Mogao Caves

Mogao Caves – 492 caves, famous for statues and drawings on the walls, are located in Gansu Province and are remarkable for displaying more than 1,000 years of Buddhist art history. Recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.

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General Information

According to legend, in 366, a monk named Luo Cun had a vision – 1000 Buddhas – after which he began to carve the first cave. The Mogao Caves are located on the Great Silk Road, one of the most important trade routes of the East. The monk asked passing merchants to donate money to build the caves. As Buddhism spread, the caves became a place of pilgrimage. To this day, 492 caves have survived. The largest is 40 meters high, the smallest is less than 1 meter, and their total length is about 1.6 kilometers. The complex, also called the “Caves of 1000 Buddhas”, is famous for the 2415 painted clay statues of Buddha, saints and bodhisattvas (beings who help a person on the path to enlightenment) ranging in size from 10 cm to 33 meters. About 50,000 square meters of drawings and paintings on subjects ranging from floral ornaments, Buddha’s teachings, magical tales and legends to episodes from holy books have been preserved. Their purpose is to instruct and inspire illiterate believers, much like the stained glass windows of medieval cathedrals. Only five wooden structures remain in the caves.

Around the fourteenth century, the Mogao Caves were abandoned and virtually forgotten, but were rediscovered at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Chinese government sent an archaeological expedition here in 1949, the work of which continues to this day. Many tourists rush here, so the caves can be crowded, but it is impossible to resist the beauty of the paintings and the grandeur of the whole complex.

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Motifs and the development of styles

In the first phase of temple building on the Great Silk Road, Buddhism still advocated self-denial to the point of complete self-sacrifice. This position receives typical expression in the Jatakas, legends created in India about the previous incarnations of Gautama Buddha. The events are often told as a kind of religious comic strip in the form of a sequence of pictures (partly in an “S” shape, starting at the top right). The style of the images in the Mogao caves also bears distinctly Indian features: people are wrapped in seamless skirts or loincloths, while the upper half of their bodies are naked, their skin is dark, and their facial features are Indian or Asian.

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With the spread of Chinese Mahayana Buddhism, which promises deliverance not only to monks but also to laypeople and presupposes to abstract nirvana an illustrative intermediate paradise, and from the end of the 6th century with the emergence of a new Chinese state under the Sui dynasty, which conquered Dunhuang, the character of the images changes dramatically. Typical expression of the new doctrine is given in paintings of paradise. The palace architecture is marked by a central perspective and numerous ponds; in the center, Buddhas sit on lotus flowers, orchestras play music, elegant dancers raise their legs and wave their waving shawls, and most of the participants in these scenes have distinctly Chinese facial features. The architecture itself also changes: the early rock temples of Mogao have a central column supporting the ceiling; from the 6th century onwards – thanks to pyramidal ceilings – such columns become redundant and the base area becomes larger.

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Inspection

The entrances to the Mogao Caves are closed with steel doors, so you should join one of the group tours. There is no lighting of any kind in the caves. It is best to bring your own pocket flashlights, or you can rent them at the entrance vestibule, where you can drop off your bags and cameras. Opening hours: daily. 8.00-17.00.

Attention! The guides take a break during the day, so you should come either before 10.00 or at 14.00.

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Overview of the most frequently visited caves

Cave #16 and #17

No. 16 is a very large cave with a thousand picturesque Buddha images from the Western Xia era. While the cave itself is even older as such, presumably as old as the cave accessible from here, No. 17, in which the monastery library was walled up.

Cave No. 61

Cave No. 61 (Western Xia era) is famous for life-size images of its female founders – including one of a princess from Hotan who married the ruler of Dunhuang. The monastery’s Wutaishan Mountain is depicted on the left.

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Cave No. 96

The largest cave in Mogao, No. 96, was created in 695 during the Tang Dynasty. Because it is higher than the rock wall, it is covered with a wooden roof and is immediately striking from the outside with its pagoda-like shape. The 34.5-meter-high image of Maitreya is considered the largest interior Buddha figure in the world. His hands were restored in 1980. Various layers of floor planking are displayed at the entrance, the oldest of which dates back to the time of the cave’s construction.

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Cave #130

This cave, arranged in 713-741 (Tang Dynasty), also harbors a monumental 26-meter-high Maitreya. Wall paintings of boddhisattvas can be seen on the left and right. The paintings and ceramic floor tiles in front of the entrance were created in the Western Xia era. The apsaras dancing on the walls above are 2 meters long – thus, they are the largest in all of Dunhuang. The cave was founded by the military governor’s wife and her two daughters.

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Cave No. 148

Cave No. 148, built in 775, contains a 15.6-meter-long reclining Buddha mourned by seventy-two disciples, boddhisattvas and other beings. Opposite the Buddha can be seen remarkable images of heaven. To the left and right are the boddhisattvas Manjushri and Samantabhadra riding their riding animals.

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Cave No. 158

At the same time or a little later, this cave emerged with a 15-meter reclining Buddha, who has a particularly beautiful head. Boddhisattvas and other supernatural creatures mourn for him, but there are also quite earthly beings among the mourners, including partly caricatured strangers who form a whole group in the dregs. Some dull the pain by stabbing themselves. One “man from the West” in a tasseled cap can also be recognized – a German Michel!

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Cave No. 196 from the late Tang era is famous for its depiction of the demon Raudraksha fighting with the Buddha’s disciple Shariputra; it occupies the entire west wall. Just then, Raudraksha wants to use flames against Shariputra, but his pious rival, no less skilled in magic, causes a mighty wind to blow, which drives the flames back and causes terror and panic among Raudraksha’s hordes.

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Cave #249

Cave No. 249 with magnificent paintings was created in the Western Wei Dynasty. On the ceiling vault opposite the central entrance, the giant Asura is prostrated surrounded by the god of wind and thunder (recognizable by his crown of drums), garudas, gandharvas and other supernatural beings. The Thousand Buddhas motif is recognizable on the left and right, with the founders visible below. The original figures have not survived, the ones represented here were created 1000 years later.

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Cave No. 257

Cave No. 257 is the site of a popular jataka: the legend of a miraculous nine-colored antelope (here depicted as white) who saves a drowning man and in return asks him to promise her that he will not give away her habitat to anyone. But when this antelope is dreamt by a certain queen, who promised a reward to the one who can give information about the antelope, the rescued man breaks his vow – and the marvelous antelope is caught. But she tells how it was, and the traitor is punished.

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Cave #323

The left front wall of Cave No. 323 (early 7th century) depicts the early history of the Great Silk Road: one can see Emperor Wudi of the Han dynasty and Zhang Qian, who traveled on his behalf to the “western lands” (up to the territory of today’s Uzbekistan), whose reports served as the basis for the development of the conquests that expanded China’s territory to Dunhuang and beyond.

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Cave No. 428

Cave No. 428 was built by an association of Buddhist adherents consisting of one thousand two hundred members. It is one of the youngest caves, with a central column. On the right wall on the left, one of the Buddha legends can be seen: the death demon Mara orders his beautiful daughter to dance in front of Gautama in order to excite his worldly passions and thus deprive him of his final victory. Then there are two jatakpas: the one about the generous prince Sudan who gives an enemy neighboring country in drought a miraculous elephant that can conjure rain, and the story of the prince Sattva who, while riding with his brothers, sacrifices himself to a starving tigress.

Cave Museum

Useful additional information after a tour of the Mogao Caves is offered by the Cave Museum. There is a museum kiosk near the entrance with a fine assortment, but the life-size photographs of the eight cave fragments are particularly good: at leisure you can finally examine the individual details.

Unique library

In 1900, a Taoist monk named Wang, who lived as a hermit in the Mogao caves, was cleaning one of them from wind-blown sand. Suddenly, part of the side wall collapsed. Wang widened the resulting hole, crawled through it – and made a discovery in the gloomy, hitherto hidden from view neighboring cave, the value of which he, an uneducated monk, in his time could not appreciate: he stumbled upon a mountain of old written scrolls more than three meters high.

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The venerable monk, however, reported his discovery to the provincial governor, but the latter apparently considered the transportation of the find too expensive and ordered Wang to keep the scrolls under lock and key at the place where they were found. Seven years later, British archaeologist Sir Aurel Stein, who was searching for the remains of the Great Wall in Dupyhuang, learned of the find. Stein gradually managed to gain the monk’s trust and persuade him to give him the manuscripts, perfectly preserved in a dry and cool place … Of the twenty thousand scrolls, he managed to smuggle more than a third of them safely to London.

Soon another explorer arrived, the French Chinese scholar Paul Pelliot. He also managed to gain Wang’s trust and, since he, unlike Stein, knew Chinese, he sorted out the most valuable part of the remaining manuscripts and… transported them to Paris. Other scholars did the same. When the Chinese authorities finally reacted, most of the scrolls, and the most valuable ones at that, were already outside the country.

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Priceless treasures

The treasure of manuscripts at Dunhuang, as Stein had already realized, was a monastery library of immeasurable value. The oldest manuscripts date back to the 5th century. When foreign invaders arrived, presumably in 1035, the scrolls were walled up for the sake of preservation and later forgotten. Most of them contained Buddhist texts, but a lot of other literature was also discovered. Much of it was completely unknown before. Among the most valuable is the text of the Diamond Sutra, published in 868: it is the oldest printed book in the world.

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