809, Dunhuang Feitian

"General Song! You're our guide, and you're familiar with the mountain, so where are you going to take us next? ”

"Handsome! Don't forget, the Thousand Buddha Cave and the Tibetan Scripture Cave I told you, when you get there, I will keep you nostalgic and forgetful! ”

"General Song! Is that much magic really in that place you're talking about? I saw Wang Mingyi behind him asking with a smile.

"It's better to see than to hear! I promise you don't know if you don't see it, and you'll be shocked when you see it! Walk! You'll know when you see it. Between the words, Song Kejin whipped the horse and quickened his pace.

Soon, the five of them had come to the cave carved out of the mountain - Mogao Grottoes, commonly known as the Thousand Buddha Caves.

Dunhuang Feitian is a business card with a long history of Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes and a symbol of Dunhuang art.

At this point, it is necessary to introduce the details of this cave. Because here, it is simply a historical treasure of Chinese civilization. Through it, you can see the long history of China for 5,000 years, which is the crystallization of history, culture and art that is rare in the world.

It is said that this thousand Buddha caves are 25 kilometers southeast of Dunhuang County, Gansu Province. But today's Dunhuang county and the Dunhuang city garrisoned by Murong Tianshui are two different things, one of them is in the east of the Dang River, and the other is in the west of the Dang River, and they have been up and down for more than a thousand years. Today, the ruins of the ancient city of Dunhuang remain forever on the west bank of the Dang River, becoming a trace of history.

Turning our heads, let's move on to the Thousand Buddha Caves. This Thousand Buddha Cave, that is, Mogao Caves, it is chiseled on the cliff of the eastern foot of Mingsha Mountain, divided into five layers, high and low staggered, row upon row, more than 1,600 meters long from north to south. According to the first year of the Wuzhou Shengli (698 AD), "Li Huairang rebuilt the Buddha Shrine Tablet of Mogao Grottoes", Mogao Grottoes was built in the second year of the former Qin Dynasty (366), and there were more than 1,000 niches in the cave room when Wu Zetian of the Tang Dynasty. Now there are still 492 caves of murals and statues of the Northern Wei Dynasty, the Western Wei Dynasty, the Northern Zhou Dynasty, the Sui Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty, the Five Dynasties, the Song Dynasty, the Western Xia Dynasty and the Yuan Dynasty, the murals are more than 45,000 square meters, the colored sculptures are 2,405 bodies, the Tang and Song Dynasty wooden buildings are five, and the lotus pillar stones and paving tiles are thousands of pieces. It is a comprehensive art treasure house composed of architecture, painting, and sculpture. Its shape has a Zen cave and a central pillar type, a square Buddha hall type and a covered bucket type. There is an original temple outside the cave, and there is a wooden corridor connected with the plank road. The largest cave is more than 40 meters high and 30 meters square. The smallest one is not as tall as a foot. Its statues are all clay colored sculptures, with single statues and group portraits. The Buddha statue is in the center, and the disciples, Bodhisattvas, Heavenly Kings, and Lux stand on both sides, with as little as three bodies and as many as eleven bodies. The largest is 33 meters and the smallest is 10 centimeters. Most of its statues express the characters in exaggerated colors, and their expressions are different and varied. The content of its murals includes Buddha statues, Buddhist historical sites, scriptures, myths, donors and other themes and decorative patterns. Among them, the oldest map, "Wutai Mountain Map", is more than 40 square meters. From a flower and a leaf, gods, and Buddhas, to the "Travel Map of Zhang Yichao and His Wife", which shows the activities of local historical figures at that time, the composition is fine, vivid, and lifelike.

The inside of this cave is even more brilliant and gorgeous. If the pictures are arranged according to the height of two meters, they can form a 25-kilometer-long gallery, which is the largest and richest treasure house of grotto art in China. The twenty-fifth year of Guangxu in the Qing Dynasty (1899, and it is also said that it is the twenty-sixth year of Guangxu. After the discovery of the cave, the historical relics and artworks in the cave were severely damaged by the imperialists, and a large number of precious cultural relics were stolen. These little bunnies! They should be asked to get it back! On the Chinese ground, how can you be allowed to run amok? Hasn't the sleeping lion woken up yet?

After the establishment of the Dunhuang Art Research Institute in 1943, the caves were restored, preserved and studied. After liberation, it was changed to Dunhuang Cultural Relics Research Institute, and the cave was comprehensively repaired. In the east of this cave, there is a spring, which converges into a clear stream, and the trees are shady, which is tantamount to a desert oasis, which is unique!

This can be said to be the East Thousand Buddha Cave of Mingsha Mountain. Among the components of the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, there are also the West Thousand Buddha Caves. It is excavated on the north side of the cliff wall of the Danghe River, arranged from west to east, more than 20 meters away from the bottom of the river, and the top of the cave is a flat Gobi desert. There are 19 existing caves, which were built in the late Northern Dynasties, and continued to be repaired in the Sui, Tang, Five Dynasties, early Song Dynasty and Western Xia. The murals and statues belong to the same system as the Mogao Grottoes, which have the same artistic and appreciative value, and are an important branch of the art system of the Dunhuang Grottoes.

Let's talk about this Tibetan scripture cave, it is the seventeenth cave of the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang. It is a small hole in the wall of the sixteenth cave Yongdao, the door is only 1 meter above the ground, the length and width are 2.5~2.7 meters, nearly square, 3 meters high, the top is covered with bucket shape, and the space is 19 cubic meters. On the north wall, there are two Bodhi trees with branches and leaves, and the east tree hangs a water bottle, and a bhikshuni stands on the side, holding a fan with both hands; Xishu hangs a satchel and stands on the side of the maid as men's clothing. There is a rectangular Zen bed-type low altar under it, and the statue of the high monk Hong Qiao is sitting. The stone tablet embedded on the west wall is passed, that is, Hong Qiao's body is a monument, as if it was closed before it was completed. According to the testament in the cave, the latest year is from the Northern Song Dynasty to the Dao period, and there is no Xixia scroll. The two walls of the Yongdao in the sixteenth cave are painted with the ranks of the Bodhisattvas of the Song Dynasty, so it is inferred that this may be the war of the Xixia people to conquer Dunhuang in the early 11th century, when the monks of the Mogao Caves were preparing to flee, and then did not return, so they were claustrophobic for 900 years. should let the former "Dunhuang" TV series see the light of day again! Let's go and see the historical sky that is gradually obsolete and forgotten by the world!

In the twenty-sixth year of Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty (1900), when the 16th cave road was cleared of silt, it began to stumble upon this stone room full of scriptures, documents, weaving and embroidery, and portraits, with a total of more than 5,000 pieces of cultural relics. In addition to Chinese manuscripts, there are also Tibetan, Sanskrit, Lulu, Sogdian, Khotanese, Uighur and other ethnic languages about one-sixth, and there are hundreds of works of art such as silk paintings and embroidery. In addition to a large number of Buddhist scriptures, Taoist scriptures and Confucian classics, there are also historical books, poems, novels, folk literature, gazetteers, household registers, account books, calendars, deeds, letters, pleadings, etc., including cultural relics and books of nearly ten dynasties from the fourth century to the fourteenth century (i.e., from the Jin to the Song Dynasty), which have attracted great attention from scholars at home and abroad. Since then, the number of people who study Dunhuang art has gradually increased, and a Dunhuang study has been formed.