Flying Fainy

Dunhuang Mogao Caves
Silk Road Tours: Adventure along the Silk Road to explore the ancient cities and rich culture..
Dunhuang lies at the western end of the Gansu Corridor, called Hexi Zoulang. The name Dunhuang originally meant "prospering, flourishing"-- a hint that Dunhuang must once have been an important city. Its position at the intersection of two trade routes was what made Dunhuang flourish. The coming and going of horse and camel caravans carried new thoughts, ideas, arts and sciences to the East and West.
It was Europeans who re-opened the road in their search for the ancient Silk Road cities. It happened in the latter part of the last century. These tours can begin very logically in Xian, proceeding via Lanzhou and the Jiayuguan Pass to the Magao Caves of Dunhuang, and then to Turpan, Urumqi and Kashi.
Mogao Caves, or Mogao Grottoes (also known as the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas and Dunhuang Caves) form a system of 492 temples 25 km (15.5 miles) southeast of the center of Dunhuang, an oasis strategically located at a religious and cultural crossroads on the Silk Road, in Gansu province, China. The caves contain some of the finest examples of Buddhist art spanning a period of 1,000 years.[1] The first caves were dug out 366 AD as places of Buddhist meditation and worship.[2] The Mogao Caves are the best known of the Chinese Buddhist grottoes and, along with Longmen Grottoes and Yungang Grottoes, are one of the three famous ancient sculptural sites of China. The caves also have famous wall paintings.
According to local legend, in 366 AD a Buddhist monk, Lè Zūn , had a vision of a thousand Buddhas and inspired the excavation of the caves he envisioned. The number of temples eventually grew to more than a thousand.[3] As Buddhist monks valued austerity in life, they sought retreat in remote caves to further their quest for enlightenment. From the 4th until the 14th century, Buddhist monks at Dunhuang collected scriptures from the west while many pilgrims passing through the area painted murals inside the caves. The cave paintings and architecture served as aids to meditation, as visual representations of the quest for enlightenment, as mnemonic devices, and as teaching tools to inform illiterate Chinese about Buddhist beliefs and stories.
Dunhuang was of great importance as a defensive and cultural center on the western borders of the Chinese empire at various points in its history. The routes west going north and south of the Taklamakan Desert split near Dunhuang. The route to the south and southwest was guarded by the so-called "Jade Gate" (Yü Guan) and "Southern Gate" (Yang Guan) which were garrisoned and supplied from Dunhuang. The Dunhuang region was the site of very important Buddhist monastic complexes, the most famous of which was at the Mogao Grottoes, where today one can see a treasure trove of Buddhist art covering a span of more than a millenium.
It is said that in the fourth century a Buddhist monk had a vision of 1000 Buddhas, and began to carve grottoes into the sandstone cliff and fill them with buddhist images. They were abandoned and forgotten in around the 11th century until Stein and other archaeologists arrived to carry away huge quantities of manuscripts, textiles and other art objects. However Magao remains a brilliant trove of statues and wall paintings from the 4th to 10th centuries