Dunhuang Caves In China
Dunhuang and the Cave of Manuscripts
Dunhuang has 492 caves, with 45,000 square meters
of frescos, 2, 415 painted statues and five woodenstructured caves.
The Mogao Grottoes contain priceless paintings,
sculptures, some 50,000 Buddhist scriptures,
historical documents, textiles, and other relics that
first stunned the world in the early 1900s.
Dunhuang is an oasis town in Chinese Central Asia
west of Xian, a former capital of China.
To the west of Dunhuang lies the Taklamakan
Desert. The silk road coming from the west split to
follow the northern and southern borders of the
desert where there were many small oases.
Dunhuang was the town where the two branches of
the silk road rejoined for the final leg into China's
capital.
The cave-temples near the town of Dunhuang form
what is arguably the world's most extraordinary
gallery of Buddhist art: a gallery whose magnificent
mural paintings and stucco sculptures were not
collected from distant sources but were created in
situ over a period of nearly a thousand years.
Moreover, one particular cave contained a sealed
library whose contents, consisting of written
documents, silk paintings and woodblock prints,
reflect contacts with every major Buddhist centre of
both Central Asia and the Chinese empire.
The town was founded by Emperor Wudi of the Han
dynasty in 111 BC as one of the four garrison
commanderies which assured Chinese control over
the trade routes to the western regions. For several
hundred years after the collapse of the Han empire
(206 BC-220 AD), the area was subjected to
successive waves of invasions, which often caused
great upheaval. For example, in 439, conquest of the
area by the Northern Wei (386-535) led to a
relocation of thirty thousand of its inhabitants to the
dynastic capital in Shanxi province.
In 781, during the
Tang dynasty
(618-906),
Dunhuang
surrendered to the
Tibetans after ten
years' resistance.
When Chinese
rule was restored
in 848, one local
family assumed
power, to be
followed in the tenth century by other powerful
clans. Dunhuang was last considered a place of
importance when it was under the control of the
Western Xia kingdom (990-1227) and the Mongol
Yuan dynasty (1271-1368).
From the time of the Han to the end of the Yuan, a
most important trade route developed from China to
the West, which later became known by the
marvelously evocative name, The Silk Road. The
ancient traveler leaving China along this road would
pass through Dunhuang before braving the many
hazards of the journey westwards through East
Turkestan (present-day Xinjiang). Dunhuang has a
special place in history because of its location close
to the parting of the northern and southern routes
that skirted the impassable Taklamakan desert.
"rediscovery" of ancient cultures and treasures along
the trade routes.
Silk was traded along this seven thousand kilometre
braid of caravan trails from China right across Asia
to the eastern Roman empire on the shores of the
Mediterranean, and also to south Asia. Persian and
Sogdian merchants travelled the whole length, and
were such familiar sights in the Chinese capitals
Chang'an (present-day Xi'an) and Luoyang that they
can frequently be found, for example, portrayed on
Tang dynasty figurines.
It was not just merchandise, technology and culture
that passed along the Silk Road. From the early
centuries AD, learned monks from the monastic
centres of Central Asia imparted their knowledge
and interpretations of the scriptures to their Chinese
counterparts by way of these trade routes.
This route was also used by Buddhist monks from
China and Korea traveling west in search of images
and scriptures, and by ambassadors and princes from
the west making the long journey to China. It was by
means of the Silk Road that all manner of exotic
imports reached China, as diplomatic gifts or
through trade, and mainly in exchange for silks:
vessels made of gold and silver and the techniques
for working these metals; fine glass; fragrances and
spices; exotic animals such as lions and ostriches;
new fruits such as grapes; dancers, musicians and
their instruments.
After the splendours of the Tang dynasty, however,
trade along the Silk Road was severely curtailed, and
Dunhuang was left in isolation. Later trade between
China and
Europe was
entirely by
sea. By the
late
nineteenth
century, with
the decline
of Chinese
imperial
power, the
whole of
Central Asia,
including
Dunhuang,
was a
political void
which invited foreign interest from many sides,
including Britain, France, Germany, Russia and
Japan. This provided the opportunity for the
Representatives of Zoroastrianism, the ancient
Persian dualist religion, and of Nestorianism, an
Eastern Christian sect, also reached China and
established themselves there.
Founded in the sixth century BC, Buddhism soon
began expanding northwards from the foothills of
the Himalayas. In the third century BC, under its
most influential convert, the Indian emperor Asoka,
it was dispersed by missionaries across Central Asia,
where it remained dominant for about a thousand
years, until invaders in the seventh century AD
brought in Islam.
In China itself, Buddhism was introduced probably
as early as the first century BC, with communities of
Buddhist monks in existence by the first century
AD. Learned Buddhist monks became valued as
palace advisors, and it was through imperial and
aristocratic patronage that Buddhism made its first
substantial progress in the empire. Because of its
vitally important position on the Silk Road, virtually
every stage of this progress is chronicled in the caves
at Dunhuang.
Mogao Grottoes
Northern end of the
Mogao cliff face,
pitted with caves for
shelter
The Mogao Grottoes of
Dunhuang, popularly
known as the
Thousand Buddha
Caves, were carved out
of the rocks stretching for about 1,600 meters along
the eastern side of the Mingsha Hill, 25 km southeast
of Dunhuang.
In 1961 the Grottoes were listed by the State Council
as one of China's key historical and cultural sites.
Repairs were carried out from 1963 to 1965.
A Tang Dynasty inscription records that the first
cave in the Mogao Grottoes was made in 366 A.D.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO) listed the Mogao
Grottoes on the World Heritage List in 1987.
Between 1906 and 1919 the Dunhuang grottoes was
looted. Much of the Hand-copied ancient books,
manuscripts, literary works, Buddhist and secular
decorative art works, and ancient manuscripts were
removed by Aurel Stein, Paul Pelliot, Sergei
Feodorovich Oldenburg and other archaeologists.
Despite erosion and man-made destruction, the 492
caves are well preserved, with frescoes covering an
area of 45,000 square metres, more than 2,000
colored sculptured figures and five wooden eaves
overhanging the caves.
Bodhisattva
Avalokitesvara
According to
archaeologists, it is the
greatest and most
consummate repository
of Buddhist art in the
world.
Heavenly Being
Many pavilions, towers, temples, pagodas, palaces,
courtyards, towns and bridges in the murals provide
valuable materials for the study of Chinese
architecture. Other paintings depict Chinese and
foreign musical performances, dancing and
acrobatics.
The 'Cave for Preserving Scriptures', was discovered
by a Taoist monk Wang Yuanlu in 1900. The cave
contains more than 50,000 sutras, documents and
paintings covering a period from the 4th to the 11th
centuries. It was one of China's most significant
archaeological finds. These precious relics are of
great historical and
scientific value.
Detail from the
Procession of Zhang
Yichao
Chinese scholars such as Luo Zhenyu and Wang
Guowei cultivated the study of Dunhuang culture by
publishing a number of books in 1910. The
Dunhuang Art Academy was established by Chang
Shuhong later.
The site lay empty and ignored until a secret sealedup cave was discovered at the end of the 19th
century. It was crammed with ancient manuscripts
and printed documents. Its discovery coincided with
a period of great international archaeological
research in the area and Sir Aurel Stein was the first
to gain access in 1907. Thereafter archaeologists
from France, Russia and China were drawn to
Dunhuang and the great majority of manuscripts and
documents from this one cave are now in Beijing,
Paris, London and St. Petersburg. Documents and
paintings from other Silk Road towns are to be
found more widely in museums and libraries
throughout Europe and Asia.
Apart from 14,000 paper scrolls and fragments from
this cave at
Dunhuang, the
British Library
Stein
collection
includes
several
thousand
woodslips and
woodslip
fragments with
Chinese writing, thousands of Tibetan and Tangut
manuscripts, Prakrit wooden tablets in Brahmi and
Kharosthi scripts, along with documents in
Khotanese, Uighur, Sogdian and Eastern Turkic. All
this material is included in The International
Dunhuang Project and will be entered onto the
Project database.
Heavenly wonder of ancient China goes on show
The fine paper scroll, measuring 210 by 25
centimetres, (82 by 10 inches) displays no less than
1,345 stars grouped in 257 non-constellation
patterns.
Such detail was not matched until Galileo and other
European astronomers began searching the skies
hundreds of years later - and they had the advantage
of telescopes.
The chart includes very faint stars that are extremely
difficult to find with the naked eye. It also represents
the sky as a sphere projected on a cylinder, a modern
technique first adopted in Europe in the 15th
century.
The first part of the document consists of a
collection of predictions based on shapes of clouds evidence of the important role divination played in
ancient China.
Ananova - May 2004
A Chinese star chart possibly dating from the 7th
century AD mapped the heavens with an accuracy
unsurpassed until the Renaissance, according to
research.
The Dunhuang chart is the oldest manuscript star
map in the world and one of the most valuable
treasures in astronomy.
Dr Francoise Praderie, from the Paris Observatory,
who studied the map with fellow French astronomer
Dr Jean-Marc Bonnet-Bidaud, said: "The origin of
the star chart's manufacture and real use remains
unknown. One can conjecture that it was used for
military and travellers' needs and probably also for
uranomancy - divination by consulting the heavens as suggested by the cloud divination texts preceding
the charts.
"The long tradition in China of searching the sky for
celestial omens has therefore led to an early and
unsurpassed precision in star catalogues."