Chapter 12 Chapter Twelve Xixia Royal Tombs

Xixia is a dynasty established by the Dangxiang clan in Northwest my country.Its ancestor belonged to the Tuoba tribe. In the early Tang Dynasty, it was attached to the Tang Dynasty and given the surname Li.At the beginning of the Song Dynasty, he professed a minister to the Song Dynasty, and was given the surname Zhao by Emperor Taizong.In 1038 A.D., Zhao Yuanhao proclaimed himself emperor and restored his surname to Li. His country name was Xia and his capital was Xingqing (now Yinchuan, Ningxia).It was destroyed by Yuan Taizu Genghis Khan in 1227, and it was handed down to 10 emperors for 190 years.At its peak, its sphere of influence included present-day Ningxia, northern Shaanxi, western Gansu, northeastern Qinghai, and western Inner Mongolia.

Yuan Hao was familiar with Chinese characters, established the official system, military system and laws following the Tang and Song systems, and created Xixia characters by using Chinese radicals.Its mausoleum system not only imitates the Tang and Song Dynasties, but also combines the customs of the nation, which has its own characteristics. The construction of the Xixia Mausoleum began when Yuan Hao's grandfather Li Jiqian.According to the "Song History Xia Guozhuan", there are nine mausoleums with mausoleum names in the Western Xia Dynasty.The first two of them are honorable.The last three generations of Shenzong, Xianzong, and Nanping King all died in 1226-1227 when Xixia was defeated, and their mausoleum names are unknown.After Mongolia destroyed Xixia, all the ground buildings in the mausoleum area were destroyed, and most of the mausoleums were destroyed.After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the cultural relics department of Ningxia made a more detailed investigation of the Western Xia royal tombs, and unearthed one imperial tomb, four accompanying tombs, and four stele pavilions.

The mausoleum area is located in the gentle slope of the alluvial fan at the eastern foot of Helan Mountain in the west of Yinchuan City, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.The mausoleum area runs from north to south, with a width of four kilometers from east to west and a length of 11 kilometers from north to south. There are nine royal tombs and 193 accompanying tombs.According to the location and arrangement, it can be divided into four areas.The first area is in the south, including two royal tombs, about 30 meters apart.A small platform was built on the east side between the magpie platform and Nanshenmen of the two mausoleums, which may be a special symbol.According to records, the tombs of Li Jiqian and Zhao Deming were named only after Yuan Hao proclaimed the emperor, and this symbol may be related to this.The second area is about 3.5 kilometers north of the first area, including two royal tombs, two kilometers apart from east to west.The cemetery on the east side is larger and unique, and it is located in the center of the cemetery area, which shows the status of the tomb owner and the uniqueness of the era.It should be Yuan Hao's Tailing.The third area is about two kilometers north of the second area, and the two royal tombs are juxtaposed from east to west, about one kilometer apart.The excavated No. 6 royal tomb on the west side is inferred to be Li Qianshun's mausoleum (Fig. 11).The fourth area is in the north of the mausoleum area, about two kilometers away from the third area. The three royal tombs are arranged in the shape of finished characters, about 50 meters apart.A stele in the Western Xia Dynasty was unearthed from the stele pavilion in Yiling to the south, which proves that it is Li Renxiao's Shouling.Combined with the analysis of the location of the tombs, their arrangement order was deeply influenced by the Zhaomu system in the Song Dynasty, basically adopting the "Guanyu" form from south to north, left Zhaomu and right Mu.

The shape and layout of the nine cemeteries are basically the same, and the plane is vertically rectangular, each with an area of ​​more than 100,000 square meters.The southernmost part of the cemetery is the double que, facing east and west, with a distance of about 70 meters.The Que platform is square, nine meters long on each side, and about seven meters high, on which a pavilion was originally built.Que Taipei is a stele pavilion, and the north of the pavilion is Yuecheng and Inner City. The two cities are connected, and the plane is in an inverted convex shape.There are stone elephants on both sides of the Shinto in Yuecheng.The inner city is square or rectangular, with a gate in the middle of each side, turrets at the four corners, and a dedicated hall to the west of the south gate.Lingtai is in the northwest of the inner city. The inner city of Mausoleum No. 6 is 183 meters long from north to south and 134 meters wide from east to west.Some mausoleums have an outer city outside the inner city.There are two types of outer city shapes: one is closed, such as Tomb No. 1 in the south; the other is open, without a south wall, such as Tomb No. 6 in the west of the third district.Most of the city walls are rammed in sections, each section is about five meters long, and some are built with stone blocks.There are four rammed earth corners at the outermost four corners of the cemetery, which may be used to mark the area of ​​Zhaoyu.

The mausoleum is tower-shaped, octagonal or circular in plane, about 20 meters high, and divided into five, seven or nine levels.It turns out that each level has eaves and overlying tiles.In front of the mausoleum, a fish-ridge-shaped tomb passage is sealed with soil.In Mausoleum No. 6 that has been excavated, the underground palace is 18 meters in front of the mausoleum platform and 18 meters deep from the surface.The main room is a horizontal rectangular dome-top earth cave, 7.8 meters long and 5.6 meters wide, with an ear room on each side, and the ground is made of bricks.Warrior statues are painted on the two walls of the corridor, and there is a slope tomb in front of it.

The mausoleum platform, inner city, divine wall and double towers are all painted with ocher vermilion fine mud.A large number of fragments of bricks, tiles and glazed components are scattered on the ground of each cemetery.There are two types of colored glaze: yellow-green and dark blue. One of the pieces of green glazed owl kiss is restored to a height of 1.52 meters. It can be imagined that the architecture of the cemetery at that time was very magnificent. The accompanying tombs are located in the south or on both sides of the royal tomb, and are small in scale and simple in shape.Generally, there is no corner platform and que platform, and the size of the cemetery varies, and there is only the south gate.Some are composed of grave mounds, a city, and a stele pavilion, some add moon city, some have screen walls at the south gate, and some have dedicated halls; some are composed of grave mounds, inner and outer cities, moon city, gate tower, and double stele pavilions .There are round mounds, cylinders, cones, and three-level round pier types, and the sealing soil is all rammed with wooden skeletons.The tombs are all earth caves with square dome tops.There are two or three burial tombs in some cemeteries.

The tombs excavated in the Xixia Mausoleum were all destroyed and looted in the early years, and there are not many burial objects left. The gold-plated copper bull weighing 188 kilograms and the stone horse weighing 355 kilograms unearthed from the accompanying tomb No. 101 are vivid in shape and are rare casting and carving masterpieces.Some remnants of Chinese and Xixia scripts were also found in the mausoleum area. There is a large architectural site at the northern end of the mausoleum area, facing south, with a nearly rectangular plane, 290 meters long from north to south, and 170 meters wide from east to west.It may be where the Western Xia Ancestral Temple is located.

Xixia focused on the construction of the mausoleum area, built walls around the mausoleum, and opened a door on each side, and the mausoleum buildings were arranged symmetrically along the central axis, the tomb passages were sloped, and the Xuangong was an earth cave dome. Obviously, it was deeply influenced by the Tang and Song burial systems. Impact.The "Jiajing Ningxia Xinzhi" in the Ming Dynasty said that the Xixia Mausoleum "its system is imitated from the Song Mausoleum in Gongxian County", which is in line with the facts.At the same time, we can see the different characteristics of the Western Xia Mausoleum and the Northern Song Dynasty mausoleums: there is no rear mausoleum for burial in the cemetery, no lower palace, the cemetery has a double city wall, the inner city is rectangular in plane, the moon city is added in front of the inner city, and the underground palace is located to the west of the inner city In the north, there are pagoda-style mausoleums and so on.These are of great significance for understanding the relationship between Xixia culture and Han culture.