Dunhuang Mogao Caves

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-Buddha Grottoes, are located on the eastern, rocky side of Singing Sand Mountain, near Dunhang City, Gansu Province. According to historical records, the carving of them was started in 366 AD and continued for about 1,000 years. Now, there are 492 grottoes in existence, with some 45,000 square m of murals and 2,400-odd painted clay figures. The painted clay figures vary greatly in size, with the largest one being 33 m high and the smallest only 10 cm.

Painted clay sculptures and murals in the Mogao Grottoes have mainly Buddhist themes, but they also include human figures, reflecting various societies and cultures of different times. Besides, they also demonstrate painting styles of different times in layout, figure design, delineation and coloring, as well as the integration of Chinese and Western arts.

In 1900, a total of 4,500 valuable cultural relics dating from 256 AD to 1002 were found in the Buddhist Sutra Cave here, including silk paintings, embroidery and documents in rare languages such as ancient Tibetan and Sanskrit. This is regarded as one of the world's greatest Oriental cultural discoveries.

b. Cultural Heritage

The Mogao Grottoes show examples of various types of art, such as architecture, painting and statuary. By inheriting the artistic traditions of the central and western regions of China and absorbing the merits of ancient arts from India, Greece and Iran, ancient Chinese artists created Buddhist art works with strong local features. These art works are treasures of human civilization, providing valuable material 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 period from the Three Kingdoms Period to Northern Song Dynasty.

Grottoes