year, it was early this spring, and flowers and plants were blooming in the early morning and the wind.
Poor cold food is clear
At present, the fragments of the same poem are collected in Britain and Japan, which is also a reflection of the "sad history" of the early Turpan documents. However, its discovery is also of significance in the history of literature:
First of all, poetry is accepted as a model, just like the previous poems "Chanting for the Moon" and "Chanting for Fish", and "When I first entered Qinchuan Road, Cold Food" proved that there was indeed a model of Tang poetry circulating in Xizhou in the Tang Dynasty as a practice of calligraphy or poetry.
Secondly, we can also observe the spread of Tang poetry at that time, that is, the influence of non-literary factors on the spread of poetry. So far, we haven’t found the works of other famous poets in the Tang Dynasty appearing in Turpan, which can of course be explained by chance, but the works related to Xuanzong appear in Turpan is not an individual phenomenon. Turpan documents that exist around Xuanzong’s poems in the Tang Dynasty are supposed to be the supreme power of the emperor, which played a role in literature.
Although no famous poet’s poems have appeared in Turpan documents so far, in the second stage of archaeological excavation of Turpan tombs, we found Cen Can, the author of frontier poems in Tang Dynasty. In 1973, a paper coffin was dug up in No.506 tomb in Astana, which was the horse account of Changhangfang in Jiaohe County in the 13th to 14th years of Tang Tianbao (754-755). This is a rare big account, in which there is no Tang poetry, but there is a "Cen Judge":
??Judge Fang Tiecen’s horse was seven horses, eating green wheat three times and winning five times. Fu Jianer Chen Jin.
In addition:
??County Fang posted a Ma Lu horse to welcome Judge Cen, and on August 24th, Maisi won the contest. Fu Mazi, Zhang Shizhen.
The county square welcomed the doctor □ Ma Si to pick up horses and ate Mai Er Shuo on August 27th. Pay Ma Zi’s show □, detain officer Yang Junqing.
Among them, the "sealing doctor" was Feng Changqing, the imperial adviser, the guardian of the Northern Court, and the ambassador of the Western Republic, and the "Cen Judge" was Cen Can, who was the judge of the Feng Changqing shogunate at that time.
Cen Can is a representative poet of the Frontier Poetry School in the Tang Dynasty, and one of the few poets who have been to the Western Regions in the Tang Dynasty. Cen Can, recorded in Ma Liaozhang, at least proves that he really walked hard on the land of the Western Regions, and that a series of famous works in the Western Regions, such as a Song of White Snow in Farewell to Field-Clerk Wu Going Home, he created are so popular, which is related to his personal experience in frontier fortress.
Bu Tianshou’s Poetry Creation Scene
It is worth noting that some poems belonging to folk literature appeared in Turpan documents. For example, in the No.363 tomb in Astana excavated in 1967, a 5.2-meter-long scroll was found, which was copied by Bu Tianshou, a private school student in Tang Zhongzong Jinglong four years (710). From the second mourning chapter of Wei Zheng to the fifth line of Gongye Chang, there are some lines 177, some of which are marked with calligraphy, followed by
This assignment is also very important, because the annotation of The Analects of Confucius by Zheng Xuan, a scholar in the Eastern Han Dynasty, was lost after the Song Dynasty. Through Bu Tianshou’s homework, nearly one-fifth of the space was restored, which is a major event in the history of Confucian classics.
More importantly, after copying the fifth edition of Gongye Chang, Bu Tianshou continued to write his usual New Three Lines in December and some five-character poems and miscellaneous writings, probably because the paper was white:
??1. Three words in December, the first month of the first month of the new year, the first spring □□
2. Change the old ways and welcome the new. Li Xuan is attached to the spirit and asks for a tree. Xia Naifeng
3. Zhu Xiangtuo’s seven-year-old governor, Gan Luo, thought about Qin □
4. Unscrupulous wife interprets dreams. Feng Tang Ning De Zhong Chen
5. Looking at Meilin’s green stripes and spitting leaves in February.
6. Five = Writing a Book Today, Sir, Mo Mochi Ming Dynasty
7. It was Jia Ri who released the students early and copied them.
8. Five = Bird’s Head Forest, Rest and Accommodation = High Branch □
9. Be more dispersed and don’t want to know.
10. Five = Sunset, West Mountain, Xiahuang River, East Current People □
11. If you are not satisfied with your perseverance, you will be excellent for ten thousand years.
12. Five = A child born out of a noble hall, a good wood, and a good talent □
13. Xuemin comes to Sangonghe.
14. Jinglv Temple Ningrong Temple outside Luocheng
15. Jane Xuanjue Temple sits on the road for eight months.
16. Gong Shuren ?
17. Other books are easy to read □
18. Side books, side reading, side eyes □
19. Learn Kaijue Temple and learn Jinglong for four years in May.
20. If winter is not today, it will take more than a year.
21. Look at the simple rivers and rivers.
22. Bu Tianshou, a student in Fengliyi, Ningchang Township, Gaochang County, Xizhou, has twelve forms [the next disability]
23. There has been no succession since the right body.
24. Heaven, Earth, Xuan, Huang, Universe, Flood, Sun, Moon, Surplus, Sunrise and Summer.
25. The dispatch is as good as before in the middle of this month.
These are poems written by Xue Lang. Graffiti at the margin of the paper was the habitual behavior of scholars at that time. They also made a special declaration for writing poems in blank places: "There is residual paper at the back of the book, so you can’t return at that time. Although there is no handwriting, it is a five-character poem. " (See Dunhuang Documents) These poems are actually copying inspirational nursery rhymes, popular poems or simple literati poems that are well known to Xuelang, and may also be appropriately modified when Xuelang recites. After the six-character New Three Lines in December, Bu Tianshou copied five more words: Writing a Book Today, Bird’s Head Taking a Rest in the Forest, Sunset on the Western Hills, A Noble Gate Becoming a Son, and Book Changes on the Other Side, which were full of typos. This situation is obviously different from the previous copying of The Analects of Confucius. It is speculated that the Analects of Confucius has a model copy, but poetry is. For example, he wrote "Writing a Book Today":
??It’s time to write a book today, sir. Mochi. It was Jiari in the Ming Dynasty, and students were released early.
Scholars have pointed out that this work is a copy of the Dunhuang documents "Today’s Book Writing" and "Green Bamboo Forest". Bu Tianshou’s copying "contribution" here is only an impromptu transformation, and due to his lack of knowledge, the words are distorted in form and sound, such as "too late" wrongly written as "Yaochi". It is speculated that Bu Tianshou had a basis for studying the Thousand-character Text and memorized the words "the sea is shallow and the river is light" and "the stone in Kunchi" The writing style and characteristics of this poem reveal the characteristics of children’s teaching materials in the middle ages from the shallow to the deep and the stability of the use of the thousand words.
Another example is one of them, "The Noble Hall is a Son":
??A noble gate makes a son, and a good wood makes a good talent. Hand it over to Xue Min, and come to Sangonghe.
There are also many other words in poetry. "Zi Zi" may be "Qi Zi", "Xue Min" is of course "learning", and "He" is regarded as "He". This is an "inspirational" poem that advocates the theory of "being an official by reading". Similar poetry content has also appeared in Changsha kiln cultural relics poems:
??Heaven and earth are as flat as water, and the king is naturally open. There are no students at home, where do officials come from?
Comparing the two, the style of poetry is the same, but with the different singing, many contents have changed. For example, the bi xing technique in the first two sentences changed the scene of the rise. The name of the "three publics" in the back is also directly called "official" here.
Through the revelation of the above-mentioned poetry copying, we can see the following phenomenon in the Tang Dynasty: Even in the border states, people’s love for poetry, influenced by the times, has become very common, so poetry has become an important model for children to learn. Back to the official record of "Gaochang Nursery Rhyme", it can become Tang Jun’s strategy to defeat Gao Changguo because of the universality of this hobby of reciting poetry in Gao Changguo. The widespread existence of Xuelang poems has gradually improved the understanding level of Chinese temperament and poetry for local children in the process of changing and writing poems.
It is through archaeological discoveries that we can return to the scene of the spread of Tang poetry. Through the reappearance of Bian Xuelang’s temporary study and graffiti in Turpan documents, we can deeply understand the mass base of Tang poetry when it reached the peak of literature more than 1000 years ago.