The Tiantishan Caves () are a series of

rock cut Drilling and blasting is the controlled use of explosives and other methods, such as gas pressure blasting pyrotechnics, to break rock for excavation. It is practiced most often in mining, quarrying and civil engineering such as dam, tunnel ...

Buddhist Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

cave temples in the

Liangzhou District Liangzhou District () is a district and the seat of the city of Wuwei, Gansu province, China, bordering Inner Mongolia to the east. Geography Liangzhou District is located in the eastern part of the Hexi Corridor, north of the Qilian Mountains. ...

of Wuwei,

Gansu Gansu is a provinces of China, province in Northwestern China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeastern part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibetan Plateau, Ti ...

, northwest

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. Excavated from the eastern cliffs of the Huangyang River () in the

Qilian Mountains The Qilian Mountains (), together with the Altyn-Tagh sometimes known as the Nan Shan, as it is to the south of the Hexi Corridor, is a northern outlier of the Kunlun Mountains, forming the border between Qinghai and the Gansu provinces of n ...

from the time of the

Northern Liang The Northern Liang (; 397–439) was a Dynasties in Chinese history, dynastic state of China and one of the Sixteen Kingdoms in Chinese history. It was ruled by the Juqu (沮渠) family of Lushuihu ethnicity, though they are sometimes categorized ...

, carving, decoration and subsequent modification of the caves continued through the

Northern Wei Wei (), known in historiography as the Northern Wei ( zh, c=北魏, p=Běi Wèi), Tuoba Wei ( zh, c=拓跋魏, p=Tuòbá Wèi), Yuan Wei ( zh, c=元魏, p=Yuán Wèi) and Later Wei ( zh, t=後魏, p=Hòu Wèi), was an Dynasties of China, impe ...

and Tang to the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...

. The complex is identified with the Liangzhou Caves opened during the time of

Juqu Mengxun Juqu Mengxun (; 368–433), also known by his posthumous name as the Prince Wuxuan of Northern Liang (北涼武宣王), was the second prince of the Lushuihu-led Chinese Northern Liang dynasty, and the first from the Juqu clan. His cousin Juqu Na ...

"one hundred li to the south of

Liangzhou Liangzhou District () is a district and the seat of the city of Wuwei, Gansu province, China, bordering Inner Mongolia to the east. Geography Liangzhou District is located in the eastern part of the Hexi Corridor, north of the Qilian Mountains. ...

", as recorded in the ''

Spring and Autumn Annals of the Sixteen Kingdoms The ''Spring and Autumn Annals of the Sixteen Kingdoms'', also known by its Chinese title ''Shiliuguo Chunqiu'' () is a Chinese biographical historical work of the Sixteen Kingdoms compiled by the Northern Wei official Cui Hong between 501 and 5 ...

'' and ''

Fayuan Zhulin ''Fayuan Zhulin'' (; "Forest of Gems in the Garden of the Dharma"), in 100 ''juan'' (卷 "volume", "fascicle"), is a Buddhist encyclopedia compiled AD 668 by Daoshi (道世). It comprises Buddhist and other ancient texts otherwise lost, and is th ...

''. The name Tiantishan consists of three

Chinese characters Chinese characters are logographs used Written Chinese, to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represe ...

() that literally translate as "Ladder to Heaven Mountain".

Caves

The Tang monk

Daoxuan Daoxuan (; 596–667) was an eminent Tang dynasty Chinese Buddhist monk. He is perhaps best known as the patriarch of the four-part Vinaya school (). Daoxuan wrote both the ''Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks'' (Xù gāosēng zhuàn 續� ...

in his ''Ji shenzhou sanbao gantong lu'' ascribes the opening of Tiantishan to the

Xiongnu The Xiongnu (, ) were a tribal confederation of Nomad, nomadic peoples who, according to ancient Chinese historiography, Chinese sources, inhabited the eastern Eurasian Steppe from the 3rd century BC to the late 1st century AD. Modu Chanyu, t ...

king of

's devotion to "meritorious deeds" alongside his desire to avoid the

impermanence Impermanence, also known as the philosophical problem of change, is a philosophical concept addressed in a variety of religions and philosophies. In Eastern philosophy it is notable for its role in the Buddhism, Buddhist three marks of existe ...

of the city by fashioning caves from the mountains. Contrary to the account in the ''

Wei Shu The ''Book of Wei'', also known by its Chinese name as the ''Wei Shu'', is a classic Chinese historical text compiled by Wei Shou from 551 to 554, and is an important text describing the history of the Northern Wei and Eastern Wei from 386 to 5 ...

'' of monks and Buddhist teachers relocating to the east after the conquest of the

by the

and subsequent persecution, structural, iconographic, and stylistic analysis shows that activity at the site continued. A total of nineteen caves in three tiers have been identified:

Later history

Tiantishan disappeared from the historical record after the

Tang dynasty The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, c=唐朝), or the Tang Empire, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907, with an Wu Zhou, interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed ...

. While decoration and modification of the caves continued into the

, five suffered from collapse over the centuries, exacerbated by an earthquake in 1927. Despite initial survey in the early 1950s demonstrating the importance of the site, in April 1959 the Gansu provincial government approved the construction of a reservoir that would flood two of the three tiers of caves when commissioned in May the following year. In the interval, a research team from the

Dunhuang Academy The Dunhuang Research Academy (), originally the National Research Institute on Dunhuang Art, is a "national comprehensive institution" responsible for overseeing the Mogao Caves, a UNESCO World Heritage Site located near Dunhuang in Gansu, China ...

and

Gansu Provincial Museum The Gansu Provincial Museum () is a museum in Lanzhou, China. Its collections include over 350,000 artefacts, in two main sections: history and natural science. Since its foundation, the museum has held almost 300 exhibitions, and items from its ...

documented the site and excavated the collapsed caves, although all the written records and colour photographs and most of the black-and-white photographs have since been lost, along with most of the copies of the wall paintings. Some of the paintings were

detached A single-family detached home, also called a single-detached dwelling, single-family residence (SFR) or separate house is a free-standing residential building. It is defined in opposition to a multi-family residential dwelling. Definitions ...

, although the colours have since "faded after 40 years of natural weathering", and other than for the largest, most of the sculptures were taken down and removed to the Museum. In 2001, in recognition of their significance as one of the earliest

grotto sites in the country, the Tiantishan Caves were designated a

Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level A national priority protected site is the highest-level national protection for immovable cultural relics in China. The designation was first created under the 1961 Provisional Regulations on the Protection and Management of Cultural Relics, whic ...

by SACH.

References

External links

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Tiantishan Caves
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Photos of the detachment of the paintings
{{Coord, 37.562135, N, 102.744635, E, display=title, region:CN, format=dms Buddhist grottoes in Gansu Northern Liang Northern Wei Major National Historical and Cultural Sites in Gansu Sites along the Silk Road

Caves

Later history

See also

References

External links