Stone statues of the ancient Turks (Tuque) are found widely in the
Eurasian steppes. Archaeological data on those in Tuva, the Russian
Altai, Kazakhstan and Kirgizstan have been collected and published by
Russian scholars, but those in Mongolia and Chinese Turkestan have not
yet been treated. This paper aims at a compilation of the stone statues
in Mongolia. The materials were gathered not only from preceding
publications but also from my field survey in 1993, 1995 and 1996.
I could gather data on more than 330 statues, distributed mostly in
North-western and Central Mongolia (see maps) . We find very few in
Northern, Eastern and Southern Mongolia, but recently they have been
found in Inner Mongolia, and no doubt will be discovered in Southern
Mongolia, too.
In the process of compilation I noticed some of the earliest and
latest Turkic statues in Mongolia. In Bugut and Ider sites dated to the
First Tuque Khanate (552-630) there were traces of funeral shrines with
tiled roofs, stone tortoise-bases with an inscribed stone (Bugut) and
rows of more than 200 balbals, but no stone statues. Hence S.G.
Klyashtornyi thought that there were no stone statues in the early Turkic
period.
Another noteworthy site is Unget to the north of the River Tuul,
where were found unique statues (XI-12---46), a stone lion and sheep
and a sarcophagus. Firstly D. Bayar considered these statues to be
Rouran, from just before the Tuque period, because of their
primitiveness and archaic style. However V.E. Voitov criticized D.
Bayar's vague basis and concluded that they were devoted to the leader
of the Xueyantuo, Yinan, in 642-645 after his death. Voitov's main
arguments are the following: 1) two layers are recognized at the site and
the second one seems to belong to the Second Tuque Khanate (680-744) ;
2) Yinan kept the north of the River Tuul after the decline of the First
Tuque Khanate, according to the Xintangshu.
If we accept this view, the problem of the origin of Turkic stone
statues will be solved: stone lions and sheep are clearly of Chinese origin ,
and therefore stone statues also were brought from China during the
reign of Yinan, who had contact with the Tang dynasty.
However the problem is not so simple. The stone statue standing
near the town of Zhaosu (Ili district, Xinjiang) has a Sogdian inscription
dated to the second half of the sixth century , according to the
Japanese philologist Yutaka Yoshida. Furthermore I have pointed out
elsewhere that the representations of the fingers on Turkic stone statues
originated from Sogdian (or Iranian) iconography.
Recently Yu. S. Khudyakov and Yu. A. Plotnikov proposed that
firstly only rectangular stone enclosures appeared in the 4-5 c., stone
statues with engraved faces were erected by enclosures during the First
Tuque Khanate, and then stone sculptures not only with faces but also
representations of dress and weapons continued from the Second
Khanate till the end of the tenth century. Thus the problem of their
origin has not yet been solved.
When did Turkic stone statues cease to be erected? In the early
Uighur monumental sites (Sine-usu, Khoshootyn-tal and Tariat) , there
stand stone tortoise-bases with inscribed stones, but neither stone statues
nor balbals. Those sites have no funeral elements. So it is arguable that
stone statues disappeared in the mid eighth century, especially in Central
Mongolia. Yet we know later statues holding a cup with both hands in
Kazakhstan and South Russia. L.R. Kyzlasov states that in Tuva such
statues stand alone without rectangular enclosures. I myself have
observed two such cases (I -23 and It -5) . They show a transformation
in the meaning of the statues.
モンゴリアの石人
KH_021_1_004.pdf
(19.9MB)
