Dunhuang murals mostly show Buddhist contents, such as classics, Bunsen, Buddhist biographies, benefactors, karma stories and so on. For example, in Cave 257, there are murals of the Northern Wei Dynasty painted according to the Buddhist scripture "Nine-colored Deer". The main idea of the story is: the nine-color deer king passed by the water and rescued the drowning man Juma. Later, the queen encouraged the king to skin the nine-color deer to make clothes. When he went after the nine-color deer king, Diao Da turned him in. When he was ungrateful, he was rewarded. The king put the nine-color deer king back on the mountain. The whole painting is divided into nine scenes in the style of horizontal scroll, with people and animals mostly standing on one side and the background landscape not rubbing. Strong lines, strong colors and decorative shapes. Dye the outer edge with dark color, and the middle becomes lighter gradually, and use white powder to spot the brightest part to enhance the sense of volume. This is a "concave-convex method" absorbed from foreign art
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In the rich Dunhuang murals, we can see Buddha statues, monsters, animals, landscape paintings, architectural paintings and decorative patterns, which have become the most brilliant treasure house of Buddhist art. On the long scroll, it shows the characteristics of different times, from imitating the western regions to gradually becoming China, from facial gestures to costumes, all of which return to the distinctive characteristics of the Han nationality. It not only shows the development of mural art in the Ten Dynasties, but also contains rich historical, customs, folk customs, myths, mountains and rivers, architecture and other image materials.
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