Chapter 23 Section 5 Music Hidden Deep in the Grotto

There is an ancient Buddhist site in Dunhuang County, Gansu Province. After more than 1,000 years of silence on the cliff, it suddenly aroused the covetousness of foreigners in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China. In 1907, an Englishman named A. Stein looted more than 10,000 pieces of cultural relics from it; in 1908, a Frenchman named Pelliot stole more than 5,000 pieces of cultural relics from it; The Chinese, Russians, and Americans successively took batches of scriptures and murals from it.This Buddhist site, which has been repeatedly ravaged by foreign cultural predators, is the world-famous treasure house of ancient Chinese culture - the Dunhuang Grottoes.

Dunhuang Grottoes, also known as "Mogao Grottoes", are a series of Buddhist temples excavated on the cliff at the eastern foot of Mingsha Mountain, 25 kilometers southeast of Dunhuang County.Founded in 366, it was built successively from the Northern Wei Dynasty to the Sui, Tang, Song and Yuan Dynasties, forming a huge group of Buddhist grottoes.There are 492 numbered caves, and almost all caves have music and dance images.These music and dance images can be connected into a huge picture scroll of Chinese music and dance from the Northern Wei Dynasty to the Sui and Tang Dynasties to the Song and Yuan Dynasties. In order to understand the music culture of these dynasties, especially the grand occasion of the music culture of the Sui and Tang Dynasties, a large number of vivid and specific image materials and texts are provided. material.

The murals that reflect the music scenes of the marching ceremonial guards of the Sui Dynasty are very distinctive, such as the Sui Dynasty Music and Dance Picture in Cave 390, in which eight people on the right use musical instruments such as horizontal flute, curved neck pipa, panpipe, vertical harp, and square ring to accompany the dance.Fangxiang in the picture is a musical instrument not mentioned in the previous chapters. It first appeared in the Southern and Northern Dynasties. It was often seen in bands during the Sui and Tang Dynasties. It is shaped like a rectangular sounding board made of metal, hung on a frame, and struck with a mallet. The sound is crisp and crisp. bright.It is a new type of body-sounding instrument created with reference to the chime shape.

There are many murals reflecting the music performances of the Tang Dynasty, and the scenes are also very spectacular.For example, in the picture of music and dance in the early Tang Dynasty on the north wall of Cave 220, there are four dancers dancing in the middle, and there are colored lights around them.A band of 15 people on the left is playing (left in Figure 24). ), 筚篥, another trick is waving and singing; a band composed of 13 people on the right is also playing (Fig. 24 right), with instruments from bottom to top, there are thin waist drum, flute, clapper, Ruan Xian, 筚篥, Fang Xiang , qin, pan flute, shakuhachi, etc., there is also a trick singing with a pan.The whole picture is grand in scale, vivid in image and gorgeous in decoration, showing the brilliant scenes of music, singing and dancing on the night of Lantern Festival in the court of Tang Dynasty.

The murals reflecting advocacy music and Sanle Baixi performances are also eye-catching.For example, "Zhang Yichao Traveling Picture" at the lower part of the west end of the south wall of Cave 156 in the late Tang Dynasty, in the picture there are several riders blowing horns and drums in front of the marching team; Afterwards, a 12-member walking band played big drums, curved-neck pipas, thin-waisted drums, shakuhachi, horizontal flute, Jiegu, Sheng, clappers, vertical harp and other musical instruments.This painting shows the history of Zhang Yichao leading the people of all ethnic groups to repel the Tupan rulers and recover Hexi from the second year of Dazhong to the second year of Xiantong (AD 848-861), and was appointed by the Tang government as the "Jiedu Envoy of Guiyi Army". content.

At the lower part of the east end of the north wall of the same grotto, there is also a "Mrs. Song Traveling Map", in which there are hundreds of opera performances in front of the marching procession, accompanied by drums, flutes, and board musicians; Dancing with the music festival, seven people beside them accompanied them with instruments such as thin-waisted drums, 筚篥, short-necked lutes, drums, flutes, clappers, and sheng.The accompaniment instruments for Baixi performances in the painting only use drums, flutes, and boards, which is similar to what Bai Juyi said in his poem "Libu Ji": "Libu Ji, drums and flutes are noisy, double swords are danced, seven balls are danced, long ropes are curled, The long pole" is exactly the same.

The most precious musical cultural relics in the Dunhuang Grottoes are the 25 music scores written on the back of the volume of "Lectures on the Holy Festival in Zhongxing Temple" in the fourth year of Changxing (933 AD), which are now called "Dunhuang music scores".The spectrum characters used are called "Yanyue Banzi Spectrum", and there are more than 20 in total. There are symbols and words beside the spectrum characters to indicate pitch and rhythm.It is a pity that this cultural relic has been looted by the Frenchman Pelliot, and it is now stored in the Paris Library of France (Figure 25).In addition, the lost music and dance materials include: "New Collections with Key Words" and "New Shang Lue Ancient and Modern Words Mentioned in Parallel Volume 1 and Volume 2" with the inscription "Music Department" stolen by the British Stein; The Dunhuang Dance Score stolen by Yin and Pelliot.The loss of these treasures of Sui and Tang music and dance materials cannot but be said to be a major loss in the field of Sui and Tang music and dance research in China.