Caves of Kizil

The caves of Kizil , or caves of the thousand Buddhas of Kizil , are the Buddhist caves oldest known in China, the first of them dating from III^e century, approximately one century before those of Mogao. They are located in the Bassin of Tarim, with approximately 7 km in the south-west of the village of Kizil, in the County of Baicheng, autonomous region of the Xinjiang, on the branch of the Silk route which circumvents the Désert of Taklamakan by north. The frescos which they contain are regarded as the most beautiful murals of Central Asia.

History

The caves of Kizil are artificial caves dug between and it or century in the escarpments of northern bank of the river Muzat. The development of the Islam in the area involved their abandonment before, perhaps even as of, as well as the destruction of all the statues, Islam prohibiting the representations illustrated, comparable in idolatry.

During approximately one millenium before the catch of Koutcha by the Chinese in 658, the area constituted an independent kingdom, centers of trade and Indo-European culture, the Royaume of Guici (or of Koutcha). This one had its own language, the Koutchéen, pertaining to the family of the Indo-European Langues, and its own styles of music and painting. The style of the frescos evolved/moved with time, that of oldest being Indo-European, whereas the most recent frescos adopted the rules Chinese stylistics.

Various archaeological forwardings, Russian, Japan German eases and , visited these caves at the beginning of, and, according to the methods employed at the time to preserve the old works of art of degradation by the local populations, carried with them objects and documents, as well as frescos cut out on the walls of the caves. Most important carried out between 1903 and 1913 were the four German forwardings by Albert Grünwedel and Albert von the Cock, which thus brought back in Germany 470 m ² of murals, preserved to the Museum für Asiatische Kunst (Asian museum of art) of Berlin.

The site also suffered from degradations made at the time of the Cultural revolution, as well as work of restoration and installation badly led to the beginning of.

Description

The caves of Kizil form a unit which extends over a length of more than three kilometers, and are staged on several levels. Some of them were used for the religious worship, and others for housing. One could reach it thanks to wood platforms connected by scales. On the 236 indexed caves, approximately 80 only contain frescos. Some only are opened with the public.

The style of the frescos of the oldest caves suggests the influence of the culture of the Gandhâra, kingdom old which had developed between I er and in Afghanistan and in the North-West of the Pakistan current ones.

The Buddhist topics represented on the frescos are in particular those developed in Jâtaka S - in particular of the Buddhist fables like that of the King of the offering Bear of food in alms, or the King of the Elephants sacrificing themselves to help of the poor - or in Avadana S (according to in that the example of the caves of Ajantâ in India), and of many scenes of the life of the Sakyamuni, the historical Bouddha, and of various holy characters.

Profane subjects are also represented there, covering many fields of the culture and daily life in the area, like musicians, patrons, scenes of hunting, fishing or agricultural work, landscapes, animals. One thus could regard the frescos of Kizil as a pictorial encyclopedia of the culture of the kingdom of Guici.

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