History of Mogao Grottoes
Dunhuang is located in the west of Gansu Province, at the western end of Hexi Corridor in terms of physical geography. Qinghai in the south and Xinjiang in the west have been the hub of Chinese and western transportation since the Han Dynasty.
In BC 1 1 1 year, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty established Dunhuang County as a frontier post to resist the Huns. Since the Silk Road was opened by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Dunhuang, as an important town in the western border, has become a transportation hub connecting the Central Plains and the western regions, a commercial center along the Silk Road, and a field where all ethnic cultures meet. Among them, the intersection and collision between Chinese and western civilizations, including Buddhist culture and art, is the historical root of Dunhuang grottoes art.
The excavation and construction time of Mogao Grottoes are slightly different in different documents. At present, most scholars believe that Le _ monk dug caves in the Mogao Grottoes in the second year of Jian Yuan in the former Qin Dynasty, while Fa Liang Zen Master continued to build them. By the time we arrived in Beiliang, a small monk community had formed here. These caves were originally used as meditation places for hermit monks, but later they developed into temples serving nearby.
Since then, Wang Yuan Rong Tai, the imperial clan of the Northern Wei Dynasty, and Gong Jianping Yuyi, an aristocrat of the Northern Zhou Dynasty, have successively served as the secretariat of Guazhou. Influenced by the habit of worshipping Buddha statues, the Mogao Grottoes began to develop. In the Sui and early Tang Dynasties, Dunhuang became the main commercial hub and important religious center of the Silk Road, and the Mogao Grottoes also entered its heyday and became a place of pilgrimage for all parties. During this period, a large number of grottoes were built in Mogao Grottoes, including two elephant niches. As an aid to meditation and as a teaching tool to publicize Buddhist beliefs and stories to illiterate people, these cave spaces and murals and statues inside are carefully built. The main caves are usually sponsored by Buddhist monks, local ruling elites and emperors of the Central Plains, while other caves are sponsored by business travelers, military officers and locals.
After the Anshi Rebellion, Tubo occupied Shazhou two years after the founding of the People's Republic of China. Under the protection of the three treasures of Tubo, the Mogao Grottoes continued to develop. In the second year of Dazhong, Zhang Yichao led the uprising, recovered the lost land of eleven states in Hexi and returned to the Tang Dynasty. In the late Tang Dynasty, when Zhang returned to the rebel regime, Zhang's family members and their dignitaries in-laws continued to build here.
After four years of drying, Cao Yijin succeeded Zhang in charge of the rebel regime. Cao Shijia ruled Guasha/Kloc-0 for more than 20 years, built new caves, completely repainted and rebuilt the caves and eaves of the previous generation, and painted large-scale open-air murals on the cliff surface, making the Mogao Grottoes look spectacular.
It was ruled by Xixia and Mongolian regimes, Jing Ke in the Northern Song Dynasty and Baoqing in the Southern Song Dynasty. Although it is still being built and repaired, with the loss of the important position of the Silk Road and the depression of Dunhuang economy, the Mogao Grottoes have declined. Stop digging holes after the yuan dynasty.
To sum up, the Mogao Grottoes flourished in the Sixteen Kingdoms period, and went through Northern Wei, Sui, Tang, Song, Xixia and Yuan Dynasty.
The main attractions of Mogao Grottoes
Jiuceng
The common name of wooden buildings outside Cave 96. The Tang Dynasty was called the statue of Peking University. Commonly known as the Great Buddha Hall. One of the representative caves. The largest cave in Dunhuang Grottoes was built in the early Tang Dynasty. The cave leads directly to the cliff top, 40 meters high, and there are nine-story wooden buildings outside the cave, 45 meters high. There is no painting on the cave wall, and the largest statue of Maitreya in Dunhuang Grottoes is molded on the cliff. The height is second only to Leshan stone Buddha statue in Sichuan and Rongxian stone Buddha statue in Sichuan. Among clay sculptures, its height is the highest in China.
Three-story building
A Wu monk ruled this grotto, which was called the Wu monk grotto in the late Tang Dynasty. One of the representative caves. It was built between five years in Dazhong and eight years in Xian Tong. The owner of the cave, Monk Wu, was a high-ranking monk in Hexi Capital in the late Tang Dynasty. The Buddhist altar cave is in the center of the bucket top. Located at the bottom of the northern section of the southern area of Mogao Grottoes. Cave 365 is above it, and the top floor is Cave 366. There are three wooden eaves in front of the three caves, that is, three floors.
This three-story cave seems to be a series of caves dug by monk Wu alone. The main room is the largest cave in Mogao Grottoes. On the indoor horseshoe-shaped center Buddhist altar, there are nine Song sculptures renovated in the Qing Dynasty, and the west side of the altar faces the ceiling along the back screen, painting Tang and Song paintings. The murals on the four walls overlap, and the surface layer is a thousand buddhas painted on the green background of Xixia. Single color, stereotyped image and lack of vitality. 198 1 Dunhuang cultural relics research institute found murals in the late Tang dynasty at the bottom when renovating the murals in this cave. The paintings are as bright as new, and the lines are clear, as if they were carved columns of waterside pavilions in some changed pure land statements, so that we can get a glimpse of the unchanged paintings in the late Tang Dynasty.
At the top of the grottoes is a group of phoenix and four dragons algae wells with floating plastic and gold plating in Xixia, and the four floors are covered with gold-plated checkered patterns. The two walls of the tunnel are painted with quotations from Xixia and pictures of offering sacrifices to bodhisattvas. In the middle of the south wall, there is a wooden monument to rebuild the three-story building of the Thousand Buddha Cave in Qing Dynasty, and in the middle of the north wall is the door of the Tibetan Sutra Cave. There is no painting in the front room. The cave number is 16 ~ 17, and 16 was built between the fifth year of the Tang Dynasty and the year of Xian Tong. There are three wooden cornices in front of the cave, so it is commonly known as "three floors". It was built by Taoist Wang in the thirty-second year of Guangxu in Qing Dynasty. Taoist Wang discovered the Tibetan Sutra Cave on the north side of the tunnel in Cave 16, which was later numbered as Cave 17. So the three-story building is also one of the few caves in the cave.
A cave where Buddhist scriptures are preserved
Cave 17 of Mogao grottoes, also known as "Mingsha Stone Chamber" and "Dunhuang Stone Chamber", is located in the north wall of the tunnel in Cave 16. It was built between the fifth year of the Tang Dynasty and the third year of Xian Tong. It was originally a Buddhist cave where Hong Tong monks lived in Hexi in the late Tang Dynasty. After Hong _ died, his subordinate monks or the Wu family changed it into a cinema. The plane of this cave is almost square, covered with a bucket-shaped roof, and the height from the ground to the top of the cave is 3 meters. There is a rectangular low altar of Zen bed in front of the north wall, and there is a clay sculpture sitting on the altar, which is the statue of monk Hong. The northern murals are two bodhi trees, whose branches and leaves are connected to represent floods. Draw a bhikshuni on the east side of the bodhi tree, holding a pair of phoenix fans in both hands; Draw a woman in the west, one with a towel and the other with a stick. The western wall is embedded with the memorial tablet of the flood of five years. From the 4th century to 1 1 century, tens of thousands of ancient Buddhist scriptures, social documents, silk paintings, embroideries, utensils and other cultural relics were found in the grottoes, so it is usually called "Tibetan Sutra Cave".