The Silk Road: A New History Page 8

  The Niya site gives every indication that the residents expected to return. They left a considerable amount of millet in different places, and they carefully buried documents and marked the holes so that they could find them again. They had sufficient warning to pack before leaving the site; Stein observed that they had left almost nothing of intrinsic value behind. Perhaps an attack by the Khotanese or the Supis prompted the residents to leave, and they were never able to return.

  All we have to tell us about when the end came is a Chinese-language source by the famous Chinese monk and Buddhist pilgrim Faxian. In 401, he passed by Kroraina and wrote these subdued lines:

  The land is uneven and infertile. The clothing of ordinary people is coarse and the same as in the land of the Han people. The only difference is in felt and coarse cloth. Their country’s king worships the dharma. It is possible that there are over four thousand monks; all are adherents of Hinayana. The ordinary people of various countries and the shramana all carry out the dharma of India, but to a greater or lesser degree.100

  It is not clear exactly which city he visited, since the city of Loulan was abandoned in 376, when one regional dynasty replaced another that had been based there. Chinese official histories mention the Shanshan Kingdom in the first half of the fifth century; this was a period when a non-Chinese dynasty, called the Northern Wei, gradually conquered different regional dynasties in north China. The Shanshan rulers submitted to the Northern Wei in 450. Twenty years later, a Central Asian confederacy of tribes from north of the Gobi Desert, called the Rouran, occupied the Shanshan Kingdom.

  The fifth century was a time of great turbulence in Central Asia, and traffic across the Taklamakan came to a halt. After the year 500 the Chinese histories no longer mention the Shanshan Kingdom as a destination, and most travelers shifted to the northern route around the Taklamakan, the subject of the next chapter.101

  CHAPTER 2

  Gateway to the Languages of the Silk Road

  Kucha and the Caves of Kizil

  As a meeting place for peoples of multiple nationalities, the Silk Road was a site of sustained language exchange in an era long before the development of modern learning aids like dictionaries and textbooks. Among the most dedicated language teachers were Buddhists who hoped to convey their sophisticated teachings as originally expressed in Sanskrit to potential converts. The residents of the prosperous oasis of Kucha on the northern route around the Taklamakan enjoyed an advantage over other language learners along the Silk Road, since their native language of Kuchean (a Kuchean document is shown on the opposite page) belonged to the same Indo-European language family as Sanskrit. Kucha (this is the Uighur pronunciation; the Chinese say Kuche) provided a natural gateway for the entry into China of Buddhist teachings. The oasis also afforded Buddhist teachers the opportunity to meet with multilingual travelers who came to Kucha—then the largest and most prosperous settlement on the northern Silk Road, rivaled only by Turfan.

  Kucha’s most famous native son, Kumarajiva (344–413), produced the first understandable translations of Buddhist works from Sanskrit into Chinese, greatly facilitating the subsequent spread of the new religion into China.1 He was the lead translator of some three hundred different texts from Sanskrit into Chinese, of which the most famous is the Lotus Sutra. (Sutra is the Sanskrit term for a work credited to the Buddha; in fact, many took shape long after his death around 400 BCE.) Even though subsequent translators tried to improve on Kumarajiva’s work, many of his translations, prized for their readability, continue to be used even today.

  Kumarajiva was an unusually talented linguist, who, like many of Kucha’s residents, had mastered multiple Central Asian languages including his native Kuchean, Chinese, Sanskrit, Gandhari, and possibly Agnean and Sogdian as well. Kumarajiva’s father spoke Gandhari in his homeland of Gandhara, as did the immigrants to Niya. Sogdian prevailed in the area around Samarkand, and Agnean was used along a stretch of the northern Silk Road centered on the settlement of Yanqi, roughly 250 miles (400 km) to the east of Kucha. Yanqi is the Chinese name; the Uighur is Qarashahr. Kumarajiva and his colleagues used the Brahmi script to read and write Kuchean and Sanskrit, and they may also have studied the Kharoshthi script, which stopped being used around 400.

  A SILK ROAD TRAVEL PASS

  This travel pass in the Kuchean language, measuring 3 ¼ inches (8.3 cm) by 1 ¾ inches (4.4 cm) and written in Brahmi script, gives the name of the official inspecting a party of travelers going through a border station, the official to whom he is sending the report, and the name of the person carrying the pass. Over one hundred such passes have been found, which usually continue by listing the people and the animals traveling together, information missing from this document. Written with ink on notched poplar wood, these passes originally had a cover tied with twine and sealed, but no intact examples survive. Courtesy of Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

  This chapter will discuss these languages, especially the immense intellectual effort to understand the lost languages of Kuchean and Agnean after 1892. Scholars around the world spent almost one hundred years translating Kuchean, not only to decipher the language but also to understand how it differed from the closely related Indo-European language Agnean. The effort proved most worthwhile.

  In Kumarajiva’s lifetime, work began on building the world-famous caves of Kizil, located 42 miles (67 km) to the west of Kucha. The caves are one of the most appealing tourist sites in Xinjiang, and can be visited today by taking a car, train, or plane to Kucha or Korla, and then by ground transportation to the valley where the caves are located. But in the past, until about a century ago, almost everyone came by boat, down the many rivers fed by glacial runoff that flowed through the Taklamakan Desert. The largest river, the Tarim, runs along the northern edge of the desert, and two of its tributaries are near Kucha, the Kucha River and the Muzart River, which passes directly in front of the Kizil caves. The heavy demand for water in northwest China means that these rivers now carry much less water than they did in the past. Today, if one wants to cross the desert by boat, it has to be done in the early spring, when the water levels are at their highest. A century ago these rivers were navigable most of the year, except when blocked by ice.

  To understand how dramatically different the Kucha region was just a century ago, one only has to read the splendid account by Sven Hedin of Sweden. In the fall of 1899 he purchased a barge 38 feet (12 m) long with a shallow draft of just over a foot (30 cm). The deck accommodated Hedin’s tent, his darkroom, and a clay fire pit for cooking. Alerted that the river would narrow near Maralbashi (modern-day Bachu), he bought a second boat “less than half the size” of the barge, and the two boats traveled together (see color plate 10).

  Hedin began his voyage in the far western corner of Xinjiang in Yarkand, just southeast of modern Kashgar. He vividly depicted his departure on September 17, 1899, from the Lailik pier in Yarkand: “The wharf presented a lively scene. Carpenters were sawing and hammering, smiths were forging, and Cossacks [guards hired by Hedin] supervised the whole scene.” On that day, Hedin recorded the width of the river at 440 feet (134 m) and the depth at 9 feet (3 m).2

  After six days, Hedin reached the point where the Yarkand River divided into several smaller streams, each with its own perils.

  The river-bed narrowed. We were carried along at breakneck speed by the current. The water seethed and foamed around us. We flew down a rapids. The passage was so narrow, and the turns so abrupt, that the boats could not be steered off; and the big boat struck the shore so violently, that my boxes were nearly carried overboard.… The water swirled all the way; and we moved so swiftly, that the barge nearly capsized when we struck the ground violently.

  Suddenly the rapids ended, trapping the larger barge in the mud. It took thirty hired men to carry the barge overland so that the trip could resume.

  Continuing down the river, Hedin followed the Yarkand River north to where it met the Aksu River, entering from the north, forming the start o
f the Tarim River. Hedin continued through the Taklamakan Desert, floating east. For leisure, he would go sailing on the smaller craft, while the larger barge followed behind. The river continued to flow at a vigorous pace of some 3–4 feet (1 m) per second, but the chunks of ice in it became larger and larger until, after an eighty-two-day trip that had taken him nearly 900 miles (1,500 km), Hedin called an end to his river journey at Yangi-kol, three days’ travel from the oasis of Korla.3 Had Hedin departed earlier in the summer, he could have gone the full distance to Kucha, still slightly more than 200 miles (300 km) away.

  Hedin’s exploration aroused great interest in Europe, leading to the organization of British, French, and German expeditions. The Germans launched three expeditions in quick succession. After literally tossing a coin, the leader of the third expedition, Albert von Le Coq, decided to go north to Kucha and arrived at the Kizil caves in 1906. He found one of the most beautiful religious sites in all of China, with a total of 339 caves carved into a hillside along a one-mile (2 km) stretch.4 Some caves are small, while others range from 36 to 43 feet (11–13 m) in height and are 40 to 60 feet (12–18 m) deep. The Muzart River flows four miles (7 km) to the south. An oasis in front of the caves creates a lovely natural setting, where one can occasionally hear a cuckoo—a rare sound in modern China.

  The Kizil hillside is composed of conglomerate, a rock so soft that caves could be easily carved out. It also made the caves fragile, so the original diggers often left a central pillar in the middle of caves for support. Over the centuries, earthquakes have done grave damage to the site, causing the outer rooms to collapse, leaving the interior rooms sometimes totally exposed to the elements. Le Coq described such an earthquake he and Theodor Bartus and their crew experienced in March, 1906:

  A strange noise like thunder was followed quite suddenly by a great quantity of rocks rattling down from above.… The next moment—for everything happened with amazing speed—I saw Bartus and his workmen hurrying down the steep slope, and a procession of my Turkis [Uighurs], screaming after! I followed them, too, and in a flash we were down in the plain, pursued by great masses of rock, tearing past us with terrifying violence, without a single one of us being hurt—why or how I cannot understand to this very day!

  I turned my eyes in the direction of the river and saw its waters in wild commotion—great waves beating against its banks. In the transverse valley, farthest up the stream, there suddenly rose an enormous cloud of dust, like a mighty pillar, rising to the heavens. At the same instant the earth trembled and a fresh roll, like pealing thunder, resounded through the cliffs. Then we knew it was an earthquake.5

  Despite the precarious situation of the caves and the removal of many paintings by Le Coq and others, many paintings still remain at the site where today’s visitors can view them. Several other sites in the immediate vicinity of Kizil contain caves with paintings, such as those at Kumtura, which are the most extensive and well worth visiting.

  Many of the Kizil caves share the same structure: a room with a central stupa pillar for devotees to circumambulate. Since the time of the Buddha’s death, devotees expressed their devotion by walking clockwise around his buried remains in north India, and they circumambulated the stupas in the Western Regions as well. Unlike the stupas at Niya and Miran, the central pillars built along the Silk Road did not contain relics of the Buddha. Instead, a niche in the pillar originally held a statue of the Buddha, most of which are now missing.

  Cave 38 at Kizil, dated to 400 CE, is certainly one of the earliest and possibly the most visually appealing of all the caves.6 The back wall of cave 38 shows the Buddha lying on his deathbed attended by the kings of different countries who came to offer their respects to him. Standing at the central pillar and looking back to the cave entrance, one views the Maitreya Buddha, the Buddha who presides over a future paradise, over the doorway.

  Along the central spine of the arched ceiling of cave 38 are the Indian gods of the sun, moon, and wind, as well as two flaming buddhas and a two-headed Garuda, the legendary Indian bird who protects Buddhist law. Distinctly Indian in style, these were most likely painted by either artists from India or based on sketches brought from India. Le Coq calls the paintings “frescoes,” but because they were painted on dry plaster, they are not technically frescoes, a term reserved for paintings done on wet plaster. The cave construction techniques themselves came from India, adopted from the magnificent caves at Ajanta, outside Bombay, and other sites built by early Buddhists.

  THE LAYOUT OF A TYPICAL KIZIL CAVE

  Many caves at Kizil originally had the same structure. Visitors passed through an anteroom and entered the main room through a door. They demonstrated their devotion by walking around the central stupa pillar, which held a statue of the Buddha and was decorated with rocks and boughs of wood to represent Mount Sumeru, the mountain at the heart of the Buddhist cosmos. Often, only the holes that originally held these decorations are still visible. The back wall showed a painting of the Buddha on his deathbed. Courtesy of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

  On each side of the central ridge of cave 38 are rows of diamond-shaped lozenges with postage-stamp edges fitting neatly into one another. The rows alternate avadana stories with jataka stories, which recounted the previous lives of the Buddha. Avadana stories, also called cause-and-effect stories, show a seated Buddha with a figure alongside; these allegorical tales about the Buddha taught listeners the relationship between their behavior in this life and its long-term effects in future lives.

  Usually jataka tales reinterpreted preexisting Indian folk tales to teach Buddhist values. The tale of the monkey king, for example, told of a band of monkeys who stole fruit from a king’s garden. The king’s guards chased the monkeys to a wide river, and their leader made his body into a bridge so that they could cross. Then he fell into the river and died. This traditional folktale, according to the Buddhist explanation, illustrated the willingness of the Buddha, here the monkeys’ leader, to sacrifice himself for others.

  KIZIL CAVE PAINTING

  This detail from the barrel roof of a Kizil cave shows the characteristic postage-stamp lozenges local artists used to depict scenes from the Buddha’s earlier lives. Each lozenge portrays a major event from a single jataka tale, affording local storytellers an opportunity to tell the whole story for the entertainment of visitors to the caves.

  Another jataka tale, shown in several caves, particularly appealed to merchants. It told of a group of five hundred merchants traveling at night. When it became so dark that they could no longer see, their leader—the Buddha in a previous existence—wrapped his arms in white felt, which he drenched with butter, lit like torches, and lifted up to illuminate the merchants’ path. In this tale, too, the Buddha sacrificed for the sake of others. Devotees who listened to monks tell these jataka tales understood nirvana as something that only the Buddha and few other eminent monks could attain, a key teaching of the early Buddhists.

  Today the biggest cave at Kizil (no. 47) stands empty. Fifty-five feet (16.8 m) tall, it originally held a large statue of the Buddha, which would have been visible from far away to travelers coming to the site along the Muzart River. This kind of monumental Buddha cave did not originate at Kizil; the Bamiyan caves of Afghanistan contained similar giant statues, which the Kizil cave builders must have known about. Five rows of holes for wooden posts on both sides of this large cave suggest they originally supported platforms for smaller Buddha figures flanking the larger image. Other caves at Kizil held large Buddha images, no longer in place, and a visiting Chinese monk reported that two Buddha figures, each more than 90 Chinese feet (roughly 90 feet, or 28 m) high, stood outside the western gate of the city and were worshipped at a major festival every five years.7

  Even the most casual visitor to the Kizil caves today notices the many gashes in the cave walls where sections were removed. All the world’s major collections of East Asian art contain paintings dis
playing the still-fresh deep lapis lazuli blues and malachite greens of Kizil art; most were removed before the outbreak of World War I in 1914. The German holdings in Berlin are particularly extensive.

  Le Coq pioneered a new technique for removing the fragile paintings, which he proudly described:

  The process of cutting away the frescoes is somewhat as follows:

  The pictures are painted on a special surface-layer, made out of clay mixed up with camel dung, chopped straw, and vegetable fiber, which is smoothed over and covered with a thin layer of stucco.

  To begin with, the picture must be cut round with a very sharp knife—care being taken that the incision goes right through the surface-layer—to the proper size for the packing cases. The cases for transport by carts may be large, somewhat smaller for camels, and smallest for horses.…

  Next, a hole must be made with the pickaxe in the wall at the side of the painting to make space to use the fox-tail saw; in the excavated rock-temples, as we have said, this space often has to be made with hammer and chisel in the solid rock, which fortunately is very soft.8

  This step-by-step description has a chilling effect, as one can easily imagine the damage inflicted on the art. Some Europeans thoroughly disapproved of removing the paintings. Le Coq’s colleague Albert Grünwedel felt, instead, that the sites should be sketched and carefully measured so that, if desired, replicas could be made in Europe. His was the minority view at the time.