ABSTRACT
The Mogao 莫高 cave temples at Dunhuang are also known as the Caves of a Thousand Buddhas. They are situated in China’s Gansu province on an escarpment in the foothills to the east of Mt Wusha 鳴沙山 and south-east of the town of Dunhuang. The first cave was established in Ce 366, the second year of the Jianyuan reign period of the Former Qin 前秦建元 (the Sixteen Kingdoms period of Eastern Jin 東晉十六國) and from then, continuously to the Tang period, monks, nobility, local officials, merchants, civilians and artisans chiselled out one thousand or more caves. With 1,600 years of natural and man-made damage, only 492 grottoes now remain. The square metres of frescoes, 2,300 statues and five Tang and Song wooden ceiling structures in the caves make up one of the world’s largest treasure troves of Buddhist art. Most remarkably, in the year 1900, a cave was discovered within cave 16, storing scriptures which had been sealed for nearly one thousand years. It contained several tens of thousands of documents of every kind.
