Dunhuang is an oasis city located at the western end of the Gansu (Hexi) Corridor and at the eastern end of the Takla Makan Desert. For many periods of Chinese and Inner Asian history, Dunhuang marked the western limit of direct Chinese administrative control and military authority. The reign of Emperor Wudi marked the beginning of imperial Chinese control over this area when the Han emperor waged an aggressive expansion campaign into the West in order to combat the nomadic Xiongnu, who had been making frequent incursions into Han territory. The Hexi Corridor came under Han control as a result of battles in 121 and 119 BCE; in 111 BCE a decree established the Dunhuang commandery, whose 2000 soldiers were establish a military colony and extend the fortifications beyond the city. The culmination of these successful military campaigns was a victory by Han armies in the Ferghana Valley (modern Uzbekistan) in 101 BCE, although the Han were never able to establish a permanent presence that far west. By the year 9 CE, a census recorded some 11,200 households in Dunhuang. The Dunhuang region today preserves striking evidence of the defenses erected in the region by the Han and later the Tang Dynasty. Beginning in Anxi, to the east of Dunhuang and moving to the west and southwest of the city, a distance of some 250 km., there are extensive sections of wall, dozens of watchtowers, and many ruins of forts or supply depots.

Located near one of the important nodes of the routes across Eurasia, Dunhuang experienced a variety of cultural influences. Given its location at the point where travelers would be departing or returning from the unpredictable dangers of the desert routes, the region became a religious center, in particular because of its several Buddhist monastic communities. Perhaps the most important early translator of Buddhist scriptures in China, the monk Kumarajiva from Kucha in the Tarim Basin, worked at Dunhuang before he went to Chang-an. The famous Buddhist pilgrim monks Faxian and Xuanzang passed through Dunhuang en route to (or from) India in their quest for new knowledge of Buddhism at its source. We know that Zoroastrian and Manichaean Sogdian merchants were there, as were Nestorian Christians. For many decades during the late period of the Tang Dynasty, Dunhuang was under Tibetan control, a fact which may explain why it escaped the damage inflicted by the persecution of Buddhism back in China proper. Later, Uighurs and Tanguts controlled the region.

The Mogao Caves are located some 25 kilometers from the city of Dunhuang in a cliff overlooking the Daquan River, which is watered by the snowmelt coming out of the Qilian Mountains to the south. Mogao was the historic location of a large monastic community, founded, according to tradition, when a monk had a vision of the Buddha gleaming in the sunrise over Sanwei Mountain in the year 366. Some 500 man-made caves containing statuary and painting have been preserved on the site and there are an additional 300 undecorated caves that were living and meditation quarters. While many have suffered from vandalism and lack of upkeep, the state of preservation of the caves is remarkable. The earliest ones with intact imagery have been dated to the early fifth century; the last caves with significant decoration were created in the early fourteenth century--in short, an almost unbroken record of Buddhist art for nearly a millennium.

Over that period the architecture and iconography of the caves changed. Early ones show evidence of direct influence from Indian and Central Asian Buddhist models, although the art of the region also was closely connected with that of metropolitan China, thanks in part to periods of lavish imperial patronage. Many of the early caves feature a central pillar, which represents the axis of the cosmos. Caves with the main statuary in niches on the west wall rather than on a central pillar then dominate for several centuries, but toward the end of the Tang period, a new series of very large caves features altar platforms built out into the center of the room. Some of the most striking early caves are of particular interest for their combination of Hindu, Buddhist and traditional Chinese iconographic motifs, but this then gives way to a more uniform Buddhist iconography and a Sinicized artistic style. By the tenth and eleventh centuries, the painting in the caves often shows Tibetan influence. The caves are of particular interest for their detailed illustrations of the jataka tales about the previous incarnations of the Buddha, similarly detailed illustrations of sutra texts and paradise scenes, and abundant evidence about the patrons and their protectors, who are depicted on the walls and identified in inscriptions.

While the history of Dunhuang and its region has much in common with that in other cities in Inner Asia, part of its distinction lies in the degree to which life in Dunhuang has been documented. Much of that documentation came to the attention of scholars only at the beginning of the twentieth century, with the expeditions of Aurel Stein and others. In 1900 at the Mogao Caves, a local caretaker monk uncovered a treasure trove of manuscripts and paintings, most of which ended up in European collections after Stein and others purchased or otherwise obtained them. Toward the middle of the twentieth century, the systematic study of the art and inscriptions in the caves began under the auspices of the Dunhuang Research Institute. Apart from the evidence at Mogao, considerable written material for the early history of the region has been found in the ruins of Han-era fortifications. Taken together with the information in dynastic historical records, these sources often allow much more detailed study of the Dunhuang region than can be obtained for many other areas of China. The Dunhuang materials are now beginning to be made available on the Internet through the International Dunhuang Project of the British Library.

-- Daniel C. Waugh

Bibliography:

Roderick Whitfield, Susan Whitfield, and Neville Agnew, Cave Temples of Mogao: Art and History on the Silk Road (Los Angeles: Getty Institute, 2000).

Roderick Whitfield, Dunhuang: Caves of the Singing Sands, photographs by Seigo Otsuka, 2 vols. (London: Textile and Art Pubs., 1995)

Roderick Whitfield and Anne Farrer, Caves of the Thousand Buddhas: Chinese Art from the Silk Road (London: British Museum, 1990)