Chinese Mogao Gaves

Mogao Gaves

Mogao Grottoes are also named as “Thousand Buddha Cave”, located on the precipice of Mingsha Mountain 25 kilometers southeast of Dunhuang, Gansu province, west of China. There are adequate sunshine all year around, dry and little rainfall, absolutely distinct seasons, large temperature difference between day and night. The south-north Grottoes is 1600 meters long, with five floors of which the highest is 50 meters. There are 492 cave grottoes, colored wall painting 45000 square meters, 2415 colored sculptures, more than 4000 flying colored sculptures. The Mogao Grottoes is grand and huge with affluent contents and long history, as well as Sanxi Yungang Grottoes and Henan Longmen Grottoes, are called “Three grottoes art treasure ” Mogao Grottoes were first carved in Previous Qin dynasty Jianyuan 2nd year(366 Year AD) to Yuan dynasty(1368Year AD), during which through thousand years’ successive carving, they have become the grandest , with most contents and longest history Buddhism art treasure with architecture, carving, wall painting, colored sculpture of every dynasty as in one.

The art in Dunhuang is grand and magnificent. Mogao Grottoes are the architecture, sculpture, wall-painting three-dimensional art grottoes with very affluent contents. On the basis of inheriting the excellent traditional folk art of Zhongyuan Han nationality and West countries, the folk artists also absorbed and mixed the out culture expression means to develop the Chinese nation characteristic Buddhism art with Dunhuang local characteristics. The scale and the number is so large that it offers huge precious resources for research Chinese ancient politics, economics, culture, military affairs, transportation, geology, religious, society life, national relations, and friendly contacts between China and foreign countries, which is the rare and precious cultural and spiritual treasure. The architecture art of Mogao Grottoes have been completely reserved for about thousands years. From the evolution of the architectural forms we can get that when the ancient artists were accepting the outer art they were also absorbing and mixing them with our own art in the practical process to form our own Chinese national forms. Some of them are the unique ancient architecture of our country.