The Treasure Hunt of an Antique Dealer

Zhang Nan said hehe, "Brother Guan, do you remember?"

"You let me think about it, it's in Xijiang, it should be in Kuqa, that is the grotto of what kind of gram.?"

Guan Xingquan tried his best to search his memory, but couldn't remember the exact name...

It's very tormenting, the name is just on my lips, but I can't say it---uncomfortable!

Seeing the look of Ge Guan aggrieved, Zhang Nan said directly: "It's the Kizil Grottoes."

Upon hearing the name, Guan Xingquan immediately said with a look of excitement: "Yes, it's Kizil. There are murals similar to this one, but yeah. The colors don't seem to be as gorgeous."

Zhang Nan clicked the board on his lower leg and said, "Because the best-preserved mural in the entire grotto is here."

Xiang Weirong heard that Guan Xingquan had said about the trip to the west, and knew that they had visited the Buddhist caves many years ago.

That's Buddhism, but...I just used a flashlight to illuminate the board and said strangely: "Which Buddha is this? How can it look like the head of a personal ancient Roman general!"

It's quite similar, so I'll just roll it up a bit more, if that's the case, it's like a wall portrait of a figure left from the Roman period in an Italian monument.

He has been to Italy and has seen Roman frescoes and sculptures two thousand years ago.

"It's not ancient Rome, it's the head of the ancient Macedonian, it's the Macedonian of the very famous Alexander the Great, a bit earlier than ancient Rome."

As he said, he gestured to the head of the Buddha statue on the board, "This is a mural painting of the Buddha statue of the Gandhara culture. It has probably been 15oo years old. At that time, the Buddha was usually like this image."

Xiang Weirong didn’t care about the problems of ancient Rome’s heyday earlier than 15oo years ago. He focused on other places: he saw a lot of Buddha statues, not to mention that there is a very famous Buddhist temple in Xinchang next door to Yanxian. Yes, Xiang Weirong has been to many monasteries in Xichuan, Mt. Emei has been to many times, and the ancient five hundred Arhats in Baoguo Temple have also been visited, but he has never seen it like this!

Xiang Weirong has also seen the temples in Yunnan Province and the Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in Tibetan areas. Although the images are different, the person on this board is too difficult for people to accept: not at all. It is in line with the aesthetics of Huaxia people!

Xiang Weirong expressed his thoughts and asked by the way: "What top?"

Zhang Nan was a little dizzy, so he had to explain what "Gyro" was, word by word.

"It sounds like a foreign name."

Xiang Weirong took the board from Zhang Nan's leg and looked at the Buddha above, "This one also looks like a Westerner."

"It was originally a foreign name, belonging to the geographical category of ancient India. When there is no stability in that place, you sing it and I will go on stage. Let alone the emperor taking turns, the ruling nations are all changed. This image Not surprisingly."

"The ancient Indians look like this?"

Xiang Weirong's image immediately appeared in his mind, obviously not in line with the one on the board.

It's not that Xiang Weirong looks down on Ah San, it's that Ah San is not up for it: When Xiang Weirong was a soldier, the nickname of the division commander was "iron two shot", which means "two shots" in Sichuan dialect.

One thing that the "thousand-year-old" division commander liked the most was when he was born in the 1960s. A main division trained on the plateau in summer, and then the central government quickly couldn't find the position of the division.

Anxious!

However, the commander of Erganzi took the initiative to report to the Central Committee a few days later: At present, the position of the division headquarters where I am can hear the whistle of the New Delhi Railway Station!

Ask for instructions: Will you win New Delhi?!

The Prime Minister was so angry that he called back immediately: Return to me immediately, or I will send a plane to blow you up!

Obviously, that person's life as an official is a thousand-year life!

I don’t know if the trip to the outskirts of New Delhi for a few days is true or not. There is no such thing in military history, but the field army where my brother-in-law stayed knows the story.

To use the popular words in the 21st century: very **!

In addition, the Sino-Indian border war has only passed for so many years, and people like brother-in-law can't really see Ah San.

"Brother-in-law, ancient India twoooo years ago and India in this society are two different things. They are not the same at all! India's ancient civilization and culture have long been lost. It is very complicated here, and it is different from our Chinese culture..."

After spending a lot of tongue, I almost recounted the exhibition of the four ancient civilizations from the beginning: Fortunately, after digging a bronze cellar in the Western Qin Dynasty last month, I touched on this issue in small talk, otherwise I have to talk about the year of the monkey.

After spending a lot of words, finally brought the topic back to the art of "Western Buddhism", Zhang Nan felt it was not easy!

"This Gandhara is one of the sixteen countries of ancient India. The main location should be in the Peshawar Valley where the Indus and Kabul Rivers in northern Pakistan meet, even the Afghanistan piece..."

Xiang Weirong thought, "The Soviet army is still trapped there. That place is messy enough!"

"That place hasn't been stable for more than two thousand years." Zhang Nan said something. What he didn't say was: Twenty years later, the place was more chaotic, and there was a big beard hiding in the place that dared to challenge the Yankees. As a result, I was finally thrown into the Arabian Sea by the seals to feed the fish.

Not only the big beards, but also a bunch of guys carrying various banners. You are from my country, and you continue to make things messier than when the Soviets were there!

There will be an explosion today, and there will be an attack tomorrow. If there is no news about that area in China's news for a week, it is simply the sun coming out from the west!

I think it’s a bit far away. Zhang Nan simply took out a sculpture of a Buddha head from a box on the side. It was made of stone and looked like a Westerner with a high nose: if a person who doesn’t know how to do it at first glance, he thought it would be a The head of ancient Greek marble sculpture!

"The Buddha statues of Gandhara art are just like this, with little difference. The earliest source of this art is ancient Greece.

In more than 3oo BC, King Alexander the Great of the Balkans in southeastern Europe conquered Central Asia, the second largest in South Asia, and the northwest region, bringing classical Greek culture there. After fusion with Orientalization, Gandhara appeared. culture.

At that time, they used Greek and Roman decoration methods to express things in the 6th largest regions of Central Asia and India. Later, they spread across the Pamirs to the southwestern region of Western Xinjiang. They were Chinese paintings, sculptures, architecture, arts and crafts. Brings the taste of ancient Greece and Rome.

So this Gandhara thing is called Greek-style Buddhist art. It was formed around the 1st century AD, and began to slowly decline in the 5th century AD.

The statues of the Buddhist temples in Milan in the Loulan area of ​​West Xinjiang, as well as the statues of Buddha and Bodhisattva in the Lavakta Yard in the Khotan area, are the Gandhara art that is obviously taken from the Hellenistic style.

Even the later sculptures in Yungang and Longmen Grottoes were influenced by this style to a certain extent. "

Guan Xingquan lifted the Buddha's head and looked at it, "That Alexander had such a big impact on his visit. I remember that he died very early, and the empire was quickly torn apart. It's amazing!"

Zhang Nan's eyes whitened and said, "Come here? He didn't just go to Asia. Starting in the middle of the third century BC, ancient Greek colonists established a completely Hellenistic slave in the Central Asian steppes. The country of control, called Bactria, is what Sima Qianli said of Daxia. In fact, it should be called Daxia—the Kingdom of Greece in its entirety.

The ruling class were all immigrants from Greece and the Balkans, and it was completely finished by the year AD. Bhaktra is the Stanbalkh of Afghanistan today.

And this Bactria is what the ancient Greeks called the northeastern part of Afghanistan north of today’s Hindu Kush. That completely Hellenistic country borders the Pamirs in the northwestern part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. "

I don’t know if I don’t know, I’m surprised when I say it!

It took a long time for Guan Xingquan and Xiang Weirong to turn their minds, "You mean the Western Han Dynasty, we have a Greek neighbor?"

"Yeah, apart from history, few people really know about this.

The westernmost part of the Greek country is to the southern part of the Caspian Sea, which is still in Asia today. The northernmost part should be near the Aral Sea, and the southernmost part is now northern India and the Arabian Sea. Anyway, Pakistan is basically his own.

The east is bordered by our Western Han and Western Regions, which is almost the size of most of India now. "

At this time, Guan Xingquan was holding the Buddha's head and suddenly said, "Look at it, the more I look at this, the more I feel that I look a bit like Karimi."

"Don't talk about it, Karimi doesn't believe this." Xiang Weirong said.

Zhang Nandao didn't take it seriously, saying: "The Gandhara area was the hometown of the Aryans 40oo years ago. Later, there were so many ethnic groups living in that area that historians could not understand it.

Primitive religion, Western culture, grassland culture, Buddhism, and later Isilan, even the last temple of Gandhara culture in China should be abandoned after Isilan culture entered.

It's too complicated, I don't understand. "

Not to mention this, eating crabs is dangerous and will be caught.

But at this point, Xiang Weirong found himself being run around the ditch by his brother-in-law again!

"How come here?"

"The stolen excavation and the stolen excavation are similar to the situation of the Dunhuang cultural relics lost in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China."

Guan Xingquan on one side put the Buddha's head back into the box, only then did he see a line on the other side of the box: He can read German.

"German National Museum. Squad leader, this was originally a collection in the museum."

Guan Xingquan said what Zhang Nan himself originally meant to say, which is much simpler.

"From 19o2 to 1914, under the leadership of two named Albert Grenweider and von Lecock, the German expedition carried out four inspections along the northern line of the Silk Road in the Western Xinjiang region of China.

It was said that it was an inspection, but it was actually robbing and looting all the way. In 12 years, a total of 423 boxes of rare cultural relics were transported back to Germany.

Later, due to the outbreak of World War I, this so-called investigation was also suspended. Most of the cultural relics stolen from China were handed over to the Berlin Museum of Anthropology, including early Buddhist murals, various artifacts unearthed, ancient architectural components, and paper copies. And ancient paintings on silk...

The Germans collectively refer to these collections as Turpan. In fact, most of them come from Kuqa. They are not Turpan at all. They belong to the cultural relics of the ancient Qiuci Kingdom. The most precious is the large number of Zil grottoes that have been savagely removed. "

Xiang Weirong shook his head, "I know that Westerners robbed and plundered cultural relics in our western region 10 years ago, you said in the Soviet Union.

What I am asking is how these things are here. "

At the meeting in the Soviet Union last year, Zhang Nan deliberately went to read the Dunhuang scriptures. Xiang Weirong listened and learned a lot.

"Berlin catastrophe of Chinese cultural relics! The Battle of Berlin smashed the entire Berlin, and according to the data, before Berlin was completely besieged, some of the cultural relics hidden in the museum were moved to the zoo basement in advance, but the Nazis were next to the museum. The headquarters of the SS received a lot of bombs and bombs. Books and archives were said to have been destroyed in the air raid.

After the Red Army conquered Berlin, the Soviet Union confiscated all the cultural relics in the zoo’s basement, but those Chinese cultural relics were missing, and they should have been secretly transferred to the Soviet Union.

In 1978, the Soviet Union returned some of the Chinese cultural relics to the GDR. There were about 300 pieces. However, the Germans estimated that most of them were in the Soviet Union. The Soviets did not exhibit this part of the Chinese cultural relics obtained from Germany. How much of this is still hidden in the Soviet museum warehouse, it is estimated that only the Soviets themselves know.

However, I think it is possible that some cultural relics have been selected and transported from Berlin to the Alps for storage before the Battle of Berlin. UU Reading www.uukanshu.com"

Pointing to the tall pile of boxes, "I just crawled over and took a look. There are also boxes marked with the German National Museum, but most of them are old Western books, and many are in German.

The Nazis were also worried that their own culture would be robbed by others. There are too many robbing people. This is also experienced. "

Xiang Weirong glared at Zhang Nan.

Embarrassed and smiled: Brother-in-law had to be careful not to be smashed by the box before, and he was well and climbed onto the top of the box.

"Hey, forget it when I am happy."

"How many boxes of Huaxia's?"

Upon hearing what his brother-in-law said, Zhang Nan pointed to a dozen boxes nearby.

"Only these ten boxes, there are three boxes of murals in total, and there are about 15 of them.

Two boxes of Buddha statues, and five boxes of paintings and documents on paper and silk. "

He stood up and opened the large wooden box that was used as a stool just now, "Here are all documents. I can't understand most of the words on the documents. It is probably the words used by ancient Kucha.

There are also documents written by the Han Dynasty government to the Kingdom of Kucha, and there are also two documents written by local officials in Kucha.

It's worthless, but all his mother is a baby! "

Zhang Nan’s "worthlessness" in this meeting is relative. In the international cultural relics market, if these documents are compared with oil paintings that cost hundreds or tens of millions of dollars more than a dozen meters away, they are "in terms of auction value." It doesn't seem to be comparable, because the collection groups are different, and the latter are much more extensive.

But for the study of Chinese history and ancient civilization, these boxes of documents and paintings are absolutely precious!

"Baby, do you still sit as a stool?"

"This box is strong, at least thirty kilograms! The documents inside are all mounted on modern paper, rolled up and stored, and each weighs three kilograms.

Fortunately, the Germans are willing to take up the space, otherwise they will be completely useless if there are some heavy things in them. "8