The Mogao Caves, also known as the Thousand Buddha Grottoes or Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, form a system of 500 temples 25 km southeast of the center of Dunhuang, in Gansu province, China. The first caves were dug out in AD 366 as places of Buddhist meditation and worship. By the Sui Dynasty, the number of caves had reached over a thousand and had become a place of worship and pilgrimage for the public.
About Mogao Caves in brief
The Mogao Caves, also known as the Thousand Buddha Grottoes or Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, form a system of 500 temples 25 km southeast of the center of Dunhuang, in Gansu province, China. The first caves were dug out in AD 366 as places of Buddhist meditation and worship. The caves contain some of the finest examples of Buddhist art spanning a period of 1,000 years. An important cache of documents was discovered in 1900 in the so-called ‘Library Cave’ which had been walled-up in the 11th century. The largest collections are now found in Beijing, London, Paris and Berlin, and the International Dunhuan Project exists to coordinate and collect scholarly work on the manuscripts and other material. By the Sui Dynasty, the number of caves had reached over a thousand and had become a place of worship and pilgrimage for the public. These caves were elaborately painted by monks with funds from donors to serve as shrines to those illiterate about Buddhist beliefs and teaching tools to those who wanted to learn about them. The name Mogao was used in the Tang dynasty, where ‘Mogao’ refers to an administrative district at the site. It is also used as the name of a modern town that is administered byDunhuang city: Mogao Town. The caves themselves are now a popular tourist destination, with a number open for visiting. They are one of the three famous ancient Buddhist sculptural sites of China, along with LongmenGrottoes and Yungang Grottoe.
The term Dunhuangs Caves is used in a broader sense as a collective term for all the caves found in or around the Dunhuen area. The site was established as a frontier garrison outpost by the Han Dynasty Emperor Wudi to protect against the Xiongnu in 111 BC. It also became an important gateway to the West, a centre of commerce along the Silk Road, as well as a meeting place of various people and religions such as Buddhism. In the 4th century AD, a Buddhist monk named Lè Zūn had a vision of a thousand Buddhas bathed in golden light at theSite in 366 AD, inspiring him to build a cave here. This name may have come from the large number of Buddha figures painted on the walls of these caves as these figures are called ‘thousand Buddhas’ colloquially. The caves are also often referred to as the ‘blazing beacon’ as beacons were used at the frontier outpost to warn of attacks by nomadic tribes. The cave name ‘Blazing Beacon’ comes from the Chinese term for the nearest city DunhuANG, which means “blazed beacon” or ‘high in the desert’ The caves were built in the fourth century AD and are thought to have been the first place to be used for meditation by monks. They were built by monks of the Northern Wei and Northern Wei Dynasty.
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This page is based on the article Mogao Caves published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 25, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
