Mogao Caves

Assembled from 57 blocks · 3 evidence · 35 related

1. Story
2. A complex of 492 decorated cave temples cut into a cliff about 25 km south-east of Dunhuang, with murals covering some 45,000 square metres and work spanning roughly the fourth to the fourteenth centuries. Tradition, recorded on a stele of 698, holds that the monk Yuezun cut the first cave in 366. Cave 17, the Library Cave, was sealed in the early eleventh century and reopened in 1900, yielding on the order of fifty thousand manuscripts, paintings and printed texts in Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, Sogdian, Khotanese, Uyghur, Hebrew and other languages. Among them was the Diamond Sutra of 868, the earliest dated complete printed book. The contents were dispersed to London, Paris, St Petersburg, Beijing and Tokyo between 1907 and the 1920s. Inscribed by UNESCO in 1987.
3. Knowledge
4. Dunhuang
5. Buddhism
6. Mogao Caves
7. Religious syncretism at contact points
8. Connections
9. Religious syncretism at contact points
10. Dunhuang
11. Dunhuang
12. Buddhism
13. First cave cut at Mogao (traditional date)
14. The Dunhuang Diamond Sutra is printed
15. Mogao Cave 17 is sealed
16. Wang Yuanlu opens Mogao Cave 17
17. The Dunhuang manuscripts are dispersed
18. Mogao Caves inscribed on the World Heritage List
19. Traditional founding of the first cave at Mogao
20. Mogao Caves
21. Borobudur
22. Gandhara
23. Xi'an Stele (Jingjiao / 'Nestorian' Stele)
24. Anthropomorphic Buddha images appear in Gandhara and Mathura
25. The Xi'an stele is erected
26. Construction of Borobudur under Shailendra patronage
27. Northern Tarim route
28. Southern Tarim route
29. Mogao Caves
30. Mogao Caves
31. First cave cut at Mogao (traditional date)
32. The Sogdian Ancient Letters are abandoned west of Dunhuang
33. Mogao Cave 17 is sealed
34. Wang Yuanlu opens Mogao Cave 17
35. Silk Road religious corridor
36. Buddhism attested in Han China
37. Traditional founding of the first cave at Mogao
38. Sogdian merchant networks
39. Silk Road religious corridor
40. Xuanzang
41. Mogao Caves
42. First cave cut at Mogao (traditional date)
43. Xuanzang travels to India and back
44. The Dunhuang Diamond Sutra is printed
45. Gandhara
46. Ashoka (Ashoka Maurya)
47. Ashoka's bilingual Greek-Aramaic inscription at Kandahar
48. Council at Pataliputra and the despatch of Buddhist missions (traditional account)
49. Buddhism attested in Han China
50. Anthropomorphic Buddha images appear in Gandhara and Mathura
51. Traditional founding of the first cave at Mogao
52. Xuanzang's overland journey to India and return
53. Construction of Borobudur under Shailendra patronage
54. Evidence
55. 492 decorated cave temples with roughly 45,000 square metres of murals and over 2,000 painted sculptures, cut between the fourth and fourteenth centuries, together with the manuscript hoard of Cave 17.
56. A woodblock-printed scroll dated by its own colophon to 868 CE, the earliest dated complete printed book known. Its presence at Dunhuang shows printing in working use on the corridor four centuries before it appeared in Europe.
57. Catalogues and digitally reunites the material removed from Mogao Cave 17 and other eastern Silk Road sites between 1900 and the 1920s, now held in London, Paris, Beijing, St Petersburg and Tokyo. The dispersal is physical and permanent; the reassembly is digital.