In 2007, the burglary of the Baita Underground Palace in Jixian County, Tianjin was solved, but the cultural relics have been sold by tomb robbers and cannot be recovered, causing serious losses to the country. After the news came out, Cui Feng, a 29-year-old young man from Dacheng County, Hebei Province, not far from Tianjin, got up to his mind and began to learn from it. Since there is an underground palace under the White Tower, is there an underground palace under the other towers?
Although Cui Feng is not very educated, he is an absolute history enthusiast and tomb culture enthusiast. He also specially worships a tomb robber as a master to learn tomb robber's skills. Cui Feng collected pagoda information from all over China online and in the library. After some analysis, he judged that Xinglong Tower in Yanzhou District, Jining City, Shandong Province is likely to have an underground palace with treasures.
Cui Feng’s judgment criteria are two. The first point is that Xinglong Pagoda is large in scale. The Xinglong Pagoda is 54 meters high above and below, with a total of 13 floors, and is exquisitely designed. This can be regarded as a large building in ancient times, so it is possible to exist in an underground palace. The second point is the origin of Xinglong Pagoda. Xinglong Pagoda was built in 602, Emperor Wen of Sui The second year of Renshou. At that time, Emperor Wen of Sui, who believed in Buddhism, issued an imperial edict - to establish a relic pagoda edict, requiring Buddhist temples in various places to build pagodas to worship relics. Xinglong Pagoda was built for this reason. However, since it is worshipped and there are no relics on the ground, where are the relics? Cui Feng guessed that it was probably in the underground palace under the tower.
This Xinglong Tower was a landmark building in Yanzhou District at that time and was very famous in Shandong. Architectural design experts in the Republic of China Liang Sicheng Lin Huiyin and his wife also visited Xinglong Tower for surveys. However, whether it is historical records, folk information, or Liang Sicheng and his wife's inspections, there is no such thing as an underground palace under the tower. Moreover, Xinglong Tower was also a key cultural relics protection unit in Shandong Province at that time. There was a wall about 3 meters high. Next to it was the Yanzhou Museum. In order to protect the cultural relics of the museum, a large area around was arranged for surveillance, and there were guards and patrols, and the guards were on guard.
In September 2007, Cui Feng came to Yanzhou and inspected Xinglong Tower for a period of time. He found that not far from the north wall of Xinglong Tower was the local farmers' market. From the farmers' market to Xinglong Tower, the straight line distance was only 30-50 meters. However, he was not very sure whether there was an underground palace under the tower at that time. After several months of ideological struggle, he could not withstand the temptation of huge interests and decided to take a gamble.
So Cui Feng came up with a solution. In April 2008, he found four friends who had a good time and rented a stall in the farmers' market. In the name of seafood business, he used the excuse of building a pool in the seafood business and excavated openly. Why did he find four people? Because tomb robbers have rules, tomb robbers must be odd, otherwise it would be unlucky. In addition, Cui Feng has five people, but Cui Feng later wondered if his master counts? There are six masters? Although the master did not participate, he was still in the same group, so Cui Feng was a little nervous later.
Cui Feng didn't want to make a fuss to everyone knows, so he used the excuse of decoration to close the roll gate during the day, dig tunnels inside, and transport the digging soil out at night. As for the direction, he used a compass to determine it. After digging for more than three months, he finally dug an authentic tunnel about 35 meters long, about 50 cm wide and about 70 cm high 4 meters underground, which was about the size of a dog hole. People could only climb in one by one. If someone was too fat, they couldn't get in, but finally dug up directly below Xinglong Tower, and there was a secret underground palace that had been closed for many years.
Relics Gold Bottle
Several people were so happy that they stole the valuable relics gold bottles, gilded silver coffins, golden Buddhas and other treasures inside without knowing it. Then they filled the hole and flew away. However, in order to sell the stolen goods, they were reported to the Public Security Bureau after they made a noise. According to the investigation, the Public Security Bureau quickly locked up the five of them. On August 5, 2008, the Yanzhou Public Security Bureau received information that Cui Feng appeared in the county town of Dacheng County, Hebei, and the rest of them were also found in Yantai area.
So Yanzhou Public Security Forces divided into two groups and went to Hebei and Yantai to arrest them at the same time. On August 7, all five criminals were arrested and brought to justice. Under the bed of the beauty shop run by Cui Feng's mistress, they found cultural relics that had not yet been sold. The evidence was as strong as a mountain. Cui Feng and others quickly confessed their crimes. The case of
was solved less than a month. After hearing about it, the Shandong Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau decided to conduct rescue excavation of the underground palace. So the experts dug out the fill at the entrance of the cave again and entered the underground palace along the tunnel for archaeology. The experts found the passage from the tower to enter the underground palace, but it had been sealed at that time. The experts dug up the passage and dug a stone tablet. The stone tablet recorded the construction information of the underground palace, thus revealing an unknown history.
xinglongta underground palace stone tablet
late Tang Dynasty , Tang Dezong 4th year of Zhenyuan, in 788 AD, the Uighur ancestors of the Uighurs requested the Tang Dynasty court to change the "Uighurs" to " Uighurs ". The falcon was a fierce and flexible bird in the northwest region at that time. They thought this could better represent their courage. Later, the Uighur tribe split, and some Uighur tribes in the northern desert moved to the area west of Paoling , forming a tribal alliance with the locals, which was historically called the "Karakhan Dynasty".
After the establishment of the Karakhan Dynasty, it fought a melee with a group of countries in Central Asia and West Asia. After several generations of melee, in order to gain the support of the Islamic state, the Zhakarakhan Dynasty gradually became a country that believed in Islam , and then received support from other Islamic countries, and its strength increased greatly, and then began to invade neighboring countries.
969, the Kazakh dynasty in Central Asia and the Khotan Kingdom in southern Xinjiang broke out in war. In order to deal with the powerful Kazakh dynasty, the Khotan Kingdom attracted Gaochang Uighur as an ally. At the same time, in 970, a delegation of envoys led by the monk Fazang went to northern India to obtain the Buddha's true body relics, and then added 390 kilograms of Hotan Meiyu and 3 BMWs to Kaifeng area to request the support of the Northern Song Dynasty court at that time.
This Fazang was actually a member of the royal family of the Kingdom of Khotan. At that time, the minority countries that believed in Buddhism had many royal members as monks. However, the Northern Song Dynasty had just been established for less than 10 years, and even the Jiangnan region had not been unified, let alone supporting the distant Western Regions . Therefore, the Northern Song Dynasty court of Zhao Kuangyin could only help the request of the Kingdom of Tan, but just sent a group of 157 monks to persuade the fight. At the same time, the Northern Song Dynasty court appointed monk Fazang as Master Guangzheng and rewarded a set of purple cassocks, asking him to take a golden bottle of relics to tour the world's Buddhist holy land, and choose a place he thought was more ideal to accommodate these Buddhist sacred objects.
Then, monk Fazang brought a golden bottle of relics and a pile of gold and silver jewelry awarded by the court. He arrived at Mount Wutai, Shanxi, Mount Emei, Sichuan, Sizhou, Jiangsu and other Buddhist holy places. Later, due to floods, Sizhou was flooded by Hongze Lake after the formation of Hongze Lake. Monk Fazang gave the local golden robes every time he walked to Xinglong Temple in Yanzhou, Shandong Province. When he walked to Xinglong Temple, Yanzhou, Shandong, he was old and often asked about his homeland. However, the country of Khotan was defeated by the Karakhan Dynasty and his territory was getting smaller and smaller. So he was depressed and didn't want to leave, so he lived in Xinglong Temple and accepted an apprentice named Huaixiu. Fazang lived in Xinglong Temple for about 30 years until his death.
Silver coffin and Golden Buddha
In 1006 AD, the Karakhan Dynasty completely destroyed the Kingdom of Khotan. This ancient Western Regions, which had been in contact with the Central Plains dynasty since The Western Han Dynasty 3 period, withdrew from the historical stage. Since then, Xinjiang has changed from Buddhism to Islam, but the Karakhan Dynasty has not been proud for long. In 1041, the Karakhan Dynasty was divided into two parts, east and west, and in 1089, the western region was defeated by the Seljuk dynasty in the West Asian region and became a vassal state of the Seljuk dynasty. The Karakhan Dynasty in the east was independent for a period of time and was forced to become a vassal state of the Seljuk dynasty in 1130. A few years later, the Western Liao was established, and the Eastern Karakhan Dynasty followed the Western Liao Kingdom.In 1211, the eastern Karakhan Dynasty was destroyed by the Naiman tribe, and in 1212, the Western Karakhan Dynasty was destroyed by the Huashuzimo Dynasty.
Maybe I heard the news of the demise of the Kingdom of Khotan. Monk Fazang passed away in despair. When he was dying, he asked his disciple Monk Huaixiu that he could build a pagoda to worship the Buddha's true body relics. Monk Huaixiu kept applying to the Northern Song Dynasty court, but the Northern Song Dynasty court was not very interested in these matters and ignored them.
In 1008 AD, Song Zhenzong signed the Tanyuan Alliance with Liao Kingdom , which was secretly said to be a shame by many people. Song Zhenzong felt that he was embarrassed and wanted to improve his prestige, so he ran to Taishan to go to Fengshan. Monk Huaixiu took the opportunity to apply to the court to build a tower again, but it still failed. This matter was delayed for decades and had not succeeded. Monk Huaixiu was also old and felt that he should not have the opportunity to build a tower, so he handed over the relic gold bottle to the French monk of the Great Compassion Academy to continue this task.
In 1063 AD, in the eighth year of Renzong of the Northern Song Dynasty, the court finally agreed to the request for building a pagoda in Xinglong Temple. With the joint efforts of monks and some local officials and gentry in Buddhism, Xinglong Temple was transformed from the original 13-story wooden pagoda into a 13-story brick pagoda, and an underground palace was built to worship relics and gold bottles. Later, for some reason, the passage was blocked. If it weren't for the tomb robbers, these treasures would never have been able to see the light of day again.
In fact, from the present perspective, if the Northern Song Dynasty court sent an army of 20,000 to 30,000 people to support the Kingdom of Khotan, it would be very likely to succeed and would change history. Because at that time, between the Great Song Dynasty and the Kingdom of Khotan, in addition to the Tubo and the Dangxiang people, there was also an army stationed in the late Tang Dynasty - the Guiyi Army. The leader of the Guiyi Army was the Cao family in the Qinghai area of Gansu. It was a Han Han regime. It had a natural sense of belonging to the Central Plains dynasty. Moreover, the Cao family was good at trade, advocated harmony to make money, and had a good relationship with all forces. Moreover, the strength of the Dangxiang tribe was not as strong as that later. It was nominally a vassal area of the Song Dynasty. At least he did not dare to oppose the Song Dynasty.
At that time, if the Northern Song Dynasty court could unite the Guiyi Army in Gansu and send 40,000 to 50,000 troops to support the Kingdom of Khotan, the Dangxiang tribe was not strong enough at that time and could not pose much threat. Only Tubo Uighur tribes had some threats, but the Tubo Uighurs were not a unified regime, they were all composed of many tribes, and some tribes had a good relationship with the Central Plains dynasty and could also be used.
So it was possible to support the Kingdom of Khotan at that time. The Northern Song Dynasty did not even need to send too many troops, horses, food and grass, because the existence of the Guiyi Army was really not difficult to achieve. If the Kingdom of Khotan could be preserved, garrisoned troops in Xinjiang, and then the Guiyi Army was nominally subordinate to the Song Dynasty court, it could not only threaten the Liao Kingdom from the flanks, but also restrict the development of the Dangxiang tribe and strengthen control over the northwest region. Unfortunately, the Northern Song Dynasty was busy unifying the Jiangnan region at that time, and did not realize the importance of the Northwest region, or realized it but did not implement it. So that the Guiyi Army was later destroyed by the Dangxiang people in 1036. Finally, the Song Dynasty dynasty, the Han people lost their ruling power west of Gansu, which has to be said to be a regret of the Central Plains dynasty.
