MAGAO CAVES , CHINA

                  MOGAO CAVES, CHINA

The Magao Caves, also known as the Caves of the Thousand Buddha’s, form a system of 492 temples 25 km 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 may also be known as the Dunhuang  Caves, however, this term is also used as a collective term to include other Buddhist caves sites in the Dunhuang area, such as the Western Thousand Buddha Caves, and the Yulin Caves farther away. The site was listed in Unesco World Heritage Sites in 1987.

The Magao Caves encompass wall paintings, painted sculptures, ancient architecture, movable cultural relics and their settings. These sites contain some of the finest examples of Buddhist art spanning a period of 1,000 years.

The first caves were dug out in 366 CE as places of Buddhist meditation and worship. These caves are the best known of the Chinese Buddhist grottoes and, along with the Longmen Grottoes and Yungang Grottoes, are one of the three famous ancient Buddhist sculptural sites of China.

During late 19^th century and early 20^th century, Western explorers began to show interest in the ancient Silk Road and the lost cities of Central Asia, and those who passed through Dunhuang  noted the murals and artifacts such as the Stele of Sulaiman at Mogao. The biggest discovery, however, came from a Chinese Taoist named Wang Yuanlu  who appointed himself guardian of some of these temples around the turn of the century.

The discovery of the Library Cave at the Magao Caves in 1990, together with tens of thousands of manuscripts and relics it contained, has been acclaimed as the world’s greatest discovery of ancient Oriental culture. This heritage site provides invaluable reference for studying the complex history of ancient China and Central Asia.