At the traffic police checkpoint, it so happened that a staff member of the Kizil Thousand Buddha Caves hitched a ride with us, and because his ID card was demagnetized, he couldn't get through, so he had to return to his unit to open a certificate. Under his guidance, we arrived at our destination smoothly.
The location of Kizil Thousand Buddha Cave belongs to the town of Kizil in Baicheng County, which is also the center of the western region of Guzi. The Thousand Buddha Cave is situated on a steep cliff, and Kezir means red in Uyghur, probably named after the red Tulertag Mountain across the Weigan River.
Because of the change of religion, the Buddhist murals have been artificially damaged, some of them have had their eyes destroyed, the gold leaf has been scraped off, and there are even herdsmen who boil water for cooking in the caves.
Before the founding of new China, the Germans Le Coq came here twice, frantically cutting the siding, stole a large number of exquisite murals, but also brazenly declared: "Because all paintings if not preserved by me or by similar institutions in Europe, undoubtedly to destruction."
However, during World War II, a large portion of the murals he stole were destroyed in the war, and the rest were preserved in the Museum of Asian Art in Germany. The frescoes left in Kizil Thousand Buddha Cave are still preserved in the cave, but not until the establishment of New China to get the protection it deserves, and the establishment of the Institute of Frescoes.
We saw only four caves temporarily opened, which is also to protect the frescoes. The frescoes here are a unique diamond-shaped grid pattern, each grid is a Buddhist story, and reflects the ancient civilizations such as Greco-Roman cultures mingled here.
The sun and moon gods of Greek mythology are personified as the sun and moon. Nude images also appear in the frescoes, the heavenly palace kabuki and singing and dancing gods are nude, and even the bodhisattva is also nude.
In one cave, there is no remnants of mural paintings, was stripped of mural paintings on the wall skin is the Korean artist Han Le Ran in the protection and cleaning of the cave left a paragraph, and he organized a large number of mural paintings information to take the plane back when the plane crashed, was killed.
Standing on the cliff face at the entrance to the cave, looking at the lush banks of the Weigang River, and the opposite side of the barren Tseleh Tag Mountain, gusts of wind blowing, bringing infinite sadness, this sadness is even beyond the sadness of visiting the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang.
The relief came when my eyes shifted to the statue of Hatamarash in the square. Instead of the image of a meditating Buddha, his sculpture, like a thinker, seems to be contemplating the wheel of history and pondering his life as well.
Hatouma Roshi's father gave up the family's hereditary title and crossed the Onion Ridge from distant India to Guzi. Hired as a state teacher, the king married his sister Jiva, who gave birth to a son named Hatamarash.
Hatamarash returned to his country at the age of 12. Passing through Shule, he met a monk of the Prajna Emptiness Sect of Mahayana Buddhism, and was converted to Mahayana Buddhism. He debated with the monk in the country of Wensu, and later became famous in the Western Region. However, history has also given him a rough experience.
The former Qin Emperor Fu Jian sent Lu Guang to lead his troops to attack Guzi for the reason of welcoming Hatamarash. And after Lü Guang captured Guzi, he didn't hand Hatamaroche back to Chang'an immediately, instead, he got drunk in the city, and forced Hatamaroche to drink, and forced him to marry the princess of Guzi country, and Hatamaroche became a monk who broke the precepts. When Lü Guang was on his way back to Chang'an, the Former Qin Dynasty was destroyed and he established the Later Liang Regime in Wuwei, Gansu. After Lü Guang's death, the Later Qin Emperor attacked Houliang, which sent Hatamarishi to Chang'an.
Hatamaroche was not only proficient in Sanskrit and the language of Guzi, but also in Chinese, translating many Buddhist classics and even influencing the use of Chinese.
It has been said that if Buddhist culture is completely abandoned, I am afraid we cannot even speak well. Many of the words in the Buddhist classics translated by Hatamarash are still applied in daily life, such as: trouble, wisdom, exactly, one cut, great enlightenment, thinking of the wrong, bulls, ghosts, serpents and gods, and magical powers ......
Walking along the steps from the cliff face of the Thousand Buddha Cave in Kizil to the ground level, I passed the statue of Hatamarash, who remains in a state of contemplation. As I stood opposite him, the Thousand Buddha Cave was in the background.
It was as if, I had actually met the original Hatamarishi, who had come from the west to the east to preach the Dharma.