Introduction

In 1902, Japanese architect Ito Chuta "rediscovered" Yun-gang accidently and published two articles thereafter, introducing Yungang to the world. In 1907, French sinologist Émmanuel-Édouard Chavannes investigated Yungang and other caves, recording them with his lens. The written record on Yungang is scanty, and the inscriptions in the caves have become increasingly illegible over the centuries. The study of Yungang in the 20th century can be divided into two stages: before 1950, and after. The essential difference lies in whether archaeological methodology was employed to investigate and record Buddhist cave remains. Chen Yuan started Chinese scholarship on Yungang in 1919. He sorted through the antiquarian literature and pointed out that both the Weishu and the Shuijing zhu, which, Chen believed was written during the Taihe era, are reliable sources. The earliest leading Western scholars of Chinese Buddhist art were Édouard Chavannes, Osvald Sirén, and Alexander Coburn Soper.