Broken statues
A friend of ours, while doing charity work in An Long village, said that he saw a local resident's house preserving some fragments of an ancient terracotta Buddha statue.
Contacting an acquaintance working at the People's Committee of Que Phong commune, we learned that the terracotta pieces were kept at Mrs. Pham Thi Ha's house and were picked up by her from Da Chua cave.
When visiting Da Chua Cave, most of the locals knew about this place. Mr. Nguyen Khoa Toan (90 years old) and Mrs. Nguyen Thi Dung (81 years old) said that Da Chua Cave was mentioned by their father and the previous generation.
Also according to Mr. Toan and Mrs. Dung, in the past, about 50m from An Long communal house, there was a small temple built of bricks and roofed with tiles, in which there were several Buddha statues, next to which was a very large milk flower tree.
The temple is a place where people come to worship, then go down to An Long communal house to practice. In An Long village, there is still a place called Doc Chua (near An Long communal house). Later, due to the war, the temple was destroyed, the Buddha statue was lost. I wonder if the statue from the temple was brought there?
Mr. Toan added that locals say that this temple was originally built with a bronze Buddha statue, then changed to a clay Buddha statue. In the years after liberation, due to lack of land for production, villagers went to the Da Chua cave area to clear trees to grow cassava, bananas... and built huts to stay at noon.
While resting, they entered the Da Chua cave and saw Buddha statues neatly arranged in clusters, including French bicycles. Later, some people thought there were valuables in the statues and challenged each other to smash the statues.
Ms. Pham Thi Ha - who is preserving pieces of terracotta statues from Da Chua cave said that her father, Mr. Pham Van Hoa (born in 1956), told her about the clusters of statues neatly placed in the cave.
Last March, Ms. Ha followed her father to Da Chua Cave to find the old statues to worship. However, when she arrived, she only saw pieces of terracotta buried in clumps.
She picked up some large pieces with traces of carvings on the head and face of the statue and brought them home. Then she continued to collect more pieces hoping to assemble them into a complete statue.
Is the artifact from the 18th or 19th century?
Led by Mrs. Ha, after nearly 2 hours of walking through the hillsides planted with acacia trees, we finally arrived at Da Chua cave.
Right at the top of the mountain, the cave is naturally formed from a large, flat volcanic rock, stacked on top of a small rock (like a pillar) creating a space about 1m - 2m high and more than 10m 2 wide, inside there are small, flat rocks like tables.
The cave faces west. There are bones, animal feces, and remaining bombs in the cave, proving that this cave was once a resting place for both humans and animals.
There are 114 pieces of terracotta statues discovered in Da Chua cave kept by Ms. Ha with different sizes. Some large pieces have clearly identifiable parts of the statue through traces of carvings: eyes, nose, ears, hair, legs, arms... Some pieces have decorative details with embossed patterns; the rest are mostly unadorned.
The pieces are molded from fine clay and fired at a fairly high temperature, making them very sturdy and heavy. Some pieces are grey, with one side smoothed and the other left rough.
Through information collected, investigated, and surveyed at Da Chua Cave, comparing artifacts and consulting with archaeological experts, we concluded that: Da Chua Cave site has existed quite early but the exact time is unknown. The terracotta pieces are fragments of Buddha statues, god statues and worship objects "dating back to around the 18th - 19th century".
Because there is a temple near An Long communal house and now there is a place called Doc Chua (near An Long communal house), it raises many questions for us. Were the statue fragments in Da Chua cave brought from the temple or from somewhere else? Why is there a place called Doc Chua? Is Da Chua cave a place of worship or just a place to hide statues during the war or some other period? What is the connection between Da Chua cave, Doc Chua and the statue fragments? That is still a mystery that needs to be solved.
To answer the above questions, it takes time to research and verify information. Currently, Quang Nam Museum has received the above terracotta statues to edit, preserve for research, display and introduce the process of opening villages in Que Phong, Que Son in particular and Quang Nam in general.
Source: https://baoquangnam.vn/bi-an-manh-tuong-dat-nung-tai-hang-da-chua-3142294.html
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