Dunhuang

Rolf Stein's Tibetica Antiqua

Month of publication:

April

Number of Pages:

400 pages

Prehistoric Spanish Caves 'Under Threat'

Submitted by Sean Williams on Mon, 08/24/2009 - 11:28

The prehistoric treasures of Spain's caves are renowned worldwide. But a recent report warns that caves in the country's Valencia region are in serious danger of being vandalised and looted. The millennia-old heritage is being disregarded in favour of more modern, tourist-friendly sites such as Baroque cathedrals and century-old buildings. They are being protected with fences and reconstruction projects, says José Aparicio, head of the archaeological service in Valencia, while the caves are left to fall apart. Sr Aparicio warns that the caves, which contain some of the world's best examples of cave painting and artefacts from daily life in prehistoric Europe.

Mogao Caves

Attribution:

eyetour

Key Dates

Construction of these Buddhist temples began in 366 CE as places to store scriptures and artwork. It is the belief among locals that their creation was the inspiration of a Buddhist monk, Lè Zūn (樂尊), who, in his quest for enlightenment had a vision of a thousand Buddhas and consequently began the excavation of the first cell.

With the coming and going of pilgrims seeking a similar austere retreat, over the next thousand years the number of cave shrines was to grow to more than a thousand.

Key People

At the beginning of the 20th century, a Chinese Taoist named Wang Yuanlu appointed himself guardian of some of these temples. He was to discover a sealed area behind the side of a corridor on the approach to a main cave. Behind this wall was a small cave swollen with manuscripts and other Buddhist objects dating from 406 to 1002 CE. To Wangs disrepute, he sold many of these artifacts to Aurel Stein for the small sum of 220 pounds, an action which stained his reputation.

Today only 492 cave shrines survive and only around 30 are open to the public. They sit at the edge of the Gobi desert in the northwest of China at a key trading post and cultural hive along the Silk Road, 25km southeast of the center of Dunhuang.

The network of shrines contain some of the best preserved examples of Buddhist art and sculpture spanning a period of 1,000 years and is regarded as holding one of the most extensive collections of Buddhist paraphernalia in the world, with clay stucco murals adorning some 45,000 square meters of inner wall and ceiling, earning the complex the more popular name of 'The Caves of the Thousand Buddhas'.

Today, the site is the subject of an ongoing archaeological project.

Images