On June 22, 1900, the day of the fierce battle between the Boxers and the Eight-Nation Alliance in the Tianjin Concession, the eyes of the whole of China were focused on the Bohai Bay, and no one would look at the desert in the northwest and the cold and dark Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang.

On this day, in Dunhuang, the northwest borderland, a door to history was quietly opened by a small person, and the Tang Dynasty manuscript, which had been sealed by the ancients for nearly a thousand years, was found in a small secret room in the Mogao Grottoes. Manuscripts written in the Middle Ages, historical documents dating back to the past, documents written in the languages of various ethnic groups in West and Central Asia, and exquisite silk paintings fill an entire cave. This cave is the cave numbered No. 16 in Mogao Grottoes, and this little person is the Taoist priest Wang Yuanzhen who guards the Mogao Grottoes. In the history of world cultural discoveries in the 20th century, it is destined to record such words: Wang Taoist discovered the Dunhuang Scripture Cave.

The process of Wang Daoshi's discovery of the Tibetan Scripture Cave is also quite legendary. Mogao Grottoes, which was excavated on the eastern cliff of Mingsha Mountain, due to the long-term blowing of the northwest wind, the quicksand continued to spread down from the top of the cave, and the tunnel at the entrance of the cave was full of sand, and the entire entrance of the cave was sealed. A few men were hired on the royal road to help remove the sand that had accumulated over the years. On that day, the sand and soil of the 16 caves of Yongdao had been gradually cleared, and a man named Yang Heqing found that there was a hole in the north wall of Yongdao, and suspected that there was a hidden stone room, so Wang Daoist and Yang broke the wall in the middle of the night, and a rare and amazing discovery in the history of Chinese archaeology was discovered by a Taoist priest who did not know what archaeology was. It is conceivable that as long as the sand filling the cave entrance is dug up, the mural painting that covers the door of the cave will lose its load-bearing, and it is likely that cracks will appear, and once the sand is removed, the discovery of the cave will be the inevitable result.

The secret room is no longer a secret room, and gradually people call it "Tibetan Scripture Cave", and the scriptures and documents in the Tibetan Scripture Cave are called "Dunhuang Testament".

Although the ignorant Taoist priest Wang had not read many books, in the face of so many ancient scriptures and picture scrolls, of course, he also knew their "value", and he constantly took out some Buddhist scriptures with exquisite calligraphy and beautiful silk paintings, and gave them to nearby gentry and passing tourists in exchange for some merit money. But none of them knew the goods, and no one asked where these ancient scrolls and silk paintings came from.

The first object of Wang Daoshi's gift was Ansu Daotai and military envoy Tingdong, because Tingdong may have been Wang Daoshi's original boss when he was a soldier in Suzhou. "Dunhuang Stone Chamber Records" has the following record: "Wang Taoist is quite clever, thinking of trade profits, privately carrying a box of scriptures to Jiuquan, dedicated to Ansu Daotai Manren Tingdong. Tingdong was unconscious, thinking that the calligraphy of this scripture was out of the way and insignificant. Wang Daoist was quite depressed and abandoned him. Ting Dong, a conceited Manchu bureaucrat, only felt that these ancient scriptures were not as good as his own, and did not show special interest in them, but Ting Dong unceremoniously took a box of scrolls sent by Wang Daoist as his own. Later, after Tingdong was killed in a mutiny in the Suzhou garrison, these scrolls fell into the hands of Zhang Guangjian, the overseer of Gansu, and Xu Chengyao of Ganliang Dao. Wang Taoist priest was not reconciled, and continued to donate scriptures through various channels to ask for donations. Many of the local gentry in Gansu had received gifts from Wang Daoshi's scriptures.

In March 1902, Wang Zonghan, a native of Hubei, was appointed as the commander of Dunhuang County, and Wang County's commander soon received the scriptures and silk paintings sent by Wang Daoshi. When the county magistrate, who was born in the upper class and was familiar with history and culture, saw the scriptures, he immediately judged that these scriptures were different, and in the winter of 1903, he wrote a letter to Ye Changchi, a Gansu scholar in Lanzhou, to inform him of the news. Ye Changchi was three months after Wang Zonghan served as the commander of Dunhuang County, as the editor of the Hanlin Academy, he became a scholar in Gansu, and had just completed the first draft of "Yushi" before coming to Gansu, so as soon as he arrived in Lanzhou, he began to visit the Helong stone carving materials as a supplement. Through Wang Zonghan, Ye Changchi not only obtained the inscription rubbings left in the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, but also received the Buddhist painting scrolls unearthed from the Tibetan Scripture Cave, the stone tablets and Sanskrit manuscripts in the collection. It's just that the news delivered by Wang Zonghan is extremely inaccurate, saying that there are only a few hundred scrolls in the cave, and it seems that they have been divided. Wang Zonghai, a local literati in Dunhuang, also brought Ye Changchi two volumes of Tang Dynasty scrolls and a frame of Buddhist paintings (this frame of Buddhist painting is the "Water Moon Guanyin Painting", which is currently in the collection of the Freer Museum in the United States), Wang Zonghai also said that the cave is just a very small hole, and there is not much collection. Therefore, although Ye Changchi saw the value of the scriptures in the cave at a glance, he had been sitting in the study to discuss the collection of the cave, and he had never set foot in Dunhuang. He later expressed his regret for not going to Dunhuang many times.

However, Yan Dong, who had a cold attitude towards Daoist Wang, later really reported the news of the cave to the Gansu Domain, which only sent an order to Wang Zonghan on the grounds that the freight from Dunhuang to Lanzhou was difficult to make up, and it was more troublesome to keep a pile of yellowed old papers after it arrived: "Seal it on the spot and take care of it by Daoist Wang." Wang Zonghan also came to Mogao Grottoes to carry out this order. The "Dunhuang County Chronicles" compiled by Lu Zhong, a native of Dunhuang, is recorded as follows: "...... At that time, Wang Zonghan led the civil and military officials and gentry to roughly read it, about 20,000 volumes of Buddhist scriptures, and people did not know the importance at that time, some brought back one or two volumes, and some did not bring back. Wang Ling immediately instructed the king and Taoist priests to be good at preservation." On the silk painting that Wang Zonghan later gave to Ye Changchi, there is also an inscription like Wang Zonghan: "On the April New Day of the 30th year of Guangxu, the portrait of the scriptures was inspected." "This is the first time that the government has come forward to seal the scripture cave, but the sealed items have been sealed by Wang Zonghan, who executed the sealing, and the actual effect of the sealing can be imagined. Due to the ineffective sealing measures, Wang Daoist ostensibly agreed, but in fact continued to take out the scriptures from the cave and sell them quietly. According to the "Catalogue and Words" of "Zhou Tingyuan Dunhuang Writing Sutra and Guarding the Residual Shadows" written by Zhou Yanyuan, a collector of Dunhuang manuscripts during the Republic of China, during this period, no less than four or five thousand volumes were obtained by Gansu officials, such as: Zhang Guangjian, the overseer, Chen Yan, the governor of the province, Xu Chengyao, the director of the government department, Kuai Shoushu, the director of the Yunyun Bureau, the Yin Kong Tingxian of Lanshan Dao, the director of the Supreme People's Procuratorate Xu Shengjin, the director of the Department of Education Ma Linyi, the director of the Department of Finance Lei Duoshou, the director of the Department of Industry Situ Ying, the director of the telegraph bureau Li Yougen, the provincial superintendent Li Bao, etc. According to the article of the person concerned in the "Selected Literature and History Materials of Gansu", at that time, the prevalent gift-giving objects in Gansu officialdom were "Helan Stone, Zhuoni Yan, and Dunhuang Scroll". Clearly, during the process of reporting to the authorities, the excited expressions on the faces of the officials when they received the collection told the priest that the scrolls were precious. So, Daoist Wang concealed the truth again and again, but only revealed part of the truth. And none of the officials took it seriously, and none of them wanted to go to the cave to see what was going on. Until the collections of the caves were shipped abroad, resulting in a large outflow of Dunhuang testaments, the authorities were still ignorant. When scholars learned the truth, some blamed the local government for being irresponsible, and some blamed foreigners. Ye Changchi was even more remorseful, he regretted that he had toured most of the Gansu Mansion, but Dunhuang did not set foot in it, leaving a lifelong hatred. Before foreigners arrived in Dunhuang, China had seven years to properly protect the Tibetan scripture caves, but they missed it again and again.

What followed was the well-known looting of the Dunhuang testament by Western explorers.

The famous historian Chen Yinke said in "Chen Yuan's Preface": "The scholarship of an era must have its new materials and new problems. The use of this material to study the problem is a new trend in scholarship of this era. Those who are scholars can anticipate this trend is called pre-flow. Those who have not been foreseen are said to have not entered the stream. The general meaning of this ancient and modern academic history is not a person who works behind closed doors, but also a person who can be used as a metaphor. Scholars are also the new trend of academic research in the world today. In the past 20 years, scholars from all over the world, from Japan to France and Britain, have made contributions to their respective fields of study. There are only three scholars in our country whose writings can be listed in the main forest of the world's Huanghuang books. Immediately afterwards, he said: "The one who burns the glory is also the sad history of our country's academics." ”

From Mr. Chen Yinke's exposition, we can see the importance of the Dunhuang testament, and we can also see how heavy the dispersion of the Dunhuang testament is. In fact, more than 20,000 volumes of various documents and materials found in the Mogao Caves are now scattered in 22 countries around the world, including Britain, France, Japan and other countries.

At present, the Dunhuang scrolls that Wang Guowei saw in Liulichang were handed down by Wang Daoist as a gift to others. And few people know all the secrets of Daoist Wang, including Sun Yuanqi - after all, these knowledge only appear in a few lines in the textbook. So just now, Sun Yuanqi knew the two most important points: first, the Dunhuang testament was found in the Tibetan scripture cave of the Mogao Grottoes, and the specific location was known to the Taoist priest; Second, the Dunhuang testament is very precious, and most people still don't know it.

Since learning that there were Dunhuang scrolls flowing out, Sun Yuanqi was a little impatient and prepared to go to the northwest. Because he didn't know when Stein, Birch and the two guys would arrive in Dunhuang, he just hoped they hadn't arrived yet!

Historically, during his expedition to Xinjiang, Stein learned about the Dunhuang Cave from Uighur merchants who fled from Dunhuang to Urumqi, so he took his Chinese secretary Jiang Xiaowan and went straight to Dunhuang on March 12, 1907, "preparing to obtain these scrolls in the most appropriate way." He only used 4 pieces of horseshoe silver (200 taels of silver) to buy off the Taoist priest, took away more than 8,000 volumes of manuscripts and a few boxes of silk paintings, and quietly left the country from the northwest border, creating a precedent for a large number of Dunhuang testaments to flow abroad. In February 1908, Birch and one after the other. Following Stein's example, he paid Wang Daoist 500 taels of silver, and then bundled up more than 6,600 volumes of manuscripts and 38 large paintings. Although Birch and Stein arrived at the cave a year later, Stein was not able to enter the cave to select and see the collection, while Birch and Birch not only went into the cave to inspect all the collections, but he was also proficient in Chinese, had a rich knowledge of Chinese and Central Asian historical documents, and obtained a few suicide notes that were not as numerous as Stein's, but almost all of them were fine.

Sometimes, Sun Yuanqi even thought: In fact, the Dunhuang suicide note was taken away by Stein and Bo Xihe, which is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, the scrolls they plundered now are now preserved in the British Museum and other places, becoming treasures all over the world, and Chinese can still see them. If it is kept in the hands of the Chinese, through the civil war, the War of Resistance Against Japan, the War of Liberation, and special periods, how much can it be preserved? I am afraid that those scriptures can escape the historical changes of a thousand years, but they cannot escape the destruction of a group of ignorant people.

Historically, these things have happened.

After transporting the scrolls from Tianjin to Paris by sea, Bo Xihe arrived in Beijing in May 1909. Knowing that the Qing Dynasty School was preparing to build the Beijing Normal Library and was "looking for all kinds of ancient books to preserve the quintessence of the country", I don't know if he was showing off or something else, so he displayed some of the Dunhuang manuscripts he was studying with him at the Liuguo Hotel in Beijing. At that time, Baoxi, the attendant of the Division, Liu Tingchen, the general superintendent of Beijing Normal University, Ke Shaowang, the superintendent of the Economics Department of Beijing Normal University, Yun Yuding, a bachelor of Hanlin Academy, Jiang Han, the counselor of the Faculty, Wang Renjun, the deputy director of the Compilation Bureau of the Beijing Normal University, Jiang Axe, the teacher of the Beijing Normal University, Xu Fang, Guozicheng, and Luo Zhenyu and Dong Kang, well-known scholars, all went to visit. "There are so many shelfs like bamboo shoots, how can the world ever see Tang Ben." This is the poetry written by Mo Youzhi, a literati in the Daoguang period of the Qing Dynasty, lamenting the lack of ancient books, which shows the rarity of the Tang Dynasty. After these officials and scholars in the capital saw the treasures such as the Dunhuang manuscript "Laozi Huahu Jing" and "Shangshu", they were "surprised, as if in a dream", and learned that there were major discoveries in Dunhuang, Gansu. Bo Xihe also told everyone that there are still 8,000 volumes of scriptures mainly Buddhist scriptures in the Dunhuang stone room. It is difficult to describe the excitement and anxiety of the Chinese scholars when they heard that there was still a collection in the cave, but they immediately took action. In the action to protect and save the remaining collections, Luo Zhenyu is one of the most active efforts. Luo Zhenyu immediately reported to Qiao Maonan, the Zuo Cheng of the school, and Luo Dai prepared a telegram: "Governor of Shaanxi and Gansu, please check and inspect the books of the Thousand Buddha Caves, solve the department, and build a statue and stone tablet, and do not let outsiders buy it." The first year of Xuantong was August 23. He ordered Mao Qingfan, the governor of Shaanxi and Gansu, to immediately seal the Dunhuang Zangjing Cave and release all the remaining testaments to the Jingshi. The Qing Dynasty School came to its senses at this time and decided to clean up the remnants. At this time, it has been 9 years since the discovery of the cave.

After the Gansu side received the telegram from the school, He Yansheng, the secretary of the Gansu domain and the acting governor, had just arrived, and he ordered Chen Zefan, the magistrate of Dunhuang, to check the remaining scriptures and release the Jingshi. In 1910, the remnants of the Dunhuang suicide note were shipped from Dunhuang. Chen Zefan sent Fu Baoshu and Wu Xiangchen (the two were responsible for the escort of the cart. In the 10th year after the cave was discovered, the Chinese government finally took over completely. Although these collections are Stein, Birch and the rest, after all, there are more than 8,000 pieces, and the number is still considerable. However, from Dunhuang to Beijing, the Dunhuang testament went through another difficult journey.

The cart left the cave, and the treasure of the cave became public news, and everyone knew that the Dunhuang scrolls were priceless. As a result, a trade, theft, and private branch for the purpose of obtaining the scrolls of the Tibetan Scripture Cave turned from the secret dispersion of the Wang Taoist priest guarding the Tibetan Scripture Cave to open plunder. Facts have proved that Fu Baoshu and Wu Xiangchen did not make any effort during the escort, and the Dunhuang scrolls they passed through were extracted and picked by local officials, and sold them without authorization. In 1944, when Xu Chengyao talked about the origin of the scrolls in his original collection of Dunhuang scriptures, he made it very clear about the situation of the scattered scrolls on the way to transport the scrolls: "The Qing School Department sent people to collect the scriptures of the people, numbering 5,000 volumes, but there were few good ones, and they were all divided and filled. There are many people who stay in Wuwei, Zhangye, and Gaolan, and they are all refined. When Xu Chengyao arrived in Lanzhou in 1913, he came across the Dunhuang scriptures for sale on the market and bought as many as 200 volumes. From 1919 to 1921, Chen Yan, who served as the Daoyin of Lanshan and the governor of Gansu Province, claimed to be an official in Gansu, and competed with his friends to buy Dunhuang scriptures. Zhang Guangjian, who served as the overseer of Gansu in the early years of the Republic of China, competed to buy the Dunhuang scrolls as the official deed, and exchanged the size of the official position according to the number of scrolls. In the 10 years after the sixth year of the Republic of China, Jia Zhangxu successively served as the General Office of Gansu Tobacco and Liquor, the director of the Gansu Provincial Department of Education, and the Daoyin of Ansu, and purchased more than 100 volumes of Dunhuang scrolls during his tenure. After that, Chen Wanli of Peking University and the second expedition of the Fogg Museum of the United States passed through Lanzhou, and Xiang Da and others traveled west to Dunhuang, and along the way, they could also see the Dunhuang scriptures that cost a lot of money. Dunhuang to Beijing, a long way, how many people should be lost along the way?

The Dunhuang suicide note was wandered all the way, and after arriving in Beijing, a new round of catastrophe began. The cart did not drive directly into the compound of the school, but into the home of He Zhenyi, the son of He Yansheng, the governor of Gansu. He Zhenyi called his father-in-law, Li Shengduo, a book collector, as well as Li's in-laws Liu Tingshen, Fang Erqian and others, to conduct a serious selection in the private house, and the selected fine products were collected in their own study. At that time, there was only the number of volumes on the list of Dunhuang scrolls of the newspaper officials, and there were no volume names, lines, etc., so after these people took away some fine works, they tore a volume into two or three copies to meet the number of reported volumes. After that, it was handed over to the Faculty with a total of 18 boxes and a total of 8,679 volumes.

It is a pity that these scrolls are no longer the original appearance and number of the scrolls since the beginning of the liberation of the Tibetan scripture cave. Therefore, Zhou Yanyuan, a collector of Dunhuang manuscripts during the Republic of China, wrote "Zhou Tingyuan's Dunhuang Scripture Writing and Guarding the Residual Shadows" at the end of the 30s, which recorded: "The more than 8,000 scrolls stored in the Beiping Library are the remnants of its dross. "So, what about the whereabouts of the scroll that was privately swallowed by He Yansheng's son He Zhenyi and others? "Catalogue Words" is recorded as follows: "The school department Yishu Gansu, so that the purchase and transportation to Beijing, its essence is not much, when Gandu He Yansheng has a son in the capital, so the first to fall into his hands, the best one is left for it." His wife Li Shengduo and the Tang people wrote the annotation of the scriptures, etc., especially precious, where with the son of the people who are in agreement, there are hundreds of volumes of people, so the factory sells endlessly. ”

However, this fragmentation of the Scriptures was soon revealed. At that time, Baoxi, the waiter of the school, found that there was a problem with the files of the school, so he wrote a notice, and Fu Baoshu, who was in charge of the escort, was detained. It was only because of the Xinhai Revolution that the Qing Dynasty officials had no time to take care of themselves, and had no choice but to put Fu Baoshu back in Gansu, and the matter was over.

The loss of Dunhuang's national treasure has every reason to blame the so-called foreign explorers, who have used various methods to acquire China's cultural heritage, and the illegal means are obvious. However, we can see from the serious theft within the Chinese people that China is so bullied. As Mr. Lu Xun profoundly analyzed: the Chinese's attitude towards the quintessence of the country, "the insider is stealing the light, and the layman is spoiling the light." When we rightly accuse foreign explorers, we can't help but feel more hurt and embarrassed in our hearts.

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