196 1 year, the Mogao grottoes were announced by the people of China and the State Council as one of the first batch of national key cultural relics protection units. 1987 65438+February, Mogao Grottoes and Yungang Grottoes in Datong, Shanxi, Longmen Grottoes in Luoyang, Henan, and Dazu Stone Carvings in Chongqing were listed as World Cultural Heritage. Mogao Grottoes, Yungang Grottoes and Longmen Grottoes are the three largest grottoes in China.
Mogao Grottoes is located on the cliff at the eastern foot of Mingsha Mountain, 25km southwest of Dunhuang City, Gansu Province, China, facing east in front of Dangquan River, with a length of1680m from north to south and a height of 50m. The caves are staggered and row upon row, with up to five floors up and down. It was built in the Sixteen Kingdoms period. According to Tang Likang's record of rebuilding the Buddhist shrine monument in Mogao Grottoes, in the second year before the establishment of the Qin Dynasty, monks passed by this mountain and suddenly saw the golden light shining like a million buddhas, so they dug the first hole in the rock wall. Since then, Zen master Fa Liang and others have continued to build caves here to practice, which is called the desert grottoes, meaning the heights of the desert. Later generations changed their names to Mogao Grottoes because of the desert and Mogong. During the Northern Wei, Western Wei and Northern Zhou Dynasties, the rulers believed in Buddhism, and the construction of grottoes was supported by princes and nobles, which developed rapidly. During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, with the prosperity of the Silk Road, the Mogao Grottoes flourished, and there were more than a thousand caves in Wu Zetian. After the Anshi Rebellion, Dunhuang was occupied by Tubo and Guiyi Army successively, but the carving activities were not greatly affected. During the Uighur period, the Mogao Grottoes reached the largest peak in history, and the famous or clear and complete portraits and Buddhist sculptures seen at present were basically restored and built during this period. In the Northern Song Dynasty, Xixia and Yuan Dynasty, the Mogao Grottoes gradually declined, and only the caves of the previous dynasties were rebuilt, with few new buildings. After the Yuan Dynasty, with the abandonment of the Silk Road, the construction of the Mogao Grottoes stopped and gradually disappeared into the world's field of vision. It was not until forty years after the reign of Kangxi in the Qing Dynasty that people paid attention to it again. In modern times, people usually call it the Thousand Buddha Cave.
There are 735 caves in the Mogao Grottoes from the Northern Wei Dynasty to the Yuan Dynasty, which are divided into north and south areas. The Southern District is the main body of the Mogao Grottoes, where monks engage in religious activities. There are 487 caves with murals or statues. There are 248 caves in the North District, of which only five have murals or statues, and the rest are places where monks practice, live and bury after death, with living facilities such as heatable adobe sleeping platform, stove kang, flue, niche and desk lamp. There are murals and statues in 492 caves in the two districts, including 45,000 square meters of murals, 24 15 clay sculptures, 5 wooden cornices in Tang and Song Dynasties, and thousands of lotus columns and floor tiles.
Mogao Grottoes is a large-scale cave temple with murals as the main part and statues as the auxiliary part, which integrates painting, sculpture and architectural art. Its grottoes mainly include Zen Grottoes, Central Pagoda Grottoes, Palace Grottoes, Central Buddhist Grottoes, Four-walled Three-niche Grottoes, Elephant Grottoes and Nirvana Grottoes. The size of caves varies greatly, with the largest cave 16 reaching 268 square meters and the smallest cave 37 less than one foot high. The original wooden temples outside the grottoes were connected by cloisters and plank roads, but many of them no longer exist.
The murals of Mogao Grottoes are painted on the walls, roofs and shrines of the caves, with profound contents, including seven themes, such as Buddha statues, Buddhist stories, Buddhist historical sites, changes, immortals, patrons and decorative patterns. In addition, there are many paintings that show all aspects of social life at that time, such as hunting, farming, textiles, transportation, war, architecture, dancing, weddings and funerals. Some of these paintings are bold and broad, and some are magnificent and gorgeous, reflecting the artistic styles and characteristics of different periods. If Uighur is counted as the territory of China, most of China's paintings before the Five Dynasties have been lost. The murals in the Mogao Grottoes provide important objects for studying the art history of China and extremely valuable images and patterns for studying the ancient customs of China. According to calculation, if these murals are arranged at a height of 2 meters, they can be arranged for up to 25 kilometers.
The cliff where the Mogao Grottoes are located has soft soil and is not suitable for making stone carvings. Therefore, the statues of Mogao Grottoes are all made of wooden bones except four giant buddhas made of stone tires. Statues are Buddhist gods and Buddhists, and there are many combinations such as single portrait and collective portrait. Group images are generally centered on Buddha, including disciples, bodhisattvas, heavenly kings, lux and so on. Both sides, ranging from 3 to 1 1. Color plastic forms include round plastic, floating plastic, shadow plastic and fine plastic. These statues are exquisite, vivid, imaginative and profound, which complement each other with murals.
Cave 96 is the highest cave in the Mogao Grottoes, and the rocks attached to its nine-story building are the landmark buildings of the Mogao Grottoes, with a height of 33 meters. It is a nine-story canopy, also known as the statue of Peking University, located in the center of the cliff cave, as high as the cliff top, magnificent. Its wood structure is red, the eaves are high, the outline is patchy, and the eaves ring with the wind. In the meantime, there is a sitting statue of Maitreya Buddha, 35.6 meters high, painted with stone tires and clay sculptures. It is the third largest sitting Buddha in China after Leshan Giant Buddha and Rongxian Giant Buddha. The space for accommodating the giant Buddha is large at the bottom and small at the top, and the plane is square. There are two passages outside the building, which can not only be used to watch the nearby giant Buddha, but also be used as the light source for the head and waist of the giant Buddha. The eaves of this cave existed before the first year of Tang Wende, when it was five stories. Gande was rebuilt in the Northern Song Dynasty for four years, and in the Qing Dynasty, it was changed to four floors. 1935 was rebuilt again, forming the current 9-story model.
/kloc-in 0/900, Wang Yuan, a Taoist living in the Mogao grottoes, carried out a large-scale cleaning in order to transform some abandoned caves into Taoist temples. He happened to find a small door on the north side of the tunnel wall when he was cleaning mud for Cave 16. After it was opened, a square cave room with a length of 2.6 meters and a height of 3 meters appeared, which contained more than 50,000 pieces of literature, paper paintings, silk paintings, embroidery and other cultural relics from the 4th century to1/kloc-0. This is the famous Tibetan Sutra Cave.
The inner wall of the Tibetan Sutra Cave is painted with images of bodhi trees and handmaids, including a low altar in the form of a Zen bed and a stone tablet, which is a confession tablet of the eminent monk Hongbian, that is, a tablet recording Hongbian's life story. Judging from the documents unearthed in the cave, the latest is the characters of the Northern Song Dynasty, which shows the Xixia characters. Therefore, it can be inferred that the Tibetan Sutra Cave was closed by the monks of Mogao Grottoes in the 20th century to avoid the Xixia army. Moreover, the outside of the cave was covered with paint, so it should not be closed when fleeing the disaster of war. The Mogao Grottoes is a very important discovery in the archaeological history of China. Most unearthed documents are written, and a few are engraved. About five-sixths of them are written in Chinese, and others are in ancient Tibetan, Sanskrit, Qilu, Sogdian, Hehe, Qiuci and so on. The contents of the literature are mainly Buddhist scriptures, in addition to Taoist scriptures, Confucian classics, novels, poems, historical records, cadastres, account books, calendars, deeds, letters, plays and so on. Many of them are unique, unique. These are of great historical and scientific value to the study of the history of China and Central Asia, thus forming a discipline of Dunhuang studies focusing on the study of Tibetan classics, cave documents and Dunhuang grottoes.