Acta Via Serica

Academia Via Serica (계명대학교 실크로드연구원)
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Modes of Burial and Mourning Rituals in Kucha: On the Central Role of the Yurt and the Unique Find of a Coffin

  • Astrid KLEIN (Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig)
  • Published : 2025.12.31
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Abstract

In Kucha, approximately forty painted wooden caskets or parts of them have been found, which are interpreted as bone receptacles for the cremated remains of certain individuals. They correspond to caskets represented in the central pillar caves in connection with the "sharing of the Buddha's relics" and are dated to the same period between the sixth and seventh centuries, when Kucha was under the control of the Göktürks. In appearance and construction details, the bone receptacles reflect key features of the yurt, a tent that served nomadic peoples in Central Asia as a portable home, but also as a place to hold all important ceremonies when a member of the community died. The Chinese chronicle Zhoushu 周書 describes such burial ceremonies around a yurt as a characteristic of the Early Turks; but the yurt also plays a central role in burials excavated in Mongolia and on the northern Tibetan Plateau. Painted representations and archaeological finds from Kucha indicate that, under the influence of the Göktürks, parts of these Central Asian burial and mourning practices were adopted into the local Tocharian culture. In the central pillar caves, such elements of local burial culture appear to be integrated into the representations of the parinirvāṇa story cycle. The present paper shows that this also applies to the coffin, which until now has only been known in Western research from depictions of the cremation of the Buddha. However, a comparable archaeological find was made during Chinese excavations in 1978 and two painted wooden panels, published here for the first time, may originally have belonged to the side walls of another coffin from Kucha. The dating suggests that coffin burials took place before the sixth century.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Prof. Monika Zin, Dr. Amy Heller, and my colleagues Wang Fang 王芳 and Robert Schulz, who supported me in pursuing initial clues for coffin burials in Kucha, as well as the private collector in Switzerland for kindly providing photographs and important core information on the two wooden panels presented here. Furthermore, thanks to Prof. Jan Bemmann for his important comments on the excavations in Mongolia and Prof. Mayke Wagner for bringing this research to my attention. Thanks also to Dr. Jens Wilkens and Melisa Aytas for discussing the etymology of the word yurt, as well as Sue and David Richardson who introduced me to the construction of traditional Karakalpak yurts. Finally, many thanks to the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, which helped to improve this manuscript.

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