Some photos of the Mogao cave complex near Dunhuang, Gansu province, Western China. It is hardly known to the foreign tourists. Three hours by flight from Beijing. Mogao which means "No Comparison" contains the largest collection of Buddhist murals in the world. Dunhuang was the beginning of my Silk Road trip. This region also known as Hexi Corridor of the Silk Road is dotted with amazing caves with Buddhist murals. I visited a few.
Mogao is undoubtedly the best.
Strictly no photos were allowed inside but they have a wonderful museum and some replica caves. Most photos are from that museum. Prior to visiting the actual caves one must watch a movie which I found fascinating.
There is once English speaking tour daily. The day we went couple of French and Italian tourists were also with us as they did not have tours in any other foreign languages. You can visit only a set number of caves any time. We visited about fifteen out of 492 caves.
The complex is hugely popular with local tourists. We were there in the off season but I believe in summer months 18000 people visit daily. The Chinese authorities are experts in managing mass tourism.
I'm a history and archaeology buff and had extensively researched Mogao to compare it with Ajanta caves. If you are interested in history you can read the story below. Otherwise you can stop here. Material source courtesy Dunhuang Academy. I have not copied and pasted completely.
At the very edge of the Chinese empire, at the Western end of the Great Wall, there was a military outpost called Dunhuang. The word “Dunhuang” meant “Blazing Beacon”; the site was named for the watchtowers placed at intervals along the frontier’s defensive wall. Founded around 111 BCE to guard against the nomads of central Asia it became one of the most important stops on the Silk Route. A welcome sight for the camel caravans after crossing the deadly Taklamakan and Gobi Desert.
Then , in the first century CE, came the disciples of a preacher from India, who was originally known as “The preacher from the West”. aka Lord Buddha.
At the beginning of the first millennium, Buddhism spread north out of India along the trade routes, traveling east to the Silk Road oases, passing through Dunhuang on its way further into China. Dunhuang became a major city, sitting at an important bifurcation of the Silk Road.
All the travellers who managed to cross the deserts and reach the safety of Dunhuang, wanted to thank Buddha and all who were about to embark on the perilous journey wanted to pray to Buddha for their safe passage. It's clear that all of those who came to visit, to reside, or to govern the region actively supported the local worship of Buddhism.
Legend tells of a Buddhist monk named Le Zun, who stopped on his journey to rest at the Great Spring Valley near Dunhuang. Whilst watching the sunset over the Sanwei Mountain, he was amazed to see a vision of a thousand golden Buddhas, surrounded by golden light. This vision inspired him to stop his journey and build a cave in which he could meditate and pay homage to the Buddha. Le Zun cut his cave by hand into the cliff-face opposite the mountain, and painted his vision onto the cave walls.
The earliest painting found here has been dated to 419 AD. Gradually more and more ornate and elaborate caves were built and it reached the peak in Tang dynasty which built more than thousand caves. The locals started to refer the cave complex as Mogao caves , which meant The Supreme / No Better caves.
Cave building continued for over a thousand years till the 14th Century , when the decline of the importance of Silk Road started. The sea passage to India was found, which was faster and safer than the long dangerous land trek. Islam was firmly rooted in India and Arabia leading to decline of Buddhism.
Eventually Ottoman empire closed the Silk Road, Dunhuang was abandoned. Gobi Desert moved in, burying most of it. Only a few caves remain visible, sticking out of the sand and Mogao caves vanished into folklores.
In 1900 (May 26th of the 26th year of Emperor Guangxu’s reign during the Qing Dynasty), a secret chamber was accidentally discovered by Wang Yuanlu, a Daoist priest, when cleaning up the sand piled up in front of a cave. In the chamber were found about 50,000 pieces of ancient literature, cultural relics and artworks, spanning seven successive centuries, from the 4th to the 11th. This is now known as The Library Cave. We do not know why so many manuscripts were kept/hidden in this cave.
If you compare these with Ajanta caves, India, both were done with pigment colours, indigo blue , coal black , ferrous red , earthy brown , foliage green , cobalt blue and many more . All done during the daytime with sunlight being reflected from large utensils containing water, lest flames lit in caves damage the painting with soot and carbon di oxide. The style is similar to Sigiriya caves of Sri Lanka and Jataka tales painted in caves. The ideas carried by travellers.
The literature unearthed was not just religious. It ranged from astronomy and geography to contracts of financial transactions, various fields such as politics, economy, military affairs, literary art, medicine, science and technology and people’s livelihood. In addition, there was also literature written in scripts of Central Asia and even in Sanskrit. Among the Dunhuang Manuscripts were about 36,000 pieces of Chinese literature. This incredibly great number of literary and cultural relics unearthed from the Library Cave, shocked the world.
Sadly, this was a period of great turmoil in China. The Empire which had lasted an incredible unbroken 2000 years was in its death throes and Western powers were there. Wang, who had discovered the caves, now became a target. Tragically, from 1905 to 1915, expeditioners like Marc Aurel Stein from the UK, Paul Pelliot from France, Tachibana Zuicho and Yoshikawa Koichiro from Japan, and Sergei Fedorovich Oldenburg from Russia arrived one after the other and purchased nearly 40,000 documents, scriptures, and other cultural relics from Wang Yuanlu at deceitful prices.
Stein paid thirty pounds towards restoration of the caves and took away probably ten thousand manuscripts. For this reason, most of the best Dunhuang Manuscripts are now disbursed abroad. Not only the manuscripts, in 1924, American explorer Langdon Warner removed a number of murals as well as a statue from some of the caves. The treasures of Dunhuang are now spread all over the world, from the British Library to the Smithsonian.
In 1954 Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai took personal interest in Mogao caves and it was declared it a national treasure. He also managed to protect it from the rampage of Cultural Revolution. As there were no rail station nearby so Red Guard never managed to reach this remote place.
In 1987, Mogao became a UNESCO heritage site. Currently 492 caves have been restored. While other places in China, such as the Great Wall, the Tomb of the First Emperor at Xi’an, and the Forbidden City, are well known, the Mogao cave temples do not have the same renown.