Legends and Ceremonies: Based on the Observation of the Qu Shu Collection at Xinjiang Lop Museum

Abstract

Classical theories suggest that mythologies are born for religious ceremonies. This paper attempts to uncover the source of the religious belief and folklores in the ancient kingdom of Khotan by following two implicit clues—the clue stemmed from the mythical world as represented by mythologies and the clue stemmed from the real world as served by those mythologies. The place where gods or deities gather is maṇḍala or the altar. Findings from archaeological research carried out on the centaur diagram unearthed at Xinjiang’s Shampul tombs have been thoroughly taken into consideration. It is, however, further observed that the griffin pattern to be found everywhere in Scythian world has a primary purpose for separating the eternal world from the mortal world. The reason why the griffin pattern is used in the five carpets (According to my information based on photos shown to me, there were five carpets. However now, Lop Museum has only four myth-carpets. My research is based on photos of five carpets; therefore five carpets are coherently mentioned in this paper.) is to form maṇḍalas. The Khotanese inscription on the three square carpets, meaning “To General Meri Soma is offered”, points out that the kind of ceremony with the two large myth-carpets serving as altar was celebrated for producing soma juice to be served to Meri, the hero, when he sacrificed himself for the “River Dragon” as recorded by Xuanzang in Great Tang Records on the Western Regions. The religious ceremony was a human sacrifice caused by the greatest drought in history of Khotan. As such, the tradition goes neither back to Buddhism nor Zoroastrianism.