“
Caves of Faith
thousands of Buddhas
In a Silk Road oasis,
Photography by Tony Law
Dunhuang Grottoes by Brook Larmer
“
enthrall scholars and tourists alike.
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W
hat kept Xuanzang going, he wrote in his famous account of the journey, was another precious itemcarried along the Silk Road:
Buddhistsm itself. Other religions surged along this same route-Manichaeism, Chritianity, Zoroastrianism an, and later, Islam but none
peoples and cultures were giving rise to one the the great marvles of the Buddhist world, the Mogao caves.
ew the end of his 16-year journey, the monk stopped in Dunhuang, a thriving Silk Road oasis where crosscurrents of
would serve as the foundation of Chinese Buddhism and fuel the religion’s expansion.
n the first 3 centuris A.D. The buddhists texts Xuanzang carted back from India and spent the next 2 decades studying and translating
influenced hina so deeply as Buddhism, who migration from India began sometimes
o N
“
Caves of Faith by Brook Larmer Photography by Tony Law
fluid poses of the Buddhas’s retinue
The Natural,
Dunhuang Grottoes
“
characterize the High Tang period,
when historians say boh Buddhism and art reached their highest expression in the grottoes.