The Cave Temples Of India

Some of the world's most beautiful frescos and sculptures- Buddhist, Hindu and Jain- are found here. Beautiful photographs capture the richness of an ancient ethos.

Ellora is one of the great cave temple sites of India, with thirty-four major Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain monuments of the late sixth to tenth centuries A. D. This book describes the Buddhist caves at Ellora and places them in the context of Buddhist art and iconography. Ellora's twelve Buddhist cave temples, dating from the early seventh to the early eighth centuries, preserve an unparalleled one-hundred-year sequence of architectural and iconographical development. They reveal the evolution of a Buddhist mandala at sites in other regions often considered "peripheral" to the heartland of Buddhism in eastern India. At Ellora, the mandala, ordinarily conceived as a two-dimensional diagram used to focus meditation, is unfolded into the three-dimensional program of the cave temples themselves, enabling devotees to walk through the mandala during worship. The mandala's development at Ellora is explained and its significance is considered for the evolution of Buddhist art and iconography elsewhere in India.

The Mogao grottoes in China, situated near the oasis town of Dunhuang on the fabled Silk Road, constitute one of the world's most significant sites of Buddhist art. In some five hundred caves carved into rock cliffs at the edge of the Gobi desert are preserved one thousand years of exquisite murals and sculpture. Mogao, founded by Buddhist monks as an isolated monastery in the late fourth century, evolved into an artistic and spiritual center whose renown extended from the Chinese capital to the far western kingdoms of the Silk Road. Among its treasures are miles of stunning wall paintings, more than two thousand statues, magnificent works on silk and paper, and thousands of ancient manuscripts, such as sutras, poems, and prayer sheets, which in 1900 were found sealed in one of the caves and then dispersed to museums throughout the world. Illustrated in color throughout, Cave Temples of Mogao combines lavish photographs of the caves and their art with the fascinating history of Mogao, Dunhuang, and the Silk Road to create a vivid portrait of this remarkable site. Chapters discuss the development of the cave temples, the iconography of the wall paintings, and the extraordinary story of the rare manuscripts, including the oldest printed book in existence, a ninth-century copy of the Diamond Sutra. The book also describes the long-term collaboration between the Getty Conservation Institute and Chinese authorities in conservation projects at Mogao as well as the caves and the museum that can be visited today. The publication of this book coincides with the centenary of the discovery of the manuscripts in the Library Cave.