Highly influential members of the Sogdian community, who had strengthened their positions in China due to trade activities on the Great Silk Road, adopted the custom of burial in a tomb, which spread throughout China during the Northern Dynasty. However, along with burying the deceased in a coffin, they also placed the body directly on a stone platform consisting of stone walls decorated in a unique way...
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The images on the stone walls reflect the spiritual world of Zoroastrianism, which belongs to Central Asia. This mausoleum consists of 11 stone reliefs arranged in a P-shaped pattern around it.
They are Bactrians...
Panel 2 depicts two fish swimming in a pond, with a horse without a rider next to them. Several people are holding umbrellas behind an animal. Another man, sitting on his knees, held a bowl of food to the horse's muzzle.
The depiction of a horse on stone reliefs from the Han Dynasty (202 BC - 220 BC) symbolized that the deceased had gone to heaven on foot. There are even pictures showing a horse being fed from a bucket. In paintings found in cemeteries dating back to the Northern Dynasty (386–577), such situations are sometimes depicted alongside servants holding an umbrella for a horse.
Panel 2 was apparently created under the influence of the Northern Dynasty. In addition to servants and horses, these statues depict two horsemen. Although they wore Sogdian hats with fluttering straps, there is a hypothesis that they were Bactrians.
The ancient Oxus (Amudarya) flowed through the territories of both Bactria and Sogdiana. On its coast in Bactria, there was an Oxus temple (modern-day Southern Tajikistan). During recent excavations, the bones of horses sacrificed in honor of the Oxus River were discovered at this site.
Depictions of unridden horses with straps tied to their legs, as well as priests with their mouths covered with bandages during funeral rites, are also depicted in the Sogdian frescoes of Afrasiab in Samarkand (Uzbekistan). Such names can also be interpreted as a symbol of polytheism. This situation means that the monk with his mouth tied is symbolically standing in front of the god, and the "flying" straps are fluttering under the influence of the strong wind of Ahura Mazda.
