Dunhuang Mogao Caves (Dunhuang City, Gansu Province)

a. Brief Introduction
The grottoes in the Mogao Caves are the world's largest and oldest treasure house of Buddhist art.
The Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, also known as the One-Thousand-BuddhaGrottoes, are located on the eastern, rocky side of Singing SandMountain, near Dunhang City, Gansu Province. According to historicalrecords, the carving of them was started in 366 AD and continued forabout 1,000 years. Now, there are 492 grottoes in existence, with some45,000 square m of murals and 2,400-odd painted clay figures. Thepainted clay figures vary greatly in size, with the largest one being33 m high and the smallest only 10 cm.
Painted clay sculptures and murals in the Mogao Grottoes have mainlyBuddhist themes, but they also include human figures, reflectingvarious societies and cultures of different times. Besides, they alsodemonstrate painting styles of different times in layout, figuredesign, delineation and coloring, as well as the integration of Chineseand Western arts.
In 1900, a total of 4,500 valuable cultural relics dating from 256AD to 1002 were found in the Buddhist Sutra Cave here, including silkpaintings, embroidery and documents in rare languages such as ancientTibetan and Sanskrit. This is regarded as one of the world's greatestOriental cultural discoveries.
b. Cultural Heritage
The Mogao Grottoes show examples of various types of art, such asarchitecture, painting and statuary. By inheriting the artistictraditions of the central and western regions of China and absorbingthe merits of ancient arts from India, Greece and Iran, ancient Chineseartists created Buddhist art works with strong local features. Theseart works are treasures of human civilization, providing valuablematerial for studies of the politics, economy, culture, religion,ethnic relations and foreign exchanges of China in olden times.Besides, there are also about 50,000 items of scriptures, documents,paintings and weavings written in several languages spanning the periodfrom the Three Kingdoms Period to Northern Song Dynasty.
Grottoes
So far there are 492 grottoes, with murals and painted clay figures.There are meditation grottoes, Buddha hall grottoes, temple grottoes,vault-roofed grottoes and shadow grottoes. The largest grotto is 40 mhigh and 30 m wide, whereas the smallest is less than one foot high.
Painted Clay Figures
These are the main treasures of the Dunhuang Grottoes. The figuresare in different forms, including round figures and relief figures. Thetallest is 34.5 m high, while the smallest is only 2 cm. These paintedclay figures show such a great variety of themes and subject matter, aswell as advanced techniques, that the Mogao Grottoes are generallyregarded as the world's leading museum of Buddhist painted clay figures.
Murals
The murals in the Mogao Grottoes display Buddhist sutras, naturalscenery, buildings, mountain and water paintings, flower patterns,flying Apsaras (Buddhist fairies) and ancient farming and productionscenes. There are 1,045 murals extant, with a total area of 45,000 sq.m. They are artistic records of historical changes and customs andtraditions from the 4th to the 18th centuries.
Excavated Articles
In 1900, about 50,000 cultural relics were found in a sanctum sealedbehind the northern wall of Grotto No. 16. These articles includedBuddhist sutras, documents, embroidery works and paintings from the 4thto the 12th centuries. Apart from ancient Chinese documents, there werealso documents in other ancient languages, including Tibetan, Sanskritand Uygur. The subjects of these documents include religion,literature, contracts, ledgers and official files. This discovery,which attracted world attention, is of great research value forsupplementing and emending ancient Chinese documents.
Buddhist Culture
The Sui Dynasty (518-618) was a golden age for Buddhism in Chinesehistory. And the Mogao Grottoes experienced their heyday ofconstruction during this dynasty.
Born and brought up in a Buddhist nunnery, Emperor Yang Jian,founder of the Sui Dynasty, was an enthusiastic Buddhist. After heunited the whole country, he made Buddhism the national religion. About5,000 temples were built, thousands of Buddhist sculptures were carved,and there were some 500,000 Buddhist monks and nuns. His son EmperorYang Guang was also keen on Buddhism. He had 1,000 copies of the FahuaSutra published and established a school of Buddhism.

In this period, a large number of grottoes were carved at Mogao. Themost common form of grotto dating from this dynasty is the invertedconical grotto. A typical example is the seven-layer conical tower inGrotto No. 303, converted from a central tower pillar. Murals in thisperiod were freed from the limit of foreign arts and demonstrated aliberated dynamic creativity. Generally, they show three major features.
First, murals depicting how Buddhists underwent arduous training andendured humiliation for progress in this life receded, and muralsdepicting easy ways to become a Buddha and attain Paradise began tooccupy prominent positions in the grottoes. Second, Avalokitesvara wasno longer an accompanying figure for Sakyamuni Buddha. Instead, she wasdepicted separately and with more grandeur. The appearance of theseparate Avalokitesvara marked progress in China's Buddhism. Third, assecularization of Buddhist art began to emerge, figures in murals inthis period were more lifelike.