Dunhuang Study Tour丨Introduction to Cave 17 of Mogao Grottoes

Dunhuang Study Tour丨Introduction to Cave 17 of Mogao Grottoes

Cave 17 of Mogao Grottoes, located on the north wall of the corridor of Cave 16, was built from the fifth year of Dazhong to the third year of Xiantong in the Tang Dynasty ( 851-862), it was the shadow hall of Tonghong Hong, a monk in the Hexi capital of the late Tang Dynasty.

The plane of the cave is nearly square, with a bucket-shaped roof. The cave is 3 meters high from the ground to the top and has a small area. There is a rectangular Zen bed on the ground near the north wall. Sitting on the Zen bed is the statue of eminent monk Hong Bian. This statue is one of the masterpieces of Dunhuang colored sculptures. The statue is very realistic. The eminent monk is wearing a shoulder-length cassock and sitting in the lotus position.

It contains more than 50,000 Buddhist scriptures, social documents, silk paintings, embroidery, ritual instruments and other cultural relics from the 4th century to the 11th century, so it is also called the "Sutra Cave".

In the early 11th century, due to wars and other reasons, a large number of Buddhist scriptures, Buddhist paintings, ritual instruments and other religious and social documents were secretly hidden here. Walls were built to seal the doors, and the surface was decorated with murals. As time went by, With the loss of people, the matter of closing the door was gradually forgotten...

On the west wall is embedded the monument of Hong Bian in the fifth year of Dazhong (851 AD). There are two trees painted in the late Tang Dynasty on the north wall. On the west side, under the tree, there is a painting of a maid (holding a husband and a scarf), and a cloth bag is hung between the trees. There are no murals on the east wall or the south wall. No corridor, no front room.

In 1900 (May 26, the twenty-sixth year of the reign of Emperor Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty), this secret room was accidentally discovered by Taoist priest Wang Yuangui while cleaning up accumulated sand. But what is sad is that from 1905 to 1915, the British Stein, the French Pelliot, the Japanese Mizuchio Kikuchi, Yoshikawa Koichiro, and the Russian Oldenburg came one after another. They used low-cost He fraudulently purchased nearly 40,000 pieces of ancient documents from Taoist Wang at high prices.

The Dunhuang posthumous writings are all-encompassing, covering various fields such as politics, economy, military, literature, history and geography, medicine, science and technology, ethnicity, religion, art and other fields in ancient China from the fourth to the eleventh century. In addition to Chinese manuscripts, there are also a large number of materials from ethnic minorities: such as ancient Tibetan, Uighur, Khotanese, Sogdian, Turkic, Hebrew, Sanskrit, etc.

A large number of precious historical documents have attracted scholars from my country and many countries such as Britain, France, Russia, the United States, and Japan to conduct research. As a result, a new international discipline—Dunhuang Studies—has emerged.

The Dunhuang posthumous writings, together with the Yin Ruins oracle bones, Ming and Qing archives, and Juyan Han bamboo slips, are hailed by scholars as the four major discoveries in the history of Chinese archaeology at the end of the 19th century. The discovery of cultural relics in the Tibetan Scripture Cave has provided extremely precious documentation for the study of Chinese and foreign history and culture in the medieval period. Dunhuang studies have thus become an emerging international discipline.