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2 3Sacred Caves of the Silk Road | Ways of Knowing and Re-creating Dunhuang2
This exhibition brings together a wide range of objects that allow for a deeper look into ways to model and understand this sacred site, the sociocultural sphere it operated within, and the history and religious life of the region. How we come to know Dunhuang is informed by the diverse original materials found at the caves, including architecture, paintings, sculpture, and manuscripts. How knowledge of these materials is then conveyed—via photography, artist renderings, travelogues, printed publications, or digital reproductions—also determines how we are able to model and re-create an understanding of Dunhuang.
Cary Y. Liu, Dora C. Y. Ching, and Zoe S. Kwok
For Lucy Lo
The Mogao Caves at Dunhuang were carved over a millennium starting in the mid-fourth century and continuing until the fourteenth century, when the Silk Road was largely abandoned. They comprise more than seven hundred grottoes, ranging in size from small niches to multistoried chambers, and many were filled with brightly colored sculpture and murals, primarily Buddhist in theme but also encompassing other religious and folk traditions. The remoteness of the location in later periods helped to preserve the astonishing trove of artwork found in the caves. Attention to the caves and the rise of the field of Dunhuang scholarship, however, began only after approximately 60,000 hidden manuscripts and paintings were discovered in 1900 in what is now known as the “Library Cave.” This collection of early visual and textual materials is incomparable and has revolutionized the study of the art, culture, and history of China.
Located at China’s western frontier, at a crossroads along the Silk Routes between the civilizations of East and Central Asia, Dunhuang was a gateway not only for commercial goods but also for the intellectual currency carried by its travelers: new technologies, ideas, art, and religions.
RIGHT: View of the Mogao Caves; FRONT COVER: Paintings and sculpture in Cave 320; PREVIOUS PAGE: Exterior of the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang; BACK COVER: View north from Cave 268 into adjacent caves. Photographs taken in 1943–44. © Lo Archive; FOOTER: Extended diagram showing cave locations along the cliff face, from Shi Zhangru, Mogao ku xing (1996).
The Silk Roads
Other trade routes
India
Arabian Sea
Arabian Peninsula
Altai Mountains
Himalayas
Bay of Bengal
Black Sea
Caspian Sea
Central Asiabaghdad
aleppo
damascus
merv
samarkand
kashgar
dunhuang
xi’an
Africa
China
Sacred Caves of the Silk Road | Ways of Knowing and Re-creating Dunhuang 54
ArchitectureAlthough the site has been transformed with time and is now without its former collections of manuscripts, printed texts, banner paintings, and other artifacts, there is still no substitute for actually being at the caves. Consider the architectural relationship between the Mogao Caves and the surrounding land, which in the past seemed magically alive with auspi-cious and malevolent forces. In such an inspirited world of living rock, sand, wind, and water, the material of architecture forms the physical vessel that gives the empty space of a cave its body and shape. What fills the emptiness—spirits, ritual, living, time, light, sound, color, smell, action, words, images, paradise—activates how space is experienced and imparts sacred meaning. Such qualities are often impossible to convey in attempts to reproduce or model the caves through written descriptions, photographs, and architectural and virtual reconstructions. According to Alan Y. Liu in “The Meaning of the Digital Humanities” (2013): “Models reveal meaning (recognized in patterns, trends, forms) only by reducing the dimensions and features of meaning.”
Knowing
The Mogao Caves at Dunhuang were decorated and reinforced on both the interior and exterior with architectural elements. Some caves had flat ceilings with ornamental coffers, while others had ceilings in a truncated pyramidal shape. Many caves also had exterior wooden architecture that approximated temple facades, with doorways, columns, and decorative roofs. Further architectural elements included wooden walkways and staircases that provided access to caves located above the ground level. Most original exterior elements no longer exist, but as seen in the present-day photograph, many have been rebuilt.
The interior and exterior architecture of the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang as recorded in Lo Archive photographs, taken in 1943–44, and compared to a present-day color image.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Interior of Cave 268, Northern Liang dynasty, 398–439. © Lo Archive; Antechamber of Cave 431, Northern Wei dynasty, 386–535, with a makeshift tunnel to an adjacent cave. © Lo Archive; Exterior view of the Southern Caves. © Lo Archive; Exterior view of the Southern Caves. Photo: Cary Y. Liu, 2014; Exterior view of the Northern Caves. © Lo Archive
7Sacred Caves of the Silk Road | Ways of Knowing and Re-creating Dunhuang6
Paintings and Sculptures
Covering the walls and ceilings, paintings and sculptures activate space in the Mogao Caves to give sacred meaning. A sense of the inspirited caves can be gained by examining the original painted banners and sculptures in dialogue with photographs that show related subjects in particular cave murals. For example, Tejaprabha Buddha and the Five Planets (897) and Portrait of a Monk (late 9th–early 10th century)—paintings on silk and paper, respectively, that were recovered from the Library Cave—relate to specific wall paintings and sculptures. Studying them in comparison to past and present-day photos sheds light on religious iconography, artistic practice, and new ways to know and visualize Dunhuang. Portrait, for instance, shows a monk seated before a tree with a suspended bag and a rosary. A 1940s photograph shows a similar tree with a hanging bag painted inside the famed Library Cave, and later it was determined that a statue of a monk had originally been seated in front of the painted tree. Five Planets and Portrait also elucidate two major styles in the history of Chinese painting: color painting and monochrome ink-line painting.
TOP: Interior of Cave 285, dated 538–39, Western Wei dynasty, 535–557. Photo: Dunhuang Academy
ABOVE LEFT: Portrait of a Monk, late 9th–early 10th century, Tang dynasty, 618–907, recovered from the Library Cave (Cave 17) at Dunhuang. Ink on paper, 46 × 30 cm. Collection of the British Museum. © The Trustees of the British Museum; CENTER: Photograph taken in 1943–44 of a wall painting in the Library Cave showing a similar tree with a bag. © Lo Archive; RIGHT: Present-day photograph of the statue of a monk that was originally seated in front of the painted tree in the Library Cave
8 9Sacred Caves of the Silk Road | Ways of Knowing and Re-creating Dunhuang
Detail of the painted ceiling of the niche along the west wall of Cave 321, Early Tang dynasty, 618–704. Photo: Dunhuang Academy
LEFT: Tejaprabha Buddha and the Nine Planets and Twenty-Eight Constellations (detail), 13th–14th century, south wall of the entrance corridor of Cave 61. Photograph taken in 1943–44. © Lo Archive
OPPOSITE: Tejaprabha Buddha and the Five Planets (detail), 897, Tang Dynasty, 618–907, recovered from the Library Cave, Dunhuang. Ink and color on silk, 80.4 x 55.4 cm. Collection of the British Museum. © The Trustees of the British Museum
Depictions of the Tejaprabha Buddha are extremely rare and include the painting in the collection of the British Museum and the wall painting in Cave 61. However, the similarities between the two images indicate that this was an important composition of a significant Buddha figure.
10 11Sacred Caves of the Silk Road | Ways of Knowing and Re-creating Dunhuang
Suo Dan, ca. 250–ca. 325, Daode jing (detail), A.D. 270, Wu Kingdom, 222–280, reportedly from the Library Cave at Dunhuang. Daoist handscroll (fragment); ink on paper, 30.8 x 208.2 cm. Princeton University Art Museum, bequest of John B. Elliott, Class of 1951
Manuscripts and Printed Texts
Handwritten and printed texts chronicle the myths, history, and religious beliefs as well as the government, military, and daily activities at Dunhuang. They provide a glimpse of the flow, appropriation, and mediation of cultural materials and ideas exchanged along the Silk Routes and between neighboring peoples, including Tibetans, Uyghurs, Tanguts, Khotanese, Tocharians, Sogdians, and Chinese. Surviving texts evidence both a variety of written scripts and languages and the transmission of Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian, Zoroastrian, Manichean, Nestorian, Judaic, and folk traditions.
Although fragmentary in nature, the roughly 60,000 recovered texts are fundamental to the field of Dunhuang studies. Examining the entire corpus, however, is difficult because the materials are scattered worldwide. Handwritten copies, facsimiles, transcriptions, translations, and digitization provide access, to a degree, but each method of reproduction or modeling also filters or reduces meaning. Without direct access to the originals, levels of information—such as the materiality of the paper, ink, and pigments—become absent.
“Diagram of Fortune of the 3rd, 6th, 9th, and 12th Lunar Months Controlled by the General of Xiayuan (the 15th day of the 10th month)” (detail), probably Yuan dynasty, 1260–1368, from Northern Cave B157, Dunhuang. Fragment written in Old Uyghur (Old Turkic) script; ink on paper, approximately 14.5 x 18.9 cm. The East Asian Library, Princeton University. Photo: Kyle Steinke, 2015
12 13Sacred Caves of the Silk Road | Ways of Knowing and Re-creating Dunhuang
Photographs
Since the early twentieth century, photography has been used to document the Mogao Caves at different moments in time. The Lo Archive is named after James and Lucy Lo, who photo-graphed the caves from 1943 to 1944. Their archive comprises more than 2,000 black-and-white negatives that capture Dunhuang at an important point in its history, prior to later damage, alterations, and conservation and restoration work. Black-and-white photography, however, omits the dimensions of color and, to a certain extent, scale, which sometimes were supplied by written notations or artistic renderings. Also, because of tough working conditions and limited supplies, many interior areas could not be shot, and photography had to be selective. Selection, moreover, was often dictated by aesthetic choice or scholarly interpretation. Even with color and digital technology, the concern for color accuracy and scale persists. Ultimately, all photography models space in two dimensions; it reduces and fragments the space of a cave into isolated frames and sequences that make it difficult to understand and experience the cave’s actual spatial configuration.
Re-creating
OPPOSITE: Cave 393, Sui dynasty, 589–618, with makeshift tunnels to adjacent caves. Photograph taken in 1943–44. © Lo Archive
14 15Sacred Caves of the Silk Road | Ways of Knowing and Re-creating Dunhuang
Artist RenderingsIn the era of black-and-white photography, artistic renderings of the wall paintings supplied the dimension of color and, if drawn to scale, offered an accurate measure of size. In addition, because many of the wall paintings had suffered damage and discoloration, some renderings were used as a means to reconstruct what early Chinese paintings might have originally looked like. Such interpretive renderings include those by the celebrated artist Zhang Daqian (1899–1983), who worked on-site in the 1940s. Other renderings—such as the majority of those based on Lo Archive photos taken in the 1940s—instead document the murals at Dunhuang in the condition in which they were found.
The renderings are important both for documenting the art of Dunhuang and for having served as a medium for artistic inspiration. Forced to consider unfamiliar paintings from the Tang dynasty (618–907) and earlier, the artists creating original copies developed new styles and techniques in the process that can be said to have been inspired by Dunhuang.
TOP TO BOTTOM: Interior of Cave 156, Late Tang dynasty, 848–907, containing the procession paintings of Zhang Yichao, a local general, and his wife, the Lady Song. Photograph taken in 1943–44. © Lo Archive; Procession of Lady Song, Late Tang dynasty, 848–907, wall painting from Cave 156. Photograph taken in 1943–44. © Lo Archive; James C. Lo Workshop, Copy of Procession of Lady Song from Mogao Cave 156, 1958–63. Artist rendering after a wall painting; ink and color on paper, 95.3 x 742.7 cm. Princeton University Art Museum, gift of Lucy L. Lo
16 17Sacred Caves of the Silk Road | Ways of Knowing and Re-creating Dunhuang
Stamped impressions of images, such as figures of the Buddha or Daoist magical charms, predate the appearance of the printed word in Tang dynasty China. A block-printed Buddhist Diamond Sutra scroll dated 868, recovered from the Library Cave at Dunhuang, is the earliest-surviving printed item with a known date. Since its beginnings, printing functioned as a means to propagate and preserve religious teachings as well as to record intellectual ideas and historical events.
With the transition to digital archives in the late twentieth century, greater access to reproductions of the original texts and images from the Mogao Caves became possible. An example is the International Dunhuang Project (IDP) website, a collabora-tive attempt to digitize manuscripts, printed texts, paintings, and other artifacts from the Dunhuang area. Efforts to model virtual reconstructions of the caves are also underway. Such digital archiving and modeling will underscore certain patterns, trends, and forms, but it will also result in the reduction of other dimensions in the experience of the actual caves or artifacts.
Manuscript fragment with stamped images of the Buddha. Sutra Spoken by the Buddha on the Names of the Buddhas, chapter 4, probably Tang dynasty, 618–907. Ink on paper, approximately 16.6 x 7.7 cm. The East Asian Library, Princeton University. Photo: Kyle Steinke, 2015
Sacred Caves of the Silk Road: Ways of Knowing and Re-creating Dunhuang is organized by the Princeton University Art Museum with the P. Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Center for East Asian Art. The exhibition has been made possible by generous lead support from the Dunhuang Foundation. Additional support has been provided by the John B. Elliott, Class of 1951, Fund for Asian Art; Nancy C. Lee; Amy and Robert L. Poster, Class of 1962; and an anonymous donor from the Class of 1978.
For their help realizing this exhibition and brochure, thanks go to James Steward and Jerome Silbergeld for their support and to members of the dedicated Princeton University Art Museum staff, especially Charlie Adams, Elizabeth Aldred, Mario Arias, Todd Baldwin, Anna Brouwer, Calvin Brown, Jeffrey Evans, John Feulner, Erin Firestone, Lehze Flax, Madison Goforth, Cathryn Goodwin, Christopher Gorzelnik, Christine Hacker, Caroline Harris, Patrick Holder, Joe Hooker, Mike Jacobs, Alan Lavery, Marin Lewis, Curtis Scott, Nancy Stout, and T. Barton Thurber. We also want to thank Martin Heijdra at the East Asian Library, Princeton University, Jan Stuart (now at the Freer|Sackler), and Clarissa von Spee at the British Museum for their support and advice.
Printed Publications and Digitization
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