Brief introduction of Mogao grottoes

● English name: Mogao Caves

● Approval time: 1987. 12

● Heritage type: cultural heritage

● Criteria for heritage selection: According to the Criteria for Selection of World Cultural Heritage C (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) and (vi), the Mogao Grottoes were selected into the World Heritage List.

Assessment by the World Heritage Committee:

The Mogao Grottoes are located in the strategic location of the Silk Road. It is not only a transit point for East-West trade, but also a meeting point of religion, culture and knowledge. The 492 small grottoes and grotto temples in the Mogao Grottoes are famous for their statues and murals, showing the Buddhist art that has lasted for thousands of years.

● Overview:

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. There is plenty of sunshine, dry and little rain, four distinct seasons and a large temperature difference between day and night. The grottoes are more than 600 meters long from north to south/kloc-0, with five floors up and down and the highest point of 50 meters. There are 492 caves, 45,000 square meters of murals, 2,465,438 colored sculptures and 4,000 flying statues. The Mogao Grottoes are large in scale, rich in content and have a long history. Together with Yungang Grottoes in Shanxi and Longmen Grottoes in Henan, it is also called "Three Treasures of Grottoes Art" in China.

The Mogao Grottoes were first excavated in the second year before the Qin Dynasty (AD 366). A Buddhist monk with a legal name and musical honor came here. Because he saw Sanwei Mountain glittering and looked like a thousand buddhas, he realized that this was a Buddhist land, so he chiseled the first Buddhist grottoes on the cliff. After generations of construction, it basically ended in the Yuan Dynasty (A.D. 127 1 ~ 1368).

China Grottoes originated from India. The traditional grottoes in India are mainly stone carvings, while the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang are mainly clay murals because rocks are not suitable for carving. Generally, the whole cave used to be round, and then it gradually faded into high plastic, shadow plastic and wall plastic. Finally, with the mural as the background, the two arts of plastic and painting were combined. There were more than 1,000 caves in the Tang Dynasty, and there are 492 existing caves, including 32 in Wei, 247 in Sui, 36 in the Five Dynasties, 45 in Song and 8 in Yuan. During the Northern Dynasties, the main statue in the cave was generally Sakyamuni or Maitreya Buddha, and there were mostly two dangerous bodhisattvas or one Buddha and two disciples on both sides of the main statue. The back of the statue is mostly connected with murals. The top and walls of the cave are covered with murals. The upper part and the upper part are mostly Tiangong geisha music. The lower part is a witch or decorative pattern. In addition to thousands of Buddhas, the murals in Central China mainly draw stories of Buddhism, origin and karma. Among them, Bunsen's stories include cutting meat for pigeons, giving his life to feed tigers, and giving his life to save people by nine-color deer.

The Sui and Tang Dynasties were the heyday of the Mogao Grottoes, and the style of the hundred caves in the Sui Dynasty was changed from the central tower in the Northern Dynasty to the central Buddhist altar, with the same image as before. A combination of one Buddha, two disciples, two heavenly kings or two strong men appeared in the Tang Dynasty. The statue has also returned from the early "skinny and slim" shape to the "rich and strong" appearance. Murals in grottoes are mainly large-scale paintings and simple change paintings. The largest statues in the Mogao Grottoes were made in the Tang Dynasty, and the giant Buddha in Cave 96 is the largest statue in the Mogao Grottoes. There are many kinds of murals in the Tang Dynasty, and there are five main themes of murals: ① Buddha paintings. There are many single Buddha statues and bodhisattva statues, such as the pharmacist Buddha, Lushenafo Buddha, Guanyin, Shi Zhi, Tibetan Buddhism and tantric bodhisattva statues. 2 through painting. There are more than 20 kinds, such as Amitabha, Maitreya, Oriental Pharmacist, Guan Wushou, Fahua, Yu Bao, Vimalakīrti, Laodu Tea Fighting Sage, Guanyin, Manjusri, Pu Xian, Gratitude, Huayan, Tian, Yi Gi Brahma, Jin Guangming, King Kong, Lengga, Miyan, Rewarding Parents' Grace, Demonizing, etc. In the Sui and early Tang Dynasties, there were fewer kinds of classics, grand scenes, rigorous composition, concise content, one wall and one shop, and more kinds and rich content in the later period. The composition was mainly two or three shops on one wall. Even under the classic, a screen painting was added to supplement the classic. (3) Buddhist historical paintings and Swiss portraits. In the late Tang Dynasty, it appeared in the form of Buddhist legends in the western regions, such as Hotan, Tianzhu, Nirvana and Gandhara, such as the fire and water pool of Hotan, Loki and Nirvana, the statue of Ruirukuyaen in Borneo, the double statue of Zhongtianzhu and Gandhara. ④ Buddhist story painting. The Sui Dynasty gradually disappeared, and reappeared in the late Tang Dynasty, and there were acts of kindness such as the prince entering the sea. Some caves are painted with more than 20 kinds of stories. ⑤ portrait of the provider. The figures and costumes are carefully depicted, and the images are gradually increasing. In the late Tang Dynasty, there was an equidistant statue. And enter that two walls of the entrance tunnel from the low parts of the four walls. The map of Zhang Yichao, my ambassador to Hexi, and the wife of the Song family in Hanoi County is magnificent and rigorous, and it is an important historical picture. Its scale is extremely grand, showing the magnificent picture of heaven. Grottoes lost their vitality in the Five Dynasties and began to decline in the Song Dynasty. After nearly a thousand years of continuous excavation, the Mogao Grottoes have become the largest, richest and oldest treasure house of Buddhist art in the world, integrating architecture, stone carving, murals and colored plastic arts in various periods. These art treasures not only reflect the religious and social life in medieval China, but also show the outstanding wisdom and extraordinary achievements of the working people of all ages.

1900 On June 22nd, Wang, the Taoist priest in charge of the grottoes, asked Yang, who was writing scriptures, to insert the lantern grass into the crack in the wall, and found that there was no one in the wall, so he found a secret room (there is none now. 17, also known as the Tibetan Sutra Cave, contains 50,000 to 60,000 pieces of cultural relics from the 4th to 14th centuries. This is an important archaeological discovery in China in the early 20th century, which shocked the world. Since then, the famous "Dunhuang studies" have developed. After nearly a hundred years of research, Dunhuang studies not only made remarkable achievements in academic, artistic and cultural aspects, but also showed the world the beauty of Dunhuang art, the rich cultural connotation and the wisdom of the ancient working people in China.

● Cultural heritage value:

Dunhuang grottoes art is a three-dimensional art integrating architecture, sculpture and painting. On the basis of inheriting the fine traditions of the Han nationality in the Central Plains and the brotherly nationalities in the Western Regions, ancient artists absorbed and integrated foreign expressions, and developed into Buddhist works of art with local characteristics in Dunhuang, China, which provided valuable materials for the study of ancient China's politics, economy, culture, religion, ethnic relations and friendly exchanges between China and foreign countries, and was a cultural treasure and spiritual wealth of mankind.

There are 492 paintings and colored sculptures in more than 500 caves in architectural art, including Zen caves, palace caves, pagoda caves, dome caves, "shadow caves" and some pagodas. The largest grottoes are more than 40 meters high and 30 meters wide, and the smallest grottoes are less than one foot high.

The Central Tower is a foreign grotto form preserved in the early days, which reflects that ancient artists assimilated foreign art while accepting it, making it a national form in China. Many of them are masterpieces of existing ancient buildings.

Colored Sculpture Art Colored Sculpture is the main body of Dunhuang art, including Buddha statue, Bodhisattva statue, disciple statue, heavenly king, King Kong, Lux, God and so on. Color plastic forms are rich and varied, including round plastic, floating plastic, shadow plastic and good plastic. The maximum height is 34.5 meters, and the minimum is only 2 cm (Shan Ye clay sculpture and wood carving), which is rich in themes and exquisite in craftsmanship, and can be called the Buddhist colored sculpture museum.

Cave 17 is the most famous portrait sculpture in China that hates the unification of Hexi capital in Tang Dynasty. The statue is painted with staff near the waiter.