TUN-HUANG (25 page)

In 1038, Yüan-hao changed the name of his country from Hsi-hsia (“Western Hsia”) to Ta-hsia (“Great Hsia”), officially named Hsing-ch’ing its capital and declared himself emperor. He then sent an official message to China hinting at the severance of relations. China replied by stripping Yüan-hao of the noble rank given him and publishing a decree setting a price on his head. Then the Chinese court nominated Generals Hsia Sung and Fan Yung to take charge of countermeasures against Hsi-hsia. Yüan-hao retaliated with an assault on the Chinese defense troops and then mounted a forceful invasion of all the Chinese border territories. For that reason, the frontier regions were in great turmoil.

In China, the military leadership was reshuffled several times; there were personality clashes and many differences of opinion over the policy toward Hsi-hsia. After Hsia Sung and Fan Yung came Han Ch’i and Fan Chung-yen, then Chen Chih-chung, Wang Yen, and P’an Chi replaced their predecessors, but none of them could block Yüan-hao’s invasions.

In 1041, Yüan-hao mounted another strong attack and overran the frontier territories to reach the Wei River. The Hsi-hsia cavalry ran rampant in Shensi province and to the north of Wei. East of the Ching and Fen rivers, the people had to barricade themselves in their towns and defend themselves as best they could.

In Central Asia at this time, large Hsi-hsia forces were stationed in Kan-chou and Kua-chou, where military headquarters were established. Although no wars were raging in the west, Hsi-hsia ruled over the various tribes with an iron hand, as it directed all national effort into battling China. Hsi-hsia was particularly harsh with the Chinese living in the frontier regions, actually treating them as prisoners of war. Just as the Chinese in Sha-chou wore Turfan garments when under Turfan rule, they now donned Hsi-hsia dress and slunk around with stooped shoulders and bowed heads.

The fate of Governor Ts’ao and his family never came to light. That Ts’ao Hsien-shun had perished in battle is an established fact, but the others seemed to have vanished into thin air and nothing was heard of them. Rumor had it that some members of the Ts’ao family fled to the western territories of Qoco or Khotan, but this was never verified. Traders came from those places to do business as usual, but they brought no news of them.

The fourth summer after the fall of Sha-chou, it was rumored in town that the elder brother of Hsien-shun’s widow had been captured and decapitated, but the truth of the story was uncertain.

The Thousand Buddha Caves were forgotten for a long time after they fell into Hsi-hsia hands. Yüan-hao was a devout Buddhist and many Hsi-hsia people were also Buddhists, but no one had much time for religion during the prolonged war with China.

The Three Realms Temple located in front of the Thousand Buddha Caves was temporarily used as a military billet and its interior was damaged by the soldiers. After the troops departed it was completely abandoned and left to fall into disrepair.

An incident took place just at the time that news of the decapitation of Hsien-shun’s brother-in-law was circulating. One day a caravan of about one hundred camels arrived at the foot of the hill in the Ming-sha mountains where the Thousand Buddha Caves are situated amid the undulating desert. As soon as the group arrived, they put up close to ten tents of various shapes and sizes. Above the largest tent was a banner with the symbol “Vaisravana.” Toward evening, the banner flapped noisily as the strong desert winds rose. Late that night it began to rain; then the rain turned into a violent storm.

Deep in the night, the men of the caravan folded their tents in the downpour. Both men and animals were drenched as they made their way around the foot of the Ming-sha mountains to the other side, where numerous caves of all sizes were located.

At the order of the caravan leader the group stopped briefly at the open space beside the Three Realms Temple to leave their camels while the men continued on. Just then, lightning streaked above the men’s heads. In the blinding blue flash, the hundreds of caves dug into the cliffs at the base of the Ming-sha mountains were illuminated. Rain water rushed down the rocky cliffs with the force of waterfalls and formed puddles in the shallower caves. The large and small Buddhist statues, visible from the foot of the hill, looked as if they were about to dance. The group walking toward the northern section of the Thousand Buddha Caves resembled ants compared to the scale of the mountain.

With the second streak of lightning, the group of small figures was seen climbing up single file toward the three-storied grotto. There were thirty or forty men in the group.

Some time elapsed before lightning struck the third time. When the flash lit up the whole area, the men had reached the lowest level of the three-storied grotto. Some carried hoes or mallets, others carried poles.

“Start!” Just as this command was issued, a deafening roar of thunder accompanied by another blinding flash of lightning shook heaven and earth. Some men fell to the ground; the others dispersed in all directions. One man raised both arms toward heaven, then keeled over and fell at the cave entrance. All this was then swallowed up by darkness.

The storm at the Ming-sha mountains raged all night, and subsided finally toward dawn. Several men had been electrocuted, but the one lying closest to the cave entrance was clothed differently from the rest. He appeared to be the leader of the group, but his identity could not be determined from his black, charred body. About a month later, it was learned through a caravan man that the deceased had called himself the heir of the Wei-ch’ih royal family.

In January 1043, a temporary truce was declared between Hsi-hsia and China. Six years had elapsed since Hsi-hsia invaded Sha-chou. Because of the prolonged war, both sides had suffered many casualties and exhausted their economic resources. Thus both powers were forced to negotiate for peace. There were, however, disputes over the peace treaty. Yüan-hao insisted upon retaining the title of emperor, but China would not consent to this. China demanded that Yüan-hao declare himself a vassal and that Chinese envoys be accorded similar treatment to those from Khitan. In return, China promised to send Hsi-hsia one hundred thousand bolts of silk and thirty thousand pounds of tea annually. After much negotiation, Yüan-hao finally agreed to acknowledge vassalage to China in form only, demanding in exchange double the amount of silk and tea offered by China. Yüan-hao had yielded an empty title for material profit.

In any case the war between the two countries had come to an end for the time being. When peace returned, Yüan-hao turned his attention to spreading Buddhism. As a result temples and monks were patronized, but all Buddhist scriptures and texts were taken away and stored in the capital, Hsing-ch’ing. From the Sha-chou area, camels laden with sacred scrolls headed east every day. In the summer of the peace treaty, the Three Realms Temple was restored, many monks came to take up residence, and the restoration of the Thousand Buddha Caves was begun.

There were Chinese as well as Hsi-hsia monks at the Three Realms Temple. The restoration of the Thousand Buddha Caves was completed in five years and a magnificent memorial service was held in the largest cave designated as the main Buddha Hall. Hundreds of male and female disciples gathered from the seventeen temples of Sha-chou, and people from all over Central Asia came to observe the magnificent ceremony.

On the day of the memorial service, a certain clerk named Fan, sent from Hsing-ch’ing, discovered several unrestored caves on the north side and ordered those in charge to see to their restoration.

Work on the grottoes was to commence immediately. Just as the restoration was about to begin, a monk from Sha-chou came with the request that he be given the work for a particular cave. He promised to collect the necessary money and offered to provide the labor for the project. His request was granted, and the restoration of one grotto was assigned to him. The cave he had requested was on the lowest level of the three-storied grotto in the north section.

In the manuscripts at the Three Realms Temple documenting the restoration of the Thousand Buddha Caves, the priest’s name, the name of the restored grotto, and the reason for his request were listed. According to this, the monk had stated that during the Hsi-hsia invasion he and two fellow monks had sought refuge in this cave but, unfortunately, the two others had been hit by passing arrows and had died. The surviving monk said he wished to take this opportunity to work for the repose of his deceased friends’ souls.

Yüan-hao passed away at the age of forty-five in 1048. Twelve years had passed since his conquest of Central Asia and six years since the peace treaty with China. Up to the time of his death, Yüan-hao was addressed as emperor within his country.

Conflict between Hsi-hsia and China resumed in Emperor Shen Tsung’s reign, more than twenty years after Yüan-hao’s death. After Jen Tsung and Ying Tsung, the young, intelligent Shen Tsung had ascended the throne and immediately made preparations to regain the territories in the western frontiers lost to Hsi-hsia.

The incident took place at the time when Central Asia was awakening from the lull of thirty years of peace and was about to enter another period of warfare. A member of a Khotan caravan which had come to Sha-chou brought some gifts for donation to the Three Realms Temple, with the message that the items had been entrusted to him, with a request, by a former member of the Khotan royal family. The gifts were valuable Khotan jewels and woven material, and the request was that the Buddhist grotto, which the Khotanese king Li Shen-t’ien long before had had constructed, be restored, should it be in disrepair.

This messenger also brought another item with him. In a small package were a letter and a scroll.

The writer of the letter stated that fate had brought into his hands the family history of the Ts’ao dynasty, former rulers of Sha-chou. Since he had the opportunity, he wished to donate this and to hold a memorial service for the Ts’ao family. If services could not be held openly because the Ts’ao had been former rulers, he asked if they could be held in Li Shen-t’ien’s grotto. As Li Shen-t’ien’s daughter had been given in marriage to the Ts’ao family, there was some relationship between them.

The letter was also written in Hsi-hsia and in the horizontal writing of the Uighurs. The brushstrokes were bold and splendid. It seemed that the message had been repeated in three languages as a precaution, to ensure that it could be read by anyone who received it, since the writer knew nothing of the present situation in Sha-chou after the Hsi-hsia occupation. At the end the writer had merely signed it, “Chao Hsing-te, second-degree holder from T’an-chou of the great Sung Empire.”

As requested by the former member of Khotanese royalty, the Buddhist grotto of Li Shen-t’ien at the Three Realms Temple was immediately restored. And in compliance with the other request, the family history of the Ts’ao was placed on the altar and a memorial service conducted. As Chao Hsing-te had expected, the temple representative was reluctant to conduct services openly for the Ts’ao family. For that reason, no one but the temple monks knew that the scroll placed there was the Ts’ao family history.

In the family history scroll were the names of the eight rulers, beginning with Ts’ao I-chin, and going through Yüan-te, Yüan-shen, Yüan-chung, Yen-ching, Yen-lu, Tsung-shou to Hsien-shun, with their birth dates and their individual achievements given in great detail. At the end it said that the last ruler, Hsien-shun, had lost the battle with the Hsi-hsia and had perished on the front on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month in the second year of Ching-yu (1036). In addition to the section on the rulers was a note at the end concerning the accomplishments of Hsien-shun’s younger brother, Yen-hui. “A devout Buddhist, he gallantly refused to flee from the Hsi-hsia invasion, chose voluntarily to remain alone in Sha-chou, and took his own life by throwing himself into the flames.

Such were the words in the scroll. The date of his death, like that of his brother, was also the thirteenth day of the twelfth month in the second year of Ching-yu.

The Ts’ao family history scroll was honored in the grotto for only a single day, then it was immediately stored away with other scrolls and for years thereafter lay in darkness with them.

In the following centuries, the Sha-chou area changed hands and names several times. Under the Sung dynasty, it was absorbed into Hsi-hsia and lost its provincial name; in the Yüan era it was known again as Sha-chou. During the Ming dynasty it became Sha-chou Garrison, and then was known as the Tun-huang District during the Ch’ing dynasty. Tun-huang means large and vigorous, and the name had been used in ancient times during the Former and Later Han dynasties and the Sui dynasty, when the area served as the corridor through which western culture entered the east. After two thousand years, the name had been revived.

With the change in district name, the Thousand Buddha Caves in the Ming-sha mountains came to be called the Tun-huang Caves after the Ch’ien-lung era (1736-96). Despite the name, the Tun-huang Caves did not expand, nor did they evince any intellectual vitality. For a long period, the grottoes were known only in the immediate vicinity.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, a pilgrim named Wang Yüan-lu came to the area, discovered the sand-covered stone grottoes, took up residence in one cave and began to clear out the others. Eight hundred and fifty years had elapsed since Hsi-hsia had invaded this territory.

Pilgrim Wang was a short, unimposing man who seemed uneducated. One day as he was sweeping out sand and dust from a cave, he noticed a bump on the north wall near the entrance which looked about to crumble. He thought he would try to scrape off the bulging portion, but as he tapped with a stick he noticed that this section sounded a little different from the rest of the wall. There was something there. He fetched a stake and pushed it against the bulge on the wall with all his strength. The first few attempts brought no results, but after many tries the mud wall gave way and revealed a hollow within. He peered inside but it was too dark to see anything. Since the mud wall had fallen to the other side, it was clear that there was another cave.