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Chinese Grottoes Art
The grottos in different forms include Central Pole
grotto, Fudou grotto with an oblong or square plane, and the Big Buddha with
oval plane and arched roof. Because of the single-lined passageways outside the
gates of the grottos, about 15 meters long, it is not easy for the dust storms
to intrude, which reduce the damages to the grottos. These grottos have close
relationship with the Mogao Grottos in Dunhuang, both of which are Sister
Grottos on the Silk Road
.
The frescoes inside the grottos include the statues of
Buddha, Bodhisattvas, and the paintings of Buddhism stories, flowers and beasts, patterns and ornaments,
providers, and other figures. Among them, the No.25 Grotto is the most exquisite
and precious one. Manjusri Bodhisattva riding on a lion, Samantabhadra
Bodhisattva riding on an elephant, and the Northern and Southern Heavenly Kings
are graphically carved with smooth and skilful strokes, and look vivid and
lifelike. In the Big Buddha Hall of the No.6 Grotto, there is a statue of
Sakyamuni, 20 meters high, being golden all over the body, which are stunningly
beautiful. In the No.29 Grotto chiseled in the West Xia, the male and female
providers all wear the hat and clothes of the Western Xia's style, and the
inscriptions beside them are also written in the Western Xia language. The
frescoes made in those dynasties such as the Five Dynasties, the early years of the Song Dynasty, the
Western Xia Dynasty and the Yuan Dynasty
, not only follow
the themes of the past dynasties, but also adopt some new subject matters such
as the Water and Moon Kwan-yin, Datura Stramonium of the Secret Sect of Buddhism
and so on, whose artistic style is utterly different from those of the past
dynasties.
Inside the grottos chiseled during the Western Xia
Dynasty, the image of Sun Wukong has appeared as a monkey in some paintings of
the story that Xuanzang, a Buddhist scholar of the Tang Dynasty
, overcame difficulties and obstacles and
finally reached India for Buddhist scriptures. This may be the first artistic
image of Sun Wukong and is more than 300 years earlier than that in the
Pilgrimage to the West.
 Longmen Grotto
Longmen Grottoes stretch for a kilometer or so on the west
bank of the Yihe River, 12 kilometers south of Luoyang
. The Longmen Grottoes are one of the three great
treasure houses of grotto art in China. Longmen landscape is acclaimed as the
best of the eight sights of Luoyang.
The Construction of the grottoes lasted 400 years. The
first caves of Longmen were excavated in 488 A.D., the 12th year of the reign of
Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534A.D.). Large-scale
construction took place during the Northern Wei and Tang dynasties and many
additions were made in later generations. There are more than 2,100 grotto
niches, 89 Buddhist pagoda s, 100,000 sculptured
figures, and 3600 tablets, of which the biggest stands 17.14 meters tall and the
smallest is only 2 centimeters.
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