Stone Statues in Mongolia

Stone statues of the ancient Turks (Tuque) are found widely in theEurasian steppes. Archaeological data on those in Tuva, the RussianAltai, Kazakhstan and Kirgizstan have been collected and published byRussian scholars, but those in Mongolia and Chinese Turkestan have notyet been treated. This paper aims at a compilation of the stone statuesin Mongolia. The materials were gathered not only from precedingpublications but also from my field survey in 1993, 1995 and 1996.I could gather data on more than 330 statues, distributed mostly inNorth-western and Central Mongolia (see maps) . We find very few inNorthern, Eastern and Southern Mongolia, but recently they have beenfound in Inner Mongolia, and no doubt will be discovered in SouthernMongolia, too.In the process of compilation I noticed some of the earliest andlatest Turkic statues in Mongolia. In Bugut and Ider sites dated to theFirst Tuque Khanate (552-630) there were traces of funeral shrines withtiled roofs, stone tortoise-bases with an inscribed stone (Bugut) androws of more than 200 balbals, but no stone statues. Hence S.G.Klyashtornyi thought that there were no stone statues in the early Turkicperiod.Another noteworthy site is Unget to the north of the River Tuul,where were found unique statues (XI-12---46), a stone lion and sheepand a sarcophagus. Firstly D. Bayar considered these statues to beRouran, from just before the Tuque period, because of theirprimitiveness and archaic style. However V.E. Voitov criticized D.Bayar's vague basis and concluded that they were devoted to the leaderof the Xueyantuo, Yinan, in 642-645 after his death. Voitov's mainarguments are the following: 1) two layers are recognized at the site andthe 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 FirstTuque Khanate, according to the Xintangshu.If we accept this view, the problem of the origin of Turkic stonestatues will be solved: stone lions and sheep are clearly of Chinese origin ,and therefore stone statues also were brought from China during thereign of Yinan, who had contact with the Tang dynasty.However the problem is not so simple. The stone statue standingnear the town of Zhaosu (Ili district, Xinjiang) has a Sogdian inscriptiondated to the second half of the sixth century , according to theJapanese philologist Yutaka Yoshida. Furthermore I have pointed outelsewhere that the representations of the fingers on Turkic stone statuesoriginated from Sogdian (or Iranian) iconography.Recently Yu. S. Khudyakov and Yu. A. Plotnikov proposed thatfirstly only rectangular stone enclosures appeared in the 4-5 c., stonestatues with engraved faces were erected by enclosures during the FirstTuque Khanate, and then stone sculptures not only with faces but alsorepresentations of dress and weapons continued from the SecondKhanate till the end of the tenth century. Thus the problem of theirorigin has not yet been solved.When did Turkic stone statues cease to be erected? In the earlyUighur monumental sites (Sine-usu, Khoshootyn-tal and Tariat) , therestand stone tortoise-bases with inscribed stones, but neither stone statuesnor balbals. Those sites have no funeral elements. So it is arguable thatstone statues disappeared in the mid eighth century, especially in CentralMongolia. Yet we know later statues holding a cup with both hands inKazakhstan and South Russia. L.R. Kyzlasov states that in Tuva suchstatues stand alone without rectangular enclosures. I myself haveobserved two such cases (I -23 and It -5) . They show a transformationin the meaning of the statues.