Remnant Pieces of the Text of Buddhist Scriptures Were Found in the Ruins of Cave of the Western Xia Dynasty (1038-1227) in Gansu Province

The archaeological excavation of Haimu Temple ruins of cave in Wuwei of Gansu province since the beginning of this year has made tremendous progresses with unearthed more than 40,000 tsha-tsha and a large amount of remnant pieces of the text of Buddhist scriptures along with a Tangka ( a painted cloth scroll used for decorating a lamasery and expounding Tinetan-Buddhist doctrine).

“The 40,000 odd unearthed tsha-tsha is the most being found in the Tibetan Buddhism temple of Gansu for the first time,” said by Zhao Xueye, researcher of the Gansu Institute of Cultural Heritage and Archaeology and the leader of this archaeological excavation. “There are many unearthed remnant pieces of the text of Buddhist scriptures written in the language of Western Xia Dynasty, Sanskrit, Tibetan and Chinese, etc.

“Tsha-tsha”, translated by the sound of Tibetan, is a miniature clay sculpture of Buddha or pagoda with a small part of Tibetan language or Buddhist mantras made by printing or demoulding. When the journalist arrived, the staff of archaeology was carrying on the works of tiding and consolidating, cleaning up the tsha-tsha from the mud, classifying them according to the craftsmanship and shapes to case them up. The shapes of the classified tsha-tsha indicated that there were two types of clay sculpture of Buddha and pagoda, the latter being the most. The sculpture of pagoda consisted of Baojie pagoda, 108pagoda and 8pagoda, etc. The relatively less amount of sculpture of Buddha featured Vajrapani (one of the Buddha’s warrior attendants).

Haimu temple cave had been dug in 1127 to 1134 of the Western Xia Dynasty and had been served as the place for sitting in meditation by monks of Tantrism in Tibetan Buddhism. In 1927, an earthquake measuring 8 on the Richter scale hit Wuwei and caused many places of the cave collapsing, reducing it to ruins. Gansu Institute of Cultural Heritage and Archaeology has taken on the archaeological excavation since the beginning of this year. Zhao Xueye introduced, “So far, we haven’t been able to know the interior structure of the cave and its extension scope as the crumbling to varying extent and a few records.”

It is known that a great number of relics of the Western Xia Dynasty were unearthed in the last century. Among them, the Tangka painted with the mandala of Cakrasamvara, Vajravarahi and Cintamanicakra- avalokitesvara suggests that Vajravarahi, one of the Hozon of Kagyupa, a sect of Tibetan Buddhism, was worshipped in the cave. On the important places of upper left and right part of another Tangka painted with Manjusri, are the gurus of Sagya-pa and Kagyupa, which proves that the Sagya-pa and Kagyupa played an important part in the spread of Tibetan Buddhism of Liangzhou in the Western Xia Dynasty.  

It is known that the excavation of the ruins is scheduled to last for 3 years.