Mogao Caves, China - Travel Guide And Tourism Information

The Mogao caves of China are also known as Mogao Grottoes and are located at the rock side of the Singing Sand Mountain in Dunhuang city of Gansu province. Containing more than 1,000 years of Buddhist art, they have been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987. With the spread of Buddhism, the Mogao caves or the Mogao Grottoes have become a pilgrimage site with tourists from all over the world, making it a popular travel and tourism destination in China. The site consists of 492 caves famous for their statues and wall paintings.

According to legend, in 366 AD a monk named Lo-tsun had come to the Echoing Sand Mountain and versioned thousand Buddha's under showers of golden rays. Thus inspired, he started the caves construction work that spanned ten dynasties. Mogao Caves are therefore also known as the "Caves of a Thousand Buddhas". The Mogao Caves vary in sizes, with 37 being the smallest and 16 the largest covering each an area of 268 square meters.

During its heyday, the Mogao Caves complex had thousands of caves, but today, a total of 492 grottoes, 45,000 square-meters of murals, 2,400 painted statues and over 250 residential caves remain. The Caves or the Grottes were carved out of soft sandstone containing painted clay statues of Buddha and wall paintings with subjects as diverse as floral patterns, Buddha's teachings, fairy tails, legends and episodes from the sutras. The wall paintings of the Mogao Caves are the finest of all ancient Chinese murals. Cave 96 contains a large statue of Buddha, 113 feet tall, seated behind the frame of a huge wooden pagoda. Inside the huge Cave 16, figures stand on a platform. It is reached by a passageway adorned with Song Bodhisattvas. Cave 257 displays typical work from the Northern Wei, telling stories of Buddha's life. Cave 148 has a 55 foot Buddha, dispensing a final piece of wisdom before entering Nirvana.
The Mogao caves had been abandoned after the 14th century until they were rediscovered at the turn of the 20th century by Wang Yuan-lu. He found a cache of 40,000 scrolls, bronze statues and silk paintings inside cave 16, and embarked on the refurbishment program, funded partly by donations and partly be selling the treasures found in cave 16 until the Chinese government stopped him from doing so. A research unit was set up in 1949 and archeological work continues to now. It is a major tourist attraction, drawing tourists from all over the world to see the open parts of the complex and beauty of the paintings that is inspirational. The Mogao Caves are the best known of the Chinese Buddhist caves, and along with Longmen and Yungang are one of the three famous ancient sculptural sites of China. A gigantic, elegant palace of art, the whole grotto complex is regarded as the world's largest and best-preserved treasure house of Buddhist scriptures, murals, and architectural designs.