Naz site -  Site dedicated to Nazoreans
Forum- Nazorean Forum

Dunhuang Monastic Library
'Cave for Preserving Scriptures'
Dunhuang, China

Dunhuang once had a 1000 Caves of which  492 have survived. These man made caverns contain 45,000 square meters of frescos, 2, 415 painted statues and five wooden-structured caves. Theese Magao Grottoes contain priceless paintings, sculptures, and some 50,000 Buddhist, manichaean, and Taoist scriptures, historical documents, textiles. The Mogao Grottoes of Dunhuang, popularly known as the Thousand Buddha Caves, were carved out of the rocks stretching for about 1,600 meters along the eastern side of the Mingsha Hill, 25 km southeast of Dunhuang. A Tang Dynasty inscription records that the first cave in the Mogao Grottoes was made in 366 A.D.

The secret and sealed over 'Cave for Preserving Scriptures', was discovered by a Taoist monk at Dunhuang, China named  Wang Yuanlu in 1900. The cave contains more than 50,000 sutras, documents and paintings covering a period from the 4th to the 11th centuries.  Its discovery coincided with a period of great international archaeological research in the area and Sir Aurel Stein was the first to gain access in 1907. Thereafter archaeologists from France, Russia and China were drawn to Dunhuang and the great majority of manuscripts and documents from this one cave are now in Beijing, Paris, London and St. Petersburg. Documents and paintings from other Silk Road towns are to be found more widely in museums and libraries throughout Europe and Asia.

Apart from 14,000 paper scrolls and fragments from this cave at Dunhuang, the British Library Stein collection includes several thousand woodslips and woodslip fragments with Chinese writing, thousands of Tibetan and Tangut manuscripts, Prakrit wooden tablets in Brahmi and Kharosthi scripts, along with documents in Khotanese, Uighur, Sogdian and Eastern Turkic.

Diamond Sutra from Dunhunag Library