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The
Light of Kucha
At the birthplace of Kumarajiva This attraction strengthened due to the prodigious activities of its great Buddhist monk-scholar and translator, Kumarajiva (344-413 AD). Kumarajiva (“mature-youth” in Sanskrit), of an Indian Brahmin father, Kumara, who was married by a Kuchaen King to his daughter, Jiva, was to command an epoch-making influence on Chinese Buddhist thought. A prodigy, he was taught the theories of Mahayana Buddhism by no less than a prince, Suryasoma of Yarkand, in another kingdom I had visited south of Kashgar. This itself illustrates the remarkable presence of several Buddhist kingdoms, with rich interactions, that populated this Xinjiang landscape in the first millennia. Young Kumarajiva’s wisdom and reputation as a translator soon emanated to all corners (causing his forced removal, ironically as a prize of war, to the Chinese imperial court in 383 AD); based in Kucha, his birthplace, it is said he eventually commanded a translation team of nearly 3000 ! He is renowned for his systematic translations of the Sanskrit Mahayana sutras that flowed down the Silk Road into Chinese, enabling millions to gain a meaningful, rather than mechanical, understanding of Buddhism. Infused by such thoughts emanating from far off Gandhara (today Swat Valley, Pakistan, see Sunday Times June 5, 2005 “Grandeur of Gandhara”), over mountains and deserts, through the minds of traders, monks and others, as well as by varied influences from Persia, Kucha grew. It straddled the Northern Silk Road that had emerged from the Karakoram mountains at Kashgar (which I had followed) and ran 1500 kilometres towards Urumchi (Xinjiang’s current capital) and then southwards to the Mogao Caves. Thought and art thus flourished in this outpost thousands of kilometres from the sea; reflecting on their solitude, the monk-artisans of Kucha set out harnessing these into extraordinary imagery.
Kucha’s musical legacy By strange coincidence, as I wandered along Kucha's dusty main street one evening, musicians were playing traditional music at a small gathering. What I heard was unbelievable: the music reaching my ears was no different from that which accompanies ceremonial occasions and processions in Sri Lanka. On closer inspection, the musicians were playing the flute, drums and cymbals. (I had once encountered the same music high up the Karakoram passes, indicating, probably, a Buddhist connection). It would seem that some customary vestige of the past was very much alive, even if religious practices were perhaps not.
European migration into China hey were the forefathers of the Tocharians, the indigenous inhabitants of the famed Loulan region of middle China, but their linguistic roots lay in the European family of languages (itself said to be partially rooted in Asia). Around 1000 BC, evidence of the Tocharians' direct trade with China proper has been found. As the first centuries AD dawned at Kucha, specifically, the Tocharian society that emerged had developed a highly refined Indo-Persian mixed culture which then embraced Buddhism by 2nd C AD. The contributions of the Tocharians and their forefathers to the region appear significant despite the technological and cultural prowess that developed within China; besides domestication of pasture animals, they brought knowledge of the stirrup/bridle (revolutionizing war by making man stable on horseback), and the light chariot. Indeed, amongst the most rewarding of my time in Xinjiang was the chance to finally see its unique 4000 year old "European" (Caucasian) mummies (as detailed next week). The
land of enlightenment Shortly out of Kucha, the tarred road disappeared. A dirt track took over which undulated through a moonscape, punctuated by innumerable ridges and geological formations. Soon these too vanished and we travelled many hours on a featureless, dusty, stone plateau devoid of life and features. I was perplexed as to how my local driver could follow a "road", let alone know where he was heading; a sense of uncertainty at being abandoned in this terrain came over me. Eventually, we re-encountered a dirt road and, rounding a bend, the desert plateau yielded a gorge where pockets of greenery, offshoots of water, could be seen. Slowly, a series of pockmarked high ridges with embedded caves came into my view. Below them were a marked off entrance complex, a sign of authority in a landscape which had no signs otherwise, and here we stopped. The
Kizil caves It is hard to capture the sensation of entering the Kizil Caves. A narrow opening high up on the cliff face took me into a dark, cool cave. A chamber, hand-cut 20 feet into the cliff and about 13 ft in width with a sloping concave roof, typified the caves here. As my eyes acclimatized to the darkness and the narrow shaft of blinding white light piercing it from the entrance, wondrous colours and images began slowly to emerge around me. Beautiful, sometimes fragmented, coloured images of the Buddha in various forms, detailed scenes from individual Jataka Tales, exquisite animal and flower motifs, a bewildering array of decorative patterns... were meticulously hand painted on the walls. The colour schemes were enchanting; the glorious lapis lazuli blues from crushed lapis sediments brought by unknown hands from distant valleys in Afghanistan, jade greens from malachite stone reminiscent of Khotan’s minerals (China’s best jade source), blacks, whites and earthy ochres more symbolic of Indian Ajanta Caves...but all well visualized, coordinated and painstakingly painted. Stylistically too, one could ascertain Indian, Iranian, Afghan, Sogdian, Gandharan and to a lesser extent Chinese hands that had orchestrated these murals, as Kucha's social heritage had bestowed; such styles varied across caves and centuries. Ahead of me, occasionally, lay the pitiful remains of a crumbling Buddha statue, the central and often only relic in a cave, but in its time the focus of worship. In some caves, behind the central statute, a second chamber was present. The pilgrim, having made his or her initial worship in the main cave lit by candles, would then walk around clockwise and encounter a reclining Buddha in the second chamber. A
pilgrim in another world In other caves, a dazzlingly simple, almost comical, lapis blue elephant could be seen; circles of white wild geese in a blue sky perambulated around a crescent moon. Animal paintings of Lumbini-like scenes (depicting a lusher Kucha to the arid region of today) were punctuated by (Chinese?) symbols for moon and sun gods, as monk-artists of different periods integrated objects of religious and practical concern of the societies outside the cave in the Taklamakan. Special tantric caves, depicting sexual scenes had also been excavated - a reminder that Kucha had come under Tibetan rule. In another cave, my imagination danced akin to the flickering candles that would have illuminated it for the painters; I could almost smell the incense, fruits and flowers that would have been present a millennia and a half ago. These were moments, weeks, to treasure alone. The only earthly distraction was my guide, attempting some rehearsed phrase on the cave and Buddhism...and ushering me on, whether to the next cave or plane one did not know. I pondered over how these caves came into being. After their initial excavation by hand, panels inserted into the crumbling walls were smeared with mixtures of clay, animal hair, straw and vegetable remains, to which binding agents such as apricot juice or animal glue were added. These were smoothened and a stucco (lime and gypsum) base overlaid. The difficulties in arriving at this stage were enormous given the loose rock, location and poor illumination. Then, the monk artisans who were often commissioned by rich nobles, passing dignitaries, combined donations of poor farmers or religious travellers, would have set to work, sketching in their compositions or using a ponce technique over years of intensive labour. One wonders about their thoughts and discussions, their frustrations, how their days would have passed...(My mind then recollected a timeless moment far away in Bhutan, when in a similar scene in 1994, I was privy to monks meticulously drawing thangkas in a room, while another strummed a musical instrument to harmonise their thoughts). The caves expanded in number as their generous benefactors grew...and by the same token, with the onset of Islam in the 8-9th C AD, fell into neglect and oblivion, under a blanket of fine Taklamakan dust. It seems that the curtain had closed. The
rediscovery My time in Kucha was limited, but I also travelled to other enchanting sites. At Subashi (5-6 C AD), the sprawling desert ruins - once home to 100 temples and described by Xuanzang as “so beautiful that they seemed to belong to another world” -spanned many kilometres, reminding me of Palmyra, Syria, a similar Silk Road city. Climbing a huge terraced stupa, I was suddenly aware that where once there was a teeming city, I was now the sole visitor (apart from my driver below) as far as the eye could see on this vast Taklamakan plain. With such a heritage, it is my earnest hope that China will also preserve the local and geographic ambience surrounding these sites, especially at Kizil, and not cocoon these treasures of Xinjiang in an infrastructurally modern or touristically "sound" manner. To do so will remove the very essence and sanctity that the Kuchaen monks had created so painstakingly and which has lasted till recently. |
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Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers
Ltd. All rights reserved. |
Just
a day before leaving Colombo for Central Asia, a book I ordered
months earlier arrived through the post, much to my delight. It
contained rare photographs of extraordinarily beautiful 3-5th C
AD Buddhist cave murals from a remote corner of China's vast Xinjiang
Autonomous Region. The exhilarating photographs depicted exquisite
renditions of the Jataka Tales in colours alien to murals in Sri
Lanka. As the pages turned, my mind (which had contemplated this
location for years) was already there and it was clear where the
rest of me would go, if indeed it could.
