The memorials of Kül Tegin and Bilge Khan on the Orkhon were made by craftsmen from the Tang court.[1] The two inscriptions say this themselves.[2] The Tang histories say it as well.[3] The expedition that excavated the Kül Tegin complex in 1958 reached the same conclusion from the building itself.[4] The same khan who had warned his people against Chinese sweet words and soft silk asked the Tang for carvers.[5]

The inscriptions

The Kül Tegin inscription names the craftsmen twice. The first mention stands in the list of the embassies that came to the funeral. The inscription says that the Chinese khan’s nephew, the general Čaŋ, came to build the tomb, to make the carving and to make the inscribed stone.[6] The Tang history names Zhang Quyi and Lü Xiang as the men who carried the letter of condolence.[7] Modern readers identify the İšiyi Likeŋ and the Čaŋ Seŋün of the stone with these two.[8][9]

The second mention gives the date. The tomb, the carving and the inscribed stone were finished on the twenty-seventh day of the seventh month of the Year of the Monkey, 732.[6] The stone adds that the İlteber tuygun brought this many carvers for the stone and the tomb.[6] The word tuygun is understood variously, as a name, as a title and as taygun. One argument identifies it as the name of a people, so that the sentence would say from which people the carvers were drawn.[10]

On the south face Bilge Khan speaks in the first person: “I brought carvers from the Chinese khan, and I had the carving done.”[11] He continues that the Chinese khan did not refuse his request and sent the court carvers himself.[11] Bilge Khan had them build an extraordinary tomb and cut extraordinary carving on it, inside and outside.[11] The Bilge Khan inscription repeats the passage almost word for word, and it too says that the emperor sent the carvers of his own court.[12]

The same stone warns the Göktürks that the words of the Chinese are sweet and their silks are soft, and that many people died deceived by them.[13] It also records the Chinese carvers who made the monument that carries the warning. The inscription draws no conclusion from the two facts.

The Tang histories

The Jiu Tang Shu tells the Chinese side of the Kül Tegin monument. After his death the court sent Zhang Quyi and Lü Xiang with a sealed letter. It also sent a stele whose text the emperor composed himself, and it had a shrine built with a likeness cut in stone and the battles painted on its four walls.[7]

The Xin Tang Shu adds the craftsmen. An imperial edict sent six painters of great skill, and their work was so true to life that the Göktürks had never seen anything like it. Whenever Bilge Khan looked at it, he would be choked with grief.[14]

A passage of the Cefu Yuangui, which Paul Pelliot quotes, says more about how it came about. In the eleventh month of 733 Bilge Khan sent a high official to court to thank the emperor, to offer fifty horses and to escort the painters home.[15] The text says that Bilge Khan had earlier asked for skilled workmen to draw his brother’s portrait, and that the emperor had sent six painters.[15] Pelliot concludes that the sending of the artists was a Göktürk initiative and not a Chinese one, which the Tang histories do not say.[16] He takes the date of the envoy as the approximate end of the work on the funerary temple of Kül Tegin.[16] The stone dates its own completion to 732, so the painted decoration of the temple may have been finished later than the stone.

The Chinese inscription on the stele of Bilge Khan was composed by the court historian Li Rong and cut in 735.[17] It records that the envoy Li Quan set up a statue of the khan in his funerary temple, as had been done for Kül Tegin.[17]

The excavated building

The Czechoslovak and Mongolian expedition of 1958 took the whole complex of Kül Tegin for the work of Chinese workmen. It found proof in the form of the building, in the use of the materials and in the technique. The measures of the single parts are whole multiples of the Chinese building unit of 86 centimetres.[4] The marble sculptures also point to Chinese sculptors. They keep the dress of the nomads, but they stand close to Chinese tomb sculpture.[4] The expedition counted only the balbals, the stone figures and the Turkic inscriptions as Turkic.[18]

A second account understands the line tabgaç kaganda bedizçi kelürtüm to say that a sculptor was brought from the Chinese emperor. It finds that the figures of white marble resemble Tang statues, but holds that they cannot be tied wholly to China.[19] A later summary of the excavation assumes Chinese artists as well. It holds that the statue of Kül Tegin nevertheless reflects Turkic sculpture.[20]

The carvers did not only work the figures. Some scholars hold that Chinese craftsmen cut the Turkic text into the stone, and that Yollug Tegin, who names himself as its writer, only wrote it.[21] Others add that the hands of these artisans are in the runiform letters as much as any ancestor alphabet is.[22]

Open points

The inscriptions do not say how many carvers came, and they do not name any of them. The Tang history gives the number of painters, six, and gives no names either.[14] The sources do not say where the craftsmen lived while they worked or how long they stayed. The fifty horses that Bilge Khan offered at court in 733 are given as thanks for the favour.[16] The sources do not say whether the court received any other return.

References

  1. ^ Kül Tegin inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 272, 281
  2. ^ Kül Tegin inscription; Bilge Khan inscription
  3. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215
  4. ^ a b c Jisl 1963, p. 398
  5. ^ Kül Tegin inscription
  6. ^ a b c Kül Tegin inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 272
  7. ^ a b Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  8. ^ Thomsen 1993, p. 188
  9. ^ Orkun 1994, p. 77
  10. ^ Yavuz 2026
  11. ^ a b c Kül Tegin inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 281
  12. ^ Bilge Khan inscription
  13. ^ Kül Tegin inscription
  14. ^ a b Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215
  15. ^ a b Pelliot 1929, p. 247–248
  16. ^ a b c Pelliot 1929, p. 248
  17. ^ a b Pelliot 1929, p. 233–235
  18. ^ Jisl 1963, p. 398–399
  19. ^ Ögel 1984, p. 136, 166
  20. ^ Durmuş 2000, p. 186–187
  21. ^ Thomsen 1993, p. 79
  22. ^ Golden 1992, p. 152

Sources

Literature

  • Talât Tekin, A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic (1968)
  • Vilhelm Thomsen, Çözülmüş Orhon Yazıtları (mit: Orhon ve Yenisey Yazıtlarının Çözümü: İlk Bildiri) (1993)
  • Hüseyin Namık Orkun, Eski Türk Yazıtları (1994)
  • Paul Pelliot, Neuf notes sur des questions d'Asie Centrale (1929)
  • Lumír Jisl, Kül-Tegin anıtında 1958'de yapılan arkeoloji araştırmalarının sonuçları (1963)
  • Bahaeddin Ögel, İslâmiyetten Önce Türk Kültür Tarihi. Orta Asya Kaynak ve Buluntularına Göre (1984)
  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • Emre-E. Yavuz (ed.), The Kül Tegin Inscription: working translation with transcription and notes (2026)
  • İlhami Durmuş, Köl Tigin Külliyesi Kalıntıları ve Türk Kültür Çevresindeki Yeri (2000)

Related

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Institutions and Titles
Craftsmen in the Steppe Empires · Roof Tiles of the Uyghur Khaganate · The Economy of the Steppe Empires

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Chinese Craftsmen at the Orkhon Monuments.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/institutions/chinese-craftsmen-at-the-orkhon-monuments/

Last revised: 8 November 2026