Map showing the northern and southern paths of the Overland Silk Road linking China and the West and the location of Dunhuang.

History of the Caves at Dunhuang

The 'Caves of the Thousand Buddhas' (Chinese:Qianfodong) are a series of over a thousand caves carved into the two kilometre long cliff-face at Mogao, about 25 km south-east of Dunhuang, in Gansu Province, China.

Dunhuang was the last major Chinese settlement for those travelling from the east and and first Chinese settlement for those arriving from the west along the Silk Road.  Officials, traders, pilgrims and other travellers would stop at this oasis town in the desert to stock up with provisions, pray for the journey ahead or simply give thanks for their survival.

The first caves were probably carved by monks in the fourth century AD.  Over the next millenium over a thousand caves of varying sizes were carved out of the cliffside.  About five hundred of these were transformed into cave temples, with sculpted Buddhist figures and painted Buddhist scenes covering the walls and ceilings.

In the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) the Silk Road was abandoned, the oasis towns went into decline, and many were deserted.  Although the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas were not completely abandoned, by the nineteenth century they were largely forgotten and only a few monks remained.

In the early eleventh century a remarkable archive was concealed in Cave 17, with its entrance hidden behind a wall painting.  This archive contained up to 50,000 documents, hundreds of paintings, and textiles.  They were re-discovered in 1900 by Wang Yuanlu, a Daoist monk who had appointed himself abbot and guardian of the Caves.

The first westerners visited the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas in 1879 as part of a Hungarian scientific expedition to northwest China.  One of them, the Hungarian geologist Lajos Loczy, was so impressed that when he met the archaeological explorer Aurel Stein in 1902 he urged him to go and see them for himself.  Stein made his first visit to the Caves in March 1907.  He was the first westerner to meet Wang Yuanlu and to see what lay behind the walls in Cave 17.  His expedition to Dunhuang was followed by a succession of archaeological expeditions from many different countries.

Collections from Dunhuang are now in various museums, libraries and holdings around the world: in China, France, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the UK. This website is the first stage in making the collections from Dunhuang and Central Asia at the British Museum available on the Internet. The next stage will include images of the textiles found at the Caves and nearby, as well as smaller objects found at major sites along the Silk Road. The paintings' titles are also accessible in Chinese and it is planned that more of the information will be available in Chinese as part of the next stage of the project. Together with the British Library's International Dunhuang Project (IDP) and the Mellon Foundation's Mellon International Dunhuang Archive, (MIDA), our website will provide an illuminating insight into Silk Road life during the first millennium AD.