絲路 與 石窟
絲路 與 石窟
SilkRoad and Grottoes
MoGao Grottoes
This magnificant mural came from the northern wall of cave 428 of Mogao Grottoes. The cave was built in Bei Zhou dynasty in mid 6th century. Content of this mural illustrated the moment that Prince Siddhartha attained Enlightenment and became Buddha.
In Buddhist culture, Fei Tian is a group of inmortals that live in the heaven. They had 2 duties: to provide entertainment to all in the heaven by playing instruments or by dancing; to serve buddhas, bodhisattas and gods in the heaven.
Cave 61 was built by a war lord Chao Yuan Zhong and his wife. Chao ruled a large area included Dun Huang at the 10th century. In this piece of mural there were 4 female devotees from the Chao family. From left to right were a princess of a Uighurs King who married to Chao's father; 2 sisters of Chao who were married to other Kings in XinJiang, and lastly Chao's own mother.
Sleeping buddha from cave 148.
This picture is part of a large scale Tang Dynasty mural that was painted on the west wall of cave 148 of Mogao Grottoes. In the picture 2 traditional Chinese style wooden buildings were shown, with clearly visible structures.
This mural came from the east wall of cave 148 of Mogao Grottoes which was built in mid Tang Dynasty in late 8th century. It illustrated a Buddhist legend, that after the nirvana of Buddha, his mother arrived in front of his golden coffin and she went in to a deep sorrow. To enlighten his mother, Buddha raised himself from the coffin amid a circle of golden light in which thousands of small buddha appeared. He then preached his last sermon to his mother to comfort her.
This picture came from a much bigger mural from Cave 148 that illustrated the wonderful world of enlightenment. Shown in the picture was a band of musicians playing flute, pan flute, pipa and different typles of drums.
This is part of a full scale Mount Wu Tai mural in Tang Dynasty on the east wall of Cave 61. In this picture, at the bottom left corner was the Temple of Fo Guang. Its main hall still exist and stands today, and is the oldest wood built structure in China.
This picture was taken from the pathway leading in to Cave 16. It was a mural from late 4th century AD. In the picture there was a mixture of Chinese and western Zodiacs including Libra, Gemini and Pisces.
The Mogao Grottoes is located 25 km southeast of DunHuang. The caves contain some of the finest examples of Buddhist art spanning a period of 1,000 years. The first caves were dug out in appro. 366 AD as places for monks to practice meditation, these caves did not have any sculpture or mural inside.
Cave 275 from Bei Liang era, one of the northwest regional governing regimes existed in between 397-439AD with its power center at WuWei, was generally regarded as the earliest cave excavated with Buddhist sculptures and mural inside.
In this album, a set of carefully selected pictures taken from Cave 428, Cave 61 and Cave 148 are shown to illustrate examples of how cultural elements from middle Asia and India were mixed with traditional Chinese culture elements at different times in between early 5th century and the 11th century. These pictures also exhibited a gradual change of Buddhist arttistic style from its original flavor to Chinese.