"Niuzi, look at this side. Brother Guang patted me on the shoulder and pointed to the cave wall on the side and said.

"This, this is a Sanqing stone carving. I was surprised.

"What?" Brother Guang didn't understand.

"Sanqing is the three supreme gods of Taoism, the Supreme Enlightenment Yuan Shi Tianzun of the Yuqing Holy Realm, the Yuchen Daojun Lingbao Tianzun of the Shangqing Realm, and the Taishang Laojun Daode Tianzun, the leader of the Ten Thousand Sects Mixed Yuan. I said.

However, I wondered, how could there be so many Taoist cliff carvings here?

Taoism originally respected the invisible "Tao", so there was no such thing as stone carvings. Later, under the influence of Buddhism, Taoism also began to engrave statues. With the continuous prosperity of Taoism, Taoist stone carvings and cliff statues have gradually increased. These stone carvings are not only numerous, but also have high historical value. Taoist statues, the main image is either Tianzun, or Laojun, or Tianzun, Laojun juxtaposed, or the Yuan Shi Tianzun, Taishang Daojun, Taishang Laojun "Sanqing" as the main image.

The origin of "Fang Xian Dao" is very early, and the "Historical Records and Feng Zen Book" said that Zong Wu Forget, Zheng Boqiao, Xian Menzi and other people "are Fang Xian Dao, and the form is all lost, depending on the things of ghosts and gods". Its most important feature is the emphasis on various immortal immortal dao techniques, as well as private teaching and independent practice. During the Qin and Han dynasties, a large number of Fang Xian Dao entered the court from the people and became the emperor's guests, and the Guanzhong area became the center of Fang Xian Dao's activities. For example, Lu Sheng, Han Zhong, Hou Gong, and Shi Sheng during the Qin Shi Huang period, and Li Shaojun and Gongsun Qing during the time of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, etc., were all favored by the royal family. The activities of these monks made Fang Immortal Dao's immortal magic continuous and continuous.

Unlike Fang Xiandao, which was based on individual religious behaviors, Huang Laodao in the Western Han Dynasty was formed on the basis of collective religious behaviors. The spread of the Taiping Sutra in the Chang'an region is a sign of the emergence of the Huanglao Taoist Order in this area. This early mass religious activity used the Queen Mother of the West as a center of worship. At this time, the content of the Han portrait stone also gradually formed a "fairy world" system around the "main god" West Queen Mother. The statue of the Queen Mother of the West in the Han portrait stone is often carved and painted with a variety of gods and beasts belonging to the Queen Mother of the West, such as the jade rabbit, the three blue birds, the nine-tailed fox, the toad, etc., and the Queen Mother of the West sits upright on the sacred tree or in the door, and the door is mostly equipped with the Vermilion Bird, Xuanwu, and the Unicorn Beast. The religious images of immortal immortality such as the feather man, the sacred tree, the Japanese and the Chinese black, and the rabbit pounding medicine in the Han portrait stone have a lot to do with the popularity of the idea of Fang Xiandao immortals at that time.

I looked carefully at the carved stone carvings.

There are 14 niches and 67 statues of Taoist cliffs in the style of the Tang Dynasty, these statues are concentrated in the vicinity of the original Beiping Zhizhi Office, distributed on the rock wall of 300 meters long, 30 meters wide, and 1-2 meters high from the surface. Niche No. 1-14 are all molded with the statue of Taishang Laojun, which shows the high status of Laojun in Taoism in the Tang Dynasty. These statues have different images, complex and simple coexist, and they are simple Taoist cliff statues, which are of great research value. According to the inscription of pine and cypress, the age of these statues should be around the ninth year of Tianbao. Judging from the existing more than 10 niche statues, the statues here are mostly based on Tianzun and Laojun, although the content is relatively single, but its Tianzun and Laojun worship just reflect the characteristics of Taoism in the Tang Dynasty.

"Hey, it's a double-stacked alcove. The main image is Tianzun, sitting on a hoof-shaped lotus platform with his hands on his abdomen. The upper body wears a short shirt, a collared shirt, a yellow curtain on the outside, a lotus-petal-shaped head light behind the neck, the main image is left and right, there is a wakata and a Jurchen, on the wall on both sides of the head of the main statue, there are four statues carved on each side, and at the door of the inner niche, there are two wrestlers each. It shows that the worship of Tianzun and Laojun has penetrated into the people of Shu at this time. I said.

"Is this a stone tablet?" Nanli asked.

I looked in the direction of my finger, "This is the stone inscription of Taoism in the Tang Dynasty, which not only has important calligraphy artistic value, but also provides valuable materials for the study of Taoism." I couldn't help but take a closer look.

In the middle of the Tang Dynasty, not only regular script, cursive script, and line script made epoch-making achievements, but also seal and official scripts made breakthroughs. With the enhancement of the economic strength of the Tang Empire, the enrichment of people's cultural life, and the rise of the ancient style, Tang Xuanzong felt that the official word was not transmitted, and the edict made 40 volumes of "Zitong", specializing in the official book, so the Tang Dynasty official book was all the rage. Some of the calligraphers who are not seen in the history of calligraphy have also left precious handwriting, and Yang Ling, a female calligrapher from Danling who wrote the inscription of "Pine and Cypress", is one of them.

The inscription of 589 words, for the official book, has the delicate stretch of Cao Quan's stele, and has the end of Tang Kai as the whole, which can be called the top grade of Tang Li.

The inscription begins: "Xiding Lingweizhi became enlightened, and it took a thousand years to die; "Ding Lingwei, the legend is that he is a native of Liaodong in the Han Dynasty, learned the Tao in Lingxu Mountain, and later returned as an immortal crane and fell on the pillar of the city gate. From time to time, there is a young man, who raises his bow to shoot it, and the crane is flying, wandering in the air and saying: "There are birds and birds Ding Lingwei, go home for a thousand years and return now." The city is like the old people, why not learn the immortal mound base. It is said that the story of Ding Lingwei was originally only found in the Ming Dynasty Hong Zicheng's "Xiaoyao Ruin Sutra", and this inscription engraved in the Tang Tianbao period mentions Ding Lingwei, which shows that at the latest in the Tang Dynasty, the myths and legends about Ding Lingwei have been circulated among the people.

Since the establishment of Taoism in the Eastern Han Dynasty, Taoist scriptures have been written one after another, and the Tang Dynasty is an important period in the history of Taoist scriptures. Although since Liu Song and Lu Xiujing began to sort out the catalogue of the Taoist scriptures, to the Tang Dynasty Kaiyuan, Tianbao period, there have been several Taoist catalogs, but due to the vast volume and age, so after the Tang Dynasty, the classification, articles, and volumes of the Taoist scriptures, some of them have become virtual and real, and it is difficult to distinguish, and some of the scriptures are recorded in the existing "Orthodox Taoist Collection", but the specific content has been lost.

The Nanzhu Guan Ji not only records the classification of the Taoist classics in the Tang Dynasty, but also records the total number of Taoist classics and the specific volumes of various classifications at that time in detail, which provides detailed and powerful evidence for us to understand the true compilation and inheritance of Taoist classics in the Tang Dynasty.

Lao Tzu was basically worshipped as an ancient sage in the Western Han Dynasty and before, and its image can be seen in the Han portrait stone image "Confucius Sees Lao Tzu". During the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Wudoumi Sect took Lao Tzu as its leader and began the process of deifying Lao Tzu, but at that time it did not pay attention to the shaping of Lao Tzu's image. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, under the influence of Buddhist statues, Kou Qianzhi's new Heavenly Master Dao and Louguan Dao both worshipped Lao Tzu as the leader and began to build the statue of Lao Tzu, and Lao Tzu's identity was completely transformed from a sage to the lord of the gods. In the Tang Dynasty, the royal family posthumously recognized Lao Tzu as its ancestor, called itself "the seedling of the immortals", respected Lao Tzu as the Holy Ancestor Xuanyuan Emperor, and began to worship Lao Tzu to respect the Taoist statue activities. During the reign of Xuanzong, the statue of Emperor Xuanyuan was made and distributed all over the world and enshrined. Xuanzong also gathered the strength of the whole country to gather the country's first-class craftsmen to build Taoist statues in the capital city of Chang'an, which greatly promoted the development of Taoist art. In the Taiqing Palace in Chang'an, Xuanzong specially invited Yuan Jiaer, a famous statue maker from the Western Regions, to carve the statue of Xuanyuan Laojun with the white jade of Taibai Mountain, and carved Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty as a servant. In the seventh year of Tianbao (748 AD), Yuan Jiaer also made a statue of the white jade Laojun for the Yuan Pavilion of the Huaqing Palace in Lishan.

Because Lao Tzu was given the triple identity of god, ancestor and sage by the ruler in the Tang Dynasty, Chang'an in the Tang Dynasty showed different characteristics from other statues in the statue of Lao Tzu. Unlike other statues of Lao Tzu that show a slightly larger proportional relationship with the proportions of the head, the statue of Lao Tzu in Lishan is basically in accordance with the relationship between the proportions of the human body, harmonious, natural and true, reflecting the psychological scale of the statue and the worshipper, and emphasizing the identity of the ancestor of the royal family and the sage of Lao Tzu. The statue of Lao Tzu has certain characteristics in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, with a crown and a robe, a delicate face, a beard, a skirt, a belt on the chest, and usually a dust tail or a fan in his hand. In the Tang Dynasty, the statue of Lao Tzu retained some characteristics of the previous generation, but there were great changes in the composition mode, posture, face shape and other aspects of the statue, and these characteristics were finally fully established in the Song Dynasty.

During this period, the development of Taoism in Chang'an reached its peak, and the Taoist palace system became more and more mature, so there were a large number of inscriptions of palace characters, such as "Tang Huiyuan View Bell Tower Inscription and Preface", "Tang Dynasty Sect Shengguan Record", "Niu Hongman Epitaph", "Golden Fairy Princess Epitaph" and so on.