Wang Yuanlu stood outside the arch and saw that the corpse of the monk ringing the bell was not an act of ghosts. He carefully walked into the Mi niche and observed the shape of the bell for a while. He obviously had something to say.
Yue Guanchao saw him coming in and asked, "What does this mean?"
Seeing that they didn't understand, Taoist Wang continued to explain: "What I mean is that the structure of this bronze bell is connected to the body of the pagoda, and the inner wall is full of red ore iron powder. At that time, the Tubo monks made these pagodas. It’s probably used as a chanting instrument!”
"Judging from the fact that the monk's corpse tied his hands with the sutra pestle, he stayed here voluntarily. Probably when the city declined, in order to ensure the promotion of Buddhism, the monks had no choice but to pass away in nirvana under the niche. As a town object under the pagoda, we will continue to protect this ancient city."
The old Taoist priest paused: "You are right about one thing. This Tubo monk really wanted to protect the pagoda after his death, so he turned himself into a tomb. This monk must know that the bronze bell will play the sound of chanting scriptures. Otherwise, he would not have tied his hand to the prayer pestle, and he might have been ringing the bell the moment before his death to fulfill his desire to worship the Buddha."
"As for the fact that after his death, his body was blown by the cold wind, and he accidentally struck the bell to play the sound, it was completely an accident. It can only be said that God had his own will, allowing a monk to still ring the bell and recite the sound after death. It has been passed down for thousands of years.”
Xu Xiake heard what he meant: "Then you mean that they may have known that iron oxide can be used for recording in the Tang Dynasty, so they specially covered the inside of the bell and tower with red ore iron powder?"
Wang Yuanlu nodded towards them, obviously knowing the inside story: "It's not possible, this is a fact. I have been maintaining Thousand Buddha Cave all these years. You also know that Thousand Buddha Cave was opened from the Eastern Jin Dynasty to the Ming Dynasty. Start to stop building new caves..."
During these nearly two thousand years, the Northern Wei, Northern Zhou, Sui, and Tang dynasties successively ruled here. People from the former Qin, Beiliang, Xianbei, Dangxiang, Han, Tibetans, and Yuan also expanded their territory to Hexi. Over such a long time span, countless nobles, monks, military officers, craftsmen and common people have all left majestic, rich and brilliant cave murals in Thousand Buddha Cave.
Both the Tubo aristocrats and the Tang Dynasty aristocrats once ordered craftsmen to paint the walls of Thousand Buddha Cave for various reasons to preserve them for future generations.
For example, when General Ashina conquered the Western Regions, in order to record his achievements and hard work, he left diagrams in the caves to describe how they conquered the Western Regions and their experiences in conquering other countries in the Western Regions. Remember history.
For another example, Wang Xuance, a general during the Taizong period of the Tang Dynasty, was famous for his ability to destroy an entire country with one man. He once drew all his experiences on his westward journey to Tianzhu in the Thousand Buddha Cave Grottoes to remember the great deeds he had done.
Under this trend of carving stones to record achievements, the Thousand Buddha Cave is equivalent to recording all the historical events from the Eastern Jin Dynasty to the Ming Dynasty. Exploring the grottoes is like walking along the historical corridor, with thousands of years of events twisting forward and slowly extending. When Taoist Wang repaired the grottoes, Of course, we also know the historical events recorded in the cave murals.
Most of the grottoes built by the Tubo people were built after the Anshi Rebellion.
At that time, the Tubo Kingdom took advantage of the exhaustion of Guanzhong and directly occupied the Hexi Corridor, cutting off the connection between the Anxi Protectorate and Guanzhong. Over the next forty years, it gradually encroached on the territory of the Anxi Protectorate and eventually engulfed the entire Hexi. During the Tubo rule, many murals recording events from the Tubo period were left.
According to the mural records of the Thousand Buddha Cave during the Tubo period, Princess Wencheng brought Buddhism to Tibet, and Tubo became a country that united politics and religion. The Tubo occupied Hexi and in order to educate the people as quickly as possible, they began to send monks to Hexi towns and ordered Tubo monks to build buildings in the towns. The Great Buddha Temple, at the same time, also plays the role of spreading Tibetan education.
Under this situation, the Great Buddha Temple is actually no longer a simple temple, but a tool used by the Tubo nobles to monitor Hexi under the theocratic system. These monks are responsible for the sacrifices, blessings, relief, practices, etc. in the town. thing.
Although the duties of these Tibetan monks are indeed this, in practice, it is very difficult.
By the time of the Anshi Rebellion, Hexi, including the Anxi capital, had been ruled by the prosperous Tang Dynasty for nearly two hundred years. Both the Han towns in Hexi and the Hu people in Fang Kingdom had already believed from the bottom of their hearts that they were the subjects of Li and Tang Dynasty and the people of the Celestial Dynasty.
After Tubo took advantage of the exhaustion of Guanzhong to occupy Hexi, the level of governance was extremely poor!
They themselves are a country on the plateau and have no understanding of Han towns. Facing the Hexi towns that had been governed by the prosperous Tang Dynasty and made them prosperous and rich, they neither knew how to follow the local customs nor how to win over people's hearts, so they directly adopted a one-size-fits-all approach.
Abolition of all official government structures and county divisions in the towns in Hexi is equivalent to dividing the originally fertile Hexi into pastures for rewards to the Tubo nobles.
The people on these lands and towns were all transformed from the people of the Celestial Empire into ranch slaves, serving as slaves for the Tubo nobles. They lost their personal freedom, property rights, and even their lives were not guaranteed. The Tubo tribal nobles could sell them off at any time. Kill.
This extremely low level of governance, coupled with the perverse behavior of the Tubo nobles, made the governance of the towns in Hexi very unstable. Faced with this instability, they could only kill chickens to scare monkeys, and continued to kill people to maintain their rule, so that the people could return. Fear and respect.
These pagodas and pagodas are equivalent to tools for Tibetan monks to teach. They use iron ore powder to record sounds to create the effect of the pagodas silently chirping. Their original intention is to use the authority of the pagodas to increase the legitimacy of Tibetan rule. , the pagoda silently chants to itself, promoting that this is the paradise of Buddhism in Tubo, and is used to paralyze the people and become their slaves, telling them to resist less and enjoy more blessings of Buddhism.
"Part of these stories are recorded in the murals of the Tubo nobles, and some of them are briefly mentioned in the murals of the Zhang Yichao family to revive the Tang Dynasty and defend Hexi."
When Wang Yuanlu said this, everyone already understood the historical reason for the pagoda to sing. Yue Guanchao nodded: "Then this pagoda is really harmful. We were shocked when we heard the ghost chanting just now. The people at that time heard this The sound is probably similar to hearing ghosts crying and wolves howling."
"Now that we understand the situation, let's go back. As for the monk's body, let's put him down first. We can't let him ring the bell like this all the time, and we can't scare the people passing by to death."
After Song Siyuan finished speaking, Yue Guanchao and Keli put down the monk's corpse together, briefly buried it in the Mi-zi niche, and took them out of the niche to return the same way.
When he returned, Yue Erpao was feeding alfalfa to the camels. When he saw them coming back to greet them, he said, "How is it? I see that the humming sound of chanting has disappeared. What is it?"
Yue Guanchao wanted to scare him: "Hey, it's nothing. There's just a monk who has been dead for two thousand years ringing the bell under the pagoda."
