The Mogao Caves
A Treasure House of Buddhist Art
Southeast of Dunhuang City, a wooden-plank road zigzags along the eastern cliffs of Mingsha Mountain, linking stone caves of every size. Inside, the cave walls are decorated with dignified, mysterious Buddhist works of art in the form of murals and painted statues. These are the Mogao Caves, the largest treasure house of Buddhist art in the world.
The Mogao Caves are manmade. According to historical records, construction began in 366, when a monk of high moral integrity wandered westward with the help of a walking stick. As he arrived at Mingsha Mountain, he saw 1,000 Buddhas shining before his eyes. Inspired by this vision, he dug the first cave there. Construction of the caves lasted for 1,500 years, through ten Chinese feudal dynasties.
Considering the erosion of the site by wind and drifting sand, there is no way to say whether the first cave dug by the wandering monk is still there, but 750 caves remain. They house 45,000 square meters of murals, 3,000 colored figures, and five structures with wooden eaves constructed during the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) dynasties.
Apart from these, about 50,000 hand-written documents and relics, including paintings on silk, engraved plates, embroideries, and a large amount of calligraphic works, were found in the Buddhist Sutra Cave. If these works of art were arranged in a row, they would extend more than 25 kilometers to become the largest art gallery in the world.v
But how did these works of art appear in the remote desert?
In the second century B.C., Emperor Wu Di of the Western Han Dynasty (206B.C.-A.D.24) sent his envoy Zhang Qian to establish ties with the Western Region, thus opening the overland Silk Road leading to Central and Western Asia. For more than 1,000 years, the Silk Road extended under a blue sky and was surrounded with yellow sand to serve as a route for cultural and friendly interflows between China and other countries.
Located at the meeting point of the northern and southern routes of the Silk Road, Dunhuang was a town with a flourishing trade and quite a few temples. Buddhism, a religion that uses art to disseminate its doctrines, was introduced to China via the Silk Road and mixed with traditional Chinese culture, leaving many relics in the caves along the road. Of these caves, the Mogao Caves are the largest, oldest, richest in content, and best preserved.
Most of the painted sculptures in the Mogao Caves depict Buddhist personages and their religious activities. The looseness of the rocks in the caves made it impossible to carve figures on the rock face, so the artists made clay sculptures. These sculptures are of a rare type and are treasured because few of those made before the Tang Dynasty have been preserved.
The murals are numerous and rich in content. They can be divided into paintings of Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and heavenly kings as enshrined and worshiped by the common people; paintings of stories from Buddhist scriptures; paintings depicting the Buddhist scriptures and paradise, from the Sui (581-618) and Tang dynasties; paintings showing the history of Buddhism and how Buddhism developed in India, Central Asia, and China and paintings of historical people; paintings of the people who made contributions to the excavation of the caves; paintings of traditional myths; and decorative designs.
The murals touch on a wide range of activities, including social activities of different ethnic peoples and social strata in ancient China. There are pictures of emperors leaving their palaces, farmers, fishermen, blacksmiths, wine-brewers, merchants, envoys, musicians, singers, dancers, opera performers, and people at weddings and funerals.
Western scholars have likened the murals in Dunhuang to a library on walls. In this library, scholars have conducted research on the exchanges in culture and economy between northwest China and countries in Central and South Asia.
A treasure house of art, the Mogao Caves contain art styles of different historical periods, including the most brilliant period of China's Buddhist art, which occurred during the Tang Dynasty. The artists harmoniously mixed China's own art with foreign art and reached an unprecedentedly rich and colorful level. The imposing statue of Buddha several dozen meters high; the exquisitely carved bodhisattvas, each only a little more than ten centimeters high; huge paintings depicting Buddhist scriptures, each showing a grand scene with many people; and paintings with a vivid single person all leave a deep impression on visitors.
Flying Apsara exudes an exotic fragrance, and she is adept at playing music and flying. The images of flying apsaras from the Tang Dynasty in the Mogao Caves are rich in color and variety and have a vivid bearing. They resemble neither the Greek winged angels nor the heavenly maidens of ancient India but ride clouds. Chinese artists decorated her body with long ribbons and made her fly leisurely with her graceful, nimble figure. They are beautiful images in China's national art.
In ancient China, the Mogao Caves were a sacred place where people went for spiritual and emotional inspiration. The caves attracted a large number of pilgrims every year, but were gradually forgotten in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties.
One day in 1900, Wang Yuanlu, a Taoist priest who stayed as a guard in the Mogao Caves, accidentally came upon the Buddhist Sutra Cave when cleaning the caves. The discovery was one of the most important archaeological finds of the 20th century. Adventurers then active in Central Asia thronged to Dunhuang, and they stole a large number of painted figures, murals, and official dispatches and took them out of China. Relics from the Buddhist Sutra Cave still can be found in Tokyo, London, Paris, and Moscow. Dunhuangology¡ªthe study of Dunhuang art, of the Mogao Caves, of documents from the Buddhist Sutra Cave, and of the Silk Road ¡ª has now appeared in the world.
Institutions for conducting academic research and protecting the Mogao Caves were established in China in the 1940s, reinforcement of the caves was carried out in the 1960s, and the Mogao Caves have been under State protection since the 1980s.
In recent years, there has been a new wave of interest in Dunhuang in the world. The time-honored stone caves continue to urge people to imagine and explore. They have an enduring appeal. |
