莫高窟英语导游词 Mogao Caves讲词英文

Mogao caves

Good morning my dear friends . Welcome to beautiful Gansu province. I am your tour guide , please take down my cellphone number and if you have any problem, i’d love to serve you. Now we are going to visit the Buddhist art treasure that known to all the world - Dunuang Mogao Grottoes. Mogao Grottoes is 25 kilometers far from the southeast of downtown Dunhuang , it is the world's largest treasure house of Buddhist art. I will take some time to do some simple introductions of the Mogao Grottoes.

I believe many of you have heard about the interesting stories or comments about Dunuang Mogao. It is said that once you have been to Grottoes, you are likely to see the general view of the ancient civilization of the whole world. Grottoes is the most brilliant gallery of Buddhist art in the world, the greatest treasure house of Buddhism.

The Mogao Caves are the best known of the Chinese Buddhist grottoes and, along with Longmen Grottoes and Yungang Grottoes, are one of the three famous ancient Buddhist sculptural sites of China. Mogao Caves is famous for its profound history. It has a huge size of building scale, and holds a large number of Buddhist mural. The modeling of the statue is extremely awesome and the those of painting and statues have been saved so perfectly. These whole factors made Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes world-wide renown. Every year here would serve so many visitors so that the number of tourist is beyond counting. Because of the great number of visitors, it is a good place for the communication between Chinese and foreign culture. It is also suitable for education in patriotism, because as is known to all, many Buddha statue were destroyed and stole abroad for the commercial purpose.

The Buddhist mural in Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes are unique. The caves themselves are now a popular tourist destination, with a number open for visiting. If we adjoin the totally 45,000 square meters murals one by one, the length of whole mural would reach at least 25 kilometers, the same as the distance from the downtown Dunhuang to the Dunhuang Mogao Caves. A french scholar called it “the library on the wall”.

Another name for Mogao Caves is also known as the Caves of the Thousand

Buddhas.“Thousand”, this word here does not means a s pecific concept of number, but indicate the big amounts of caves here. Also because of the huge number of its Buddha statues and mural-painted caves. But the name of Mogao Caves were first found in a cave that excavated during the Sui dynasty---The cave number 423. There was a note of its excavation information, and the name “Mogao Caves” was in the note. But as many famous scenic spot, these Caves also have many stories of its source of name. Unable to agree which is right, there are three major versions of the source: first, it is said that because the cave excavated at such a height on the cliff in the desert. Because in the pronunciation of Chinese character，the word “Desert” is pronounced as “Mo” and the “height” is pronounced as “Gao”, so people took t he pronounce “MO” and the “Gao” to use as the name of these caves. Another version supposes that many unearthed Buddhist scriptures and documents accounted during Tang dynasty recorded about the name of mountain group in the range of Dunhuang county. The excavated caves were just located in the mountain group that named Mogao. According to the rules of ancient usual practice, the caves took the same name of the mountain group. The final version was said that “Mogao” means free oneself from the the mortal world. Mogao comes from the pronunciation of Sanskrit. Mogao is just a transliteration.

Dunhuang took a special location since Han and Wei dynasty. This land dwelt not only the Han nationality ,but also many ethnic minorities. So it is a multi-culture residence. In ancient times, peopl e passed through Dunhuang to went to the Western Region( a Han Dynasty term for the area west of Yumenguan, including what is now Xinjiang and parts of Central Asia). And the people lived in the Western Region also saw it a main drag to go into the Central Plains(comprising the middle and lower reaches of the Huanghe River). People donate their money to built the brilliant statues and caves, no matter what their social class is and no matter how much money they donate. The company of traveling merchants, emissary from abroad and monks lived in desert prayed for safety. So more and more caves emerged in large numbers.

Now we can see the Mogao Grottoes over there, it is backed by Mingsha

mountain, confronted Sanwei mountain（三危峰）. The whole scenic spot stretching 1600 metres from north to south. There are 735 caves existed till now. Those caves are different in its size and scattered up and down. The Buddha statues in the caves is so vivid, what’s more, the pretty and charming Flying Apsaras (or FeiTian飞天)，stunning murals and delicate brick, those art treasure compose a beautiful mysterious Buddhist world.

Mogao Grottoes originally built in 366 CE, passed through 10 different ancient dynasty. After the Tang dynasty, the site went into a gradual declined, and construction of new cave ceased entirely after the Yuan dynasty. Islam had conquered much of central Asia, and the silk road declined in importance when trading via sea-routes began to dominated Chinese trade with the outside world. During the Ming dynasty, the silk road was finally officially abandoned, and Dunhunag slowly become depopulated and largely forgotten by the outside world. Most of the Mogao caves were abandoned. The site however, was still a place of pilgrimage and used as a place of worship by local people at the beginning of 20th century when there was renewed interest in the site.

Now there are about 45,000 square meters murals exist, and about 2400 Buddha statues are preserved. The most greatest statue height 30 meters, and the most widest mural extends 50 square meters. The murals on the caves spanned a long period of history, from the 5th to the 4th century. The murals are largely of Buddhist theme, some however are of traditional mythical theme(传统神话主题）. Early murals showed a strong Indian and Central Asian influence in the painting techniques. But as for a distinct Dunhuang style, however, it began to emerge during Northern Wei Dynasty(北魏）.These fantastic murals shows us the life of ancient society: agricultural production, transportation, architecture, art, music,and dance, folk customs, religious beliefs, ideological change, ethnic relationship, Sino-foreign communication...and so on.

And now let’s walk into the cave. The cave were cut into the side of a cliff, which is close to tow kilometers long. At its height during the Tang dynasty, there were more than a thousands caves, but over time, many of the caves were lost,

including the earliest caves. 735 caves currently exist in Mogao, the best-known ones are the 487 caves located in the southern section of the cliff which places of pilgrimage and worship.

248 caves have also been found at the north which were living quarters(住处）, meditation chambers(冥想室）and burial sites(土葬) for the monks. The caves at the southern section are decorated, while those at the northern section are mostly plain. The caves are clustered together according to their era, with new caves from a new dynasty being constructed in different part of the cliff.

An important cache of documents was discovered in the so-called "Library Cave” one day in May,1900. A Taoist priest who were responsible for the manage of Grottoes found the cave for preserving Buddhism sutra(佛教经典) by accident. These precious cultural relics finally delivered from oppression. But later these precious relics were stole abroad by devious means. Since then, the miserable destiny of these precious relics began and until now, many relics still exiled abroad in many country, for instance, France，Russia and Japan. In 1910, the Qin Government finally transported these robbed relics to Beijing, but some of relics were lost, stole or destroyed. It made a great lost of archaeology in China. The content of the library was dispersed around the world, and the largest collections are now found in Beijing, London, Paris and Berlin. In 1987, UNESCO listed Mogao Grottoes as the world cultural heritage.

Those documents found in the cave mainly recorded religious classics and folk customs that wrote in different languages. Its contents involved different kinds of subjects. It is really significant for the research of ancient religion, politics and culture. Indeed, the research of these lost relics have been bred a new kind of subject--- Dunhuangnology.（敦煌学，the study of Dunhuang）

So you may wondering, why did people excavate the caves just for preserving classics? One of version indicate that during the time about the beginning of 11th century, the Xixia dynasty invaded Dunhuang. Monks and believers excavated those caves for preserve Buddhist classics. Another version also related to invasion, it is said that Buddhist monks built the cave to prevented those precious classics from the

destroy by Muslims. But after the chaos, some monks died, others escaped or resume regular life, so the huge amount of classics were left in the cave with nobody care for.

I guess you can not wait to see the marvelous sculptures in caves, actually，There are around 2,400 surviving clay statues at Mogao. These were first constructed on a wooden frame, padded with reed, then modeled in clay stucco(粘土）, and finished with paint. The early sculptures were based on Indian and central Asian prototypes with some in Greco-Indian(印度希腊王国）style of Gandhara(古印度）. Over time the statues showed more Chinese elements and became gradually sinicized(中国化）.

Now we are entering number 328 cave. This cave is significant for its excellent statues. I would like to take up some of your time to do a further introduction of the modeling techniques about colored statues in this cave. The Mogao statues needs tow parts of techniques to model a sculpture --- model in clay and decorate with color. The modeling techniques in Mogao can be divided into 3 major aspects: round modeling, floating modeling and shadow modeling (圆塑、浮塑、影塑). The round modeling technique use figurable clay to built a Buddha statue, which is three-dimensional for admire in all directions. While the floating modeling and shadow modeling is majorly use for decorate the 3D statues. For instance, above the vivid Buddha statue is flammule(佛光), craftsman used the technique of floating modeling to show the holy glory. And the shadow modeling skill may used to emerge the smaller statues or beautiful Flying Apsaras (or FeiTian飞天). Among these Buddha statues, the smallest one measured less then one foot, and the greatest one measured more than 30 meters. The Buddha is generally shown as the central statue, often attended by boddhisattvas, along with the statues of Buddua’s disciples and the the statues of Arhan. For the different finished time of statues, the style of them was totally different. For example, the statues built during the Wei-chin period were especially slim in shape and pale in color. Because during this period, entire society admired slim body. The intellectuals were proud of their aspiration, which made them despised the power and sought for freedom.

Statues are the main relics of the Mogao Caves. Mostly, the statues appears in form of a combination that one Buddhas may have two attendant Bodhisattvas. The plump style in the modeling techniques in the early days gradually became slim and pale later. Statues from the Sui and Tang periods may be present as larger groups of seven or nine. The craftsman also started to built giant Buddha. As we can see, in the cave number 148 and number 158, there are tow Reclined Buddha statue(卧佛). Both the tow reclined Buddha statues are about 16 meters long. Reclined Buddha also named the Nirvana Buddha statue（涅槃像). One type of caves constructed is the Nirvana Cave, which features a large reclining Buddha that covers the entire length of the hall. The statue shows people the composed and peaceful expression of the Buddha. the Buddha was different from ordinary people--- Buddha could bear death with equanimity. More then that, there is a highest Buddha statue in Mogao called The larger northern giant Buddha, which is more than 30 meters in the cave number 96 at the northern part of Mogao Caves. The larger northern giant Buddha had been repaired and restored many times, consequently its clothing, colour and gestures had been changed and only the head retained its original Early Tang appearance. The larger Buddha is housed in a wooden building, originally 4 floors high, but is now a 9-floor structure. And at the southern part of Mogao, a 26 meters Buddha was standing divinely until now. Those marvelous statues were built at the same period. Its artistic style was tend to both dignified and graceful. Particularly the works built during the Tang dynasty, we can even feel the mercy of the Buddha. The high standard of modeling techniques also made the statues like a real body.

Cave number 285 best represents the art style of statues during the Western Wei period. Its dome is just like a inverse hopper(覆斗），envelop the square meditation hall(禅室). The notes on the wall tells people the story about why people built the statues after the unity of the Western Wei dynasty. This cave are suppose to be the earliest one that has notes of exact time on wall.

The south wall of this cave depicted a story--- the story of five hundred robbers

become Buddha. It said that once in ancient India, five hundred men rebelled and became robbers. The king sent army to captured them and dug their eyes, banished them in the forest. They were too suffering to bare the tribulation, so they yelled loudly to pray for the relief from Buddha. The great and merciful Buddha showed great mercy and cured their eyes, then taught them with Buddhist idea. Finally these robbers converted in Buddhism, and became the Buddha through their hard self-cultivation(修行). The mural is so vivid that even in our modern life, we can also benefit from the story. That is to say, as long as you have the courage and awareness to put right your weak point, it will never be late to change.

One of the central features of Tang art in Mogao is the aspiration of the paradise of the west, indicating the increasing popularity of Mahayana Buddhism in the Tang era. The murals of Tantric Buddhism(密宗), such as the eleven-headed or thousand-armed Guanyin, also started to appear in Mogao wall paintings during the Tang period.

The most fully painted caves have painting all over the walls and ceilings, with geometrical or plant decoration filling the spaces, which are above all of the Buddha.They are valued for the scale and richness of content as well as their artistry.The artistry of the murals reached its apogee during the Tang period, and the quality of the work dropped after the tenth century. The paintings often depict jataka tales which are stories of the life of Buddha. One of the central features of Tang art in Mogao is the representation of the paradise of the Pure Land, the paradise of the west.

The cave number 220 is a cave that excavated during the early Tang dynasty. The murals on southern and northern wall formerly covered by the murals painted in Song Dynasty. In 1948, when people peeled off the surface, the marvelous Tang dynasty murals was emerge. People astonished at its brand new color and completeness. The murals was extremely brilliant. The murals on southern wall depicted Amitabha in his pure land of Sukhavati(阿弥陀净土变相图). This painting is base on Amitabha Sutra(佛说阿弥陀经), displays scenery of the paradise of the west. The center of the mural is a pond with fencing around. The great and merciful Amitabha is sitting on

the lotus seat that under two trees named Shara. Attendant Buddhisattvas(胁侍菩萨) stands beside Amitabha, along with Flying Apsaras (or FeiTian飞天) and those goddesses who are playing the Chinese ancient instrument. It is really a grand sight.

In front of the precious pond, there is a colorful platform which is decorate with colorful tiles. The musicians seat on it and playing all kinds of instrument. Two dancing girls are dancing in the center of the platform. They do the tiptoe dance on a round carpet with graceful posture. Their flimsy dress streaming in the air. They devote all their enthusiasm.

In 1941, when the painter Zhang Daqian arrived at the caves with a small team of assistants and stayed for two and a half years to repair and copy the murals. He then exhibited and published the copies of the murals, which helped to publicize and give much prominence to the art of Dunhuang within China. And in 1961, the Mogao Caves were declared to be a specially protected historical monument by the State Council, and renovation work at Mogao began soon afterwards. The site escaped the widespread damage caused during the Cultural Revolution.

Ok, now we have 30 minutes to enjoy the murals. I’d love to answer your question if you need.