English name: Mogao Grottoes
Item no: 200-004
1987+In February, the Mogao Grottoes were selected into the World Heritage List according to the World Cultural Heritage Selection Criteria C(I)(II)(III)(IV)(V)(VI).
The Mogao Grottoes, also known as the "Thousand Buddha Cave", are located on the cliff of Mingsha Mountain, 25 kilometers southeast of Dunhuang City, Gansu Province in western China. Dunhuang is located at the westernmost end of Hexi Corridor, bordering Anxi in the east, Aksai in the south and Xinjiang in the northwest, and is located on the northern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Dunhuang was founded in the sixth year of Emperor Gaozu Ding Yuan (BC 1 1 1), and it was one of the counties in the western Han Dynasty. Historically, it was called "Three Dangers" and "Guazhou". In the second century BC, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty sent Zhang Qian to the Western Regions, which opened up the "Silk Road" for land transportation to Central Asia and West Asia, and promoted cultural exchanges and friendly exchanges between China and the West. Dunhuang is located at the intersection of the north and south roads of the Silk Road. It used to be a bustling metropolis, with prosperous trade and temples everywhere. Buddhism, which propagandizes ideas with artistic images, was introduced into China from India and merged with China traditional culture, leaving a large number of grotto cultural heritages along the way, among which Dunhuang Grottoes, with Mogao Grottoes as the main body, are the largest and best preserved.
The Mogao Grottoes were first excavated in the second year of Jianyuan in the former Qin Dynasty (AD 366), and basically ended in the Yuan Dynasty (AD 127 1 ~ 1368), during which excavation continued for nearly a thousand years. North-south length 1600 meters, five floors up and down, the highest point is 50 meters. There are 492 caves, 45,000 square meters of murals, 2,465,438 colored sculptures and 4,000 flying statues.
Dunhuang grottoes art is a three-dimensional art integrating architecture, sculpture and painting. On the basis of inheriting the excellent artistic traditions of the Han nationality in the Central Plains and the fraternal nationalities in the Western Regions, ancient artists absorbed and integrated foreign expression techniques, and developed into Buddhist works of art with China ethnic customs and Dunhuang local characteristics.
Among the 492 grottoes in Mogao Grottoes, there are Zen grottoes, palace grottoes, pagoda temple grottoes and shadow grottoes. The largest grottoes are more than 40 meters high and 30 meters wide, and the smallest grottoes are less than one foot high. It is a sacred place for religious sculptures and murals and a place for monks to engage in religious activities. From the early grottoes, the unique cave shape of the central tower column was preserved, and it began to disappear in the Sui and Tang Dynasties. The typical shape of the grottoes in Sui and Tang Dynasties is square, with a bucket roof and niches on the back wall. From the late Tang Dynasty to the Song and Yuan Dynasties, the mural niche was replaced by the Buddhist altar in the center of the cave, freeing up a whole stone wall to draw large murals.
Painted sculptures are the main body of Dunhuang art, including Buddha statues, Bodhisattva statues, disciples, heavenly kings, King Kong, Lux and immortals. Color plastic forms are rich and varied, including round plastic, floating plastic, shadow plastic and good plastic. The highest is 34.5 meters, and the smallest is only about 2 centimeters (clay and wood statues in Shan Ye). There are more than 2,400 colorful sculptures in the Mogao Grottoes. Its shape gradually evolved from coarse in the early Northern Wei Dynasty to fine in the later period. Since the Sui and Tang Dynasties, there have been seven to nine painted sculptures, and the artistic style tends to be graceful and gorgeous.
The murals in Mogao Grottoes are also very eye-catching. The grotto murals are rich and colorful, and all kinds of Buddhist stories, landscapes, pavilions and other architectural paintings, landscape paintings, flower patterns, flying Buddha statues and various scenes made by working people at that time are artistic representations of folk customs and historical changes from the Sixteen Kingdoms to the Qing Dynasty 1500 years.
In the 26th year of Guangxu (A.D. 1900), about 50,000 scriptures, documents, embroideries, portraits, etc. from Wei-Jin to Northern Song Dynasty were found in the northern wall of Cave 16. Except the documents written in Chinese, about one sixth of the documents are written in various national languages, such as Park Jung Su, Baltic, Uighur, Tubo, Sanskrit and Tibetan. The contents of documents include religious documents, literary works, contracts, account books, official documents and letters. Since then, the famous "Dunhuang studies" have developed. After nearly a hundred years' research, Dunhuang studies have made remarkable achievements in academic, artistic and cultural aspects. At the same time, it has also shown the world the beauty of Dunhuang art, the richness of cultural connotation and the wisdom of working people in ancient China.
World Cultural Heritage Manuscript: Mogao Grottoes