Zhang Nan snorted, "Brother Guan, remember?"

"You let me think about it, it's in the western Xinjiang, it should be in Kuqa, the grotto called Heke. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ”

Kwan Xingquan tried to search his memory, but he couldn't remember the exact name...

It's very painful, the name is on the side of my mouth, but I can't say it--- uncomfortable!

Seeing Brother Guan's aggrieved appearance, Zhang Nan said directly: "It's the Kizil Grottoes." ”

As soon as he heard the name, Guan Xingquan immediately said excitedly: "Yes, it's Kizil, there are similar murals over there, but yes." The color doesn't seem to be so bright. ”

Zhang Nan nodded at the board on his lap, "Because the best preserved murals in the entire grotto are here." ”

Xiang Weirong heard Guan Xingquan talk about that trip to the western Xinjiang, and knew that they went to see a few Buddhist caves many years ago.

That's Buddhism, but ...... simply shined a flashlight on the board again, and said strangely: "What kind of Buddha is this, how does it look like the head of an ancient Roman general!"

It's quite similar, just a little more curly hair, and if so, live out a fresco of the ancient Roman period in an Italian monument.

He'd been to Italy and seen Roman frescoes and sculptures from 2,000 years ago.

"It's not ancient Rome, it's the head of the ancient Macedonians, it's the Macedonian of the famous Alexander the Great, a little earlier than the ancient Romans. ”

As he spoke, he gestured to the head of the Buddha statue on the board, "This is a Buddha mural of the Gandhara culture, which is about 1500 years old, and the Buddha at that time was generally like this." ”

Xiang Weirong didn't care about the problem that the heyday of ancient Rome was earlier than 1500 years ago, and paid attention to other places: he saw a lot of Buddha statues, not to mention that there is a very famous big Buddha temple in Xinchang next door to Yan County, and when he was a soldier, Xiang Weirong also went to many temples in Xichuan, Emei Mountain has been to N many times, and the five hundred Arhat Hall that has survived in ancient times in Baoguo Temple has also been visited, but he has not seen such a thing!

There are also temples in Yunnan Province, plus Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in Tibetan areas have been seen by Xiang Weirong, although the images are different, but the one on this board is too difficult to accept: it does not conform to the aesthetics of the Chinese people at all!

Xiang Weirong said his thoughts, and asked by the way: "What spinning top?"

Zhang Nan was a little dizzy, so he had to explain what "Gandhara" was and "spinning top" word by word.

"Sounds like a foreign name. ”

Xiang Weirong took the board from Zhang Nan's lap, and then looked at the Buddha above, "This person also looks like a Westerner." ”

"It's originally a foreign name, it belongs to the geographical category of ancient India, and when that place is not stable, you sing and I play, not to mention that the emperor takes turns, and the ruling nations are all changed, this image is not strange. ”

"What did the ancient Indians look like this?"

Xiang Weirong's mind immediately appeared in the image of Ah San, which obviously did not match the number on the board.

It's not that Xiang Weirong looks down on Ah San, it's really that Ah San is not angry: Xiang Weirong's division commander when he was a soldier was nicknamed "Iron Second Pole", which means "Second Pole" in Sichuan dialect.

One of the things that the "millennium-old" division commander liked most about cattle occurred in the sixties, when a main division went to the plateau in the summer to train troops, and then the central government quickly found no place for the division.

I'm in a hurry!

A few days later, Comrade Commander of the Second Pole Division took the initiative to send a report to the Central Committee: At present, the position of the division headquarters where I am located can already hear the whistle of the New Delhi railway station!

Please: Do you want to take New Delhi?!

The prime minister was so angry that he immediately called back: Give me back immediately, otherwise I will send a plane to bomb you!

Obviously, that person is a thousand-year-old life in an official position!

I don't know if the matter of that one-day trip to the outskirts of New Delhi is true or not, there is no military history anyway, but the field army where my brother-in-law stayed knows this story.

In the popular phrase of the 21st century: very dick!

In addition, the Sino-Indian border war has only passed for so many years, and my brother-in-law and others really can't look down on Ah San.

"Brother-in-law, ancient India 2,000 years ago and India here are two different things, and they are not the same at all! The ancient civilization and culture of India have long been lost, and it is very complicated here, and it is different from our Chinese culture......

After a bit of speech, I almost talked about the development of the four ancient civilizations from the beginning: Fortunately, after digging the bronze cellar in Western Qin last month, I talked about this issue during the chat, otherwise I would have to talk about the Year of the Monkey and the month of the horse.

After a lot of speech, Zhang Nan finally brought the topic back to this "Western-style Buddhism" art, and Zhang Nan felt that it was really not easy!

"This Gandhara is one of the sixteen kingdoms of ancient India, and its main location should be in the Peshawar Valley at the confluence of the Indus River and the Kabul River in the north of present-day Pakistan, even the part of Afghanistan......"

Xiang Weirong thought for a while, "The Soviet army is still trapped there, that place is chaotic enough!"

"That place hasn't been stable for more than 2,000 years. Zhang Nan said something, but what he didn't say was: Twenty years later, that place was even more chaotic, and there was a bearded man hiding in that area who dared to argue with the Yankees, but he was finally thrown into the Arabian Sea by the seal to feed the fish.

Not only bearded people, but also a large group of guys carrying all kinds of big flags, you are from my country, and you continue to make a mess over there even more than when the Soviet army was there!

If there is no news of that area in the news of China for a week, it will simply be the sun coming out of the west!

This will be a bit far away, Zhang Nan simply took out a Buddha head sculpture from a box on the side, stone, or the image of a high-nosed Westerner: if a person who doesn't know how to do it at first glance, he thought it would be the head of an ancient Greek marble sculpture!

"The Buddha statues of Gandhara art are similar to this, and the earliest source of this art is ancient Greece.

More than 300 years BC, Alexander the Great, the king of Macedonia in the Balkans in southeastern Europe, conquered Central Asia and the northwestern part of the South Asian subcontinent, bringing classical Greek culture there, and then merged with the cultures of Eastern Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent to form the Gandhara culture.

At that time, they were all used Greek and Roman decorative techniques to express the things of Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, and later spread across the Pamir Plateau to the southwest of China's western Xinjiang, bringing the taste of ancient Greece and Rome to Chinese painting, sculpture, architecture and arts and crafts.

Therefore, this Gandhara thing is called Greek-Buddhist art, which was formed around the 1st century AD, and began to slowly decay in the 5th century AD.

The Buddha statues in the Milan Buddhist Temple in the Loulan region of western Xinjiang, as well as the Buddha statues and Bodhisattva statues in the Lavakta Courtyard in the Khotanese region, are obviously taken from the Hellenistic style of Gandhara art.

Even the statues of Yungang and Longmen Grottoes were influenced by this style to a certain extent. ”

Guan Xingquan picked up the Buddha's head and looked at it, "That Alexander had such a big impact when he came here, I remember that he died very early, and the empire quickly fell apart, it's amazing!"

Zhang Nan's eyes were white, and he said: "Come on? He didn't just go to Asia to go around, since the middle of the 3rd century BC, the colonists of ancient Greece have established a completely Hellenistic slave state in the steppe region of Central Asia, called Bactria, which is the Great Xia mentioned in Sima Qian's "Historical Records", in fact, the whole should be called Bactria - the Greek Kingdom.

The ruling class consisted entirely of immigrants from Greece and the Balkans, and it was not until the first year of the Common Era that it was completely destroyed. The capital, Bhaktra, is today's Stanbalkh in Afghanistan.

And this Bactria is what the ancient Greeks called for the region of northeastern Afghanistan north of today's Hindu Kush, a completely Hellenistic country bordering the Pamirs in the northwest of our Tibetan Plateau. ”

I don't know about it, but I'm shocked when I say it!

Guan Xingquan and Xiang Weirong took a moment before turning a corner in their minds, "You mean that in the Western Han Dynasty, we have a Greek neighbor?"

"That's right, except for history, few people really know about this.

The Greek state stretched as far west as the southern part of the Caspian Sea, which is still on the territory of present-day Asia, as far north as the Aral Sea, and as far south as north of present-day India and near the present-day Arabian Sea, and Pakistan was basically the other anyway.

To the east, it borders our Western Han Dynasty and the Western Regions, which is almost as big as most of India now. ”

At this time, Guan Xingquan held the Buddha's head and suddenly said: "Look at it, the more I look at this, the more I feel that it looks a bit like Karimi." ”

"Don't talk about that, Karimi doesn't believe it. Xiang Weirong said.

Zhang Nandao was unimpressed, and said: "The Gandhara region was the homeland of the Aryans 4,000 years ago, and there were so many ethnic groups that there were so many people who lived in that area that historians can't figure it out.

Primitive religion, Western culture, steppe culture, Buddhism, and later Isilan, even the last temples of these Gandhara cultures in China should have been abandoned after the entry of the Isilan culture.

It's too complicated to understand. ”

Don't talk about this, eating crabs is dangerous and will be caught.

But at this point, Xiang Weirong found that he was surrounded by his brother-in-law in the ditch again!

"How did you get here?"

"Illegal excavation, illegal excavation, in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China, and the loss of Dunhuang cultural relics. ”

Guan Xingquan, who was on the side, put the Buddha's head back in the box, and then saw a line on the other side of the box: He can read German.

"German National Museum. Squad leader, this was originally a collection in a museum. ”

Guan Xingquan said what Zhang Nan was going to say, which is much simpler.

"From 1902 to 1914, under the leadership of two successive men, Albert Grunweeder and von Lecock, the German expedition carried out four expeditions along the northern route of the Silk Road in the western Xinjiang region of China.

In 12 years, a total of 423 boxes of rare cultural relics were transported back to Germany.

Later, due to the outbreak of World War I, this so-called expedition was also suspended, and most of the artifacts excavated from China were handed over to the Berlin Museum of Anthropology for collection, including early Buddhist murals, various artifacts excavated from the excavations, ancient architectural components, and ancient paintings on paper and silk......

The Germans collectively refer to these as the Turpan Collection, in fact, most of them come from Kucha, not Turpan at all, and belong to the cultural relics of the ancient Qiuzi country, the most precious is a large number of Zier cave murals that have been barbarically removed. ”

Xiang Weirong shook his head, "100 years ago, Westerners stole and plundered cultural relics in our western region, I know, you said it in the Soviet Union.

I'm asking why these things are here. ”

At the meeting in the Soviet Union last year, Zhang Nan went to see the Dunhuang scriptures, and Xiang Weirong listened and learned a lot.

According to the data, before Berlin was completely besieged, some of the cultural relics hidden in the museum were transferred to the basement of the zoo in advance, but next to the museum was the headquarters of the Nazi SS, which suffered a lot of bombs, and all the books and archives were said to have been destroyed in the air raid.

After the Red Army conquered Berlin, the Soviet Union confiscated all the cultural relics in the basement of the zoo, but those Chinese cultural relics were missing, and they should have been secretly transferred to the Soviet Union.

In 1978, the Soviet Union returned some Chinese cultural relics to the GDR, about 300 pieces, but the Germans estimated that most of them were still in the Soviet Union, and the Soviets did not exhibit this part of the Chinese cultural relics obtained from Germany.

However, I think it is possible that before the Battle of Berlin broke out, some cultural relics were planned to be transported from Berlin to the Alps for hiding. ”

"I just climbed over and took a look, and there are boxes marked on the German National Museum in the back, but most of them are old books from the West, many of them are in German."

The Nazis were also worried that their culture would be robbed by others, and that there were too many people who robbed others, which was also experienced. ”

Xiang Weirong glared at Zhang Nan.

Embarrassed smile: My brother-in-law had to be careful not to be smashed by the box, but it was good for him to climb on top of the box.

"Hehe, I'm happy to forget. ”

"How many boxes are there in Huaxia?"

As soon as he heard his brother-in-law's words, Zhang Nan pointed to a dozen or so boxes nearby.

"Just these ten boxes, there are three boxes of murals, and there are about 15 of them.

Two boxes of Buddha statues, as well as five boxes of paintings and documents on paper and silk. ”

As he spoke, he stood up and opened the big wooden box that was used as a stool just now, "It's full of documents, and I can't read the words on most of the documents, probably the words used by Gu Qiuzi."

There are also documents issued by the Han Dynasty government to the country of Qiuci, and there are also two documents written by local officials in Qiuci in Chinese.

It's not worth much, but it's all damn baby!"

In the international cultural relics market, if these documents are compared with those oil paintings that cost hundreds or tens of millions of dollars more than a dozen meters away, it seems that they are not comparable in terms of "auction value", because the collection group is different, and the latter is much more extensive.

But for the study of Chinese history and ancient civilization, these boxes of documents and paintings are absolutely treasures!

"Baby, do you still sit on a stool?"

"This box is fast, at least thirty pounds! The documents inside are all mounted on modern paper and rolled up for storage, adding up to three pounds each.

Fortunately, the Germans are willing to occupy space, otherwise there will be some heavy things inside, and these treasures will be all wasted. ”