敦煌莫高窟英语论文

Mogao Caves

Mogao Caves or Mogao Grottoes is commonly known as Thousand Buddhas Cave. It is located in Dunhuang which is in the west of Gansu Corridor, an oasis strategically located at a religious and cultural crossroads on the Silk Road.Mogao Caves is famous with its elegant murals and statues around the world. It is the nation key cultural relic preservation organ.

Mogao Caves has a history of more than 1600 years. Although it is attacked and damaged by the nature or people in a long long time, Mogao Caves still owns 492 caves, 2415 body sculpture, the murals of more than 45000 square meters, 5 timberwork buildings of Tang and Song Dynasty from the Northern Wei Dynasty, the late XiWei, Northern Zhou, Northern Qi, Sui and Tang Dynasty, Five Dynasties, Song Dynasty, Xixia, Yuan Dynasty , etc. The first caves were dug out 366 AD as places of Buddhist meditation and worship.[2] The Mogao Caves are the best known of the Chinese Buddhist grottoes and, along with Longmen Grottoes and Yungang Grottoes, are one of the three famous ancient Buddhist sculptural sites of China.

History

In order to protect against the Xiongnu, the Han Dynasty Emperor Wudi set up Dunhuang as a frontier garrison outpost in 111 BC. It also became an important gateway to the West, a centre of commerce along the Silk Road, as well as a meeting place of various people and religions such as Buddhism. The construction of the Mogao Caves near Dunhuang can date back to the fourth century AD.In the first place, the caves served only as a place of meditation for hermit monks, but developed to serve the monasteries that sprung up nearby in the early periods, and by the Sui and Tang dynasties, Mogao Caves had become a place of worship and pilgrimage for the public. During the Tang Dynasty, a large number of the caves were constructed at Mogao in that Dunhuang had became the main hub of commerce of the Silk Road and a major religious centre. There are the two large statues of Buddha at the site, the largest one constructed in 695 following an edict a year earlier by Tang Empress Wu Zetian to build giant statues across the country. After the cataclysmic An Shi Rebellion, Dunhuang was occupied by Tibetan regime in ancient China and voluntary army, but it affects little. After the Tang Dynasty, the site went into a gradual decline, and construction of new caves ceased entirely after the Yuan Dynasty. In the early 1900s, a Chinese Taoist named Wang Yuanlu appointed himself guardian of some of these temples. Wang discovered a walled up

area behind one side of a corridor leading to a main cave. Behind the wall was a small cave stuffed with an enormous hoard of manuscripts dating from 406 to 1002 CE.

Artistic characteristics艺术特色: 建筑艺术, 彩塑艺术, 壁画艺术,飞天

The Mogao Graves is a large cave temples which covers more than ten major genres, such as architecture, stucco sculpture, wall paintings, silk paintings, calligraphy, woodblock printing, embroidery, literature, music and dance, and popular entertainment. It mainly focuses on murals, supplemented by statues. It’s Buddhist cave grottoes mainly contains Centre Tower cave, cave temple, central Buddha cave, cave walls of three shrines, the great Nirvana like caves and so on. Many of the early caves ran after the central column style of cave construction seen in places such as Ajanta Caves in India. The central column represent the stupa round which worshippers may circumambulate and gain blessings. And also some other caves are hall caves which are influenced by traditional Chinese and Buddhist temple architecture. These caves may have a truncated pyramidal ceiling sometimes painted to resemble a tent, or they may have a flat or gabled ceiling that imitates traditional buildings. Some of the caves used for meditation are adaptation of the Indian Vihara (monastery) caves and contain side-chambers just large enough for one person to sit in. The cave is very different in the size. The biggest one is 16th cave at 268 square meters while the smallest one is 37th cave which height is corridors, plank roads .But now it does not exist.Mogao Caves murals are mainly painted on the cave walls and shrines with the profound content. The main subject matters are Buddha, Buddhist stories, Buddhist Historical Sites, a fantasy, the dependent person and so on. Except for the seven classes of, decorative patterns, there are many performance includes hunting, farming, textiles, transportation, war, building, dancing, weddings and funerals and other social aspects of life paintings .Some of these paintings are forceful broad, and some are magnificent, reflecting the art styles and characteristics. of different periods

The cliff in which the Mogao Grottoes exists is soft soil and not suitable for the production of stone statues of the Mogao Grottoes. The four Giant Buddha stone are tire clay while the rest are wood bone clay. The statues are Buddhist deity figures, arranged in various combinations of single statues and images, As for images, Buddha is generally in the middle, stooding on both sides of his disciples, the Buddha, King, Hercules, ranging from three to more than 11. The painted sculpture are the forms of round plastic, floating plastic, plastic film, good industry plastic,etc. These statues are exquisite , realistic, imaginative and highly accomplished, blending with the mural contrast, complementing each other.