Grotto Temples

Discover China's magnificent grotto temples, featuring Buddhist art and sculptures carved into cliff faces over centuries of religious devotion.

5 results

001 Kizil Thousand-Buddha Caves Researchers date the earliest excavation of Kizil to the end of the third century CE, yet no stele bearing a direct date survives. Buddhist imagery from India, Gandhāra, and the Iranian plateau reached Kucha along the Silk Road and was painted onto the cave walls; Xuanzang's westward journey and Wukong's return east with Sanskrit scriptures made Kucha a way-station where monks and texts met in passing. More than a thousand years later the Huijiang Tongzhi still records that there were “several hundred caves,” only by then the five-colored buddhas on the walls had grown “blurred and peeling.” Western Jin Dynasty Kizil Township, Baicheng (Bay) County, Aksu Prefecture, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region

002 Kumtura Thousand-Buddha Caves On both banks of the Muzat River, the caves of Kumtura spread high and low along the cliffs. Dating of the wooden armature inside the statues of Cave 20 falls between 413 and 571; during the reign of Emperor Zhaozong of the Tang, Han Chinese monks were still carving pilgrimage vows in the Arhat Cave; and from the late ninth to the early tenth century, Uyghur donors and inscriptions in multiple scripts appeared among the cave complex. By 1906, some antechambers and cave doorways had already slid down with the cliff face; twenty-two years later, Huang Wenbi climbed into the Arhat Cave with a rope tied at his waist and copied out, one by one, such shallow engravings as “the fifth year of Dashun of the Great Tang” and “reverence to the Arhat's bones.” Eastern Jin Dynasty East bank of the Weigan River, Kuqa City, Aksu Prefecture, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region

003 Bingling Grottoes The Bingling Temple Grottoes are carved into the cliff face on the north bank of the Yellow River in Yongjing County, Linxia, Gansu. The Tibetan word “Bingling” means “where one hundred thousand Maitreya Buddhas dwell.” The Shuijing Zhu records many stone chambers in the cliffs here, called “Tangshu Caves” (ghost caves) by the Qiang people. In Cave 169 an ink inscription reading “first year of Jianhong” (Western Qin, 420 CE) was discovered, one of the earliest known dated inscriptions in Chinese grottoes. After the Liujiaxia Reservoir filled in 1968, the site can only be reached by boat. Sixteen Kingdoms-Western Qin Yongjing County, Linxia City, Gansu

004 Huangze Temple Huangze Temple stands on the west bank of the Jialing River in Guangyuan, Sichuan. Its cliff carvings were begun in the late Northern Wei, with further caves opened under the Western Wei, Northern Zhou, Sui, and Tang. This article traces the Tang Buddha pavilion, the Later Shu temple of Wu Zetian's old residence, the Northern Song Hall of Empress Wu's True Countenance, and Qing-dynasty visits, and includes old photographs by Ernst Boerschmann and Liang Sicheng. Northern Wei Lizhou District, Guangyuan, Sichuan Province

005 Xiangtangshan Grottoes The Xiangtangshan Grottoes lie at the northern and southern ends of Mount Gu in Fengfeng Mining District, Handan—two sets of mortuary caves carved by the imperial family and powerful ministers of Eastern Wei and Northern Qi. The Zizhi Tongjian records that Gao Huan was secretly interred beside the Buddha's head in the great cave at North Xiangtangshan; the Xu Gaoseng Zhuan states that the great cave image backs onto the tomb of Emperor Wenxuan. South Xiangtangshan, according to the Stele of the Fushan Grottoes, was opened in the first year of Tiantong by the monk Huiyi and Prince Gao Anahong of Huaiyin. Eastern Wei Fengfeng Mining District, Handan, Hebei Province