Maijishan Grottoes

The grottoes were later photographed by Michael Sullivan and Dominique Darbois, who subsequently published the primary English-language work on the caves noted in the footnotes below.

Later, during the Song and Ming Dynasties, as the caves were renovated and repaired, the influences came from central and eastern China and the sculpture is more distinctly Chinese.

The Later Qin was ruled by the Qiang people, and their second ruler, Yao Xing, was a fervent believer of Buddhism who heavily promoted the religion to his subjects.

Tanhung also left Maijishan during this period and travelled south, to somewhere in Cochin China, when in approximately 455, he burned himself to death.

"Nor is there any evidence to show whether the settlement they founded was destroyed and its members scattered in the suppression of 444 and the ensuring years, or whether it was saved by its remoteness to become a haven of refuge, as was to happen on several later occasions in the history of Maijishan".

These Wei caves are fairly simple and most follow the pattern of a seated Buddha flanked by bodhisattvas and other attendants, sometimes by monks or lay worshippers.

Mahasthamaprapta is slightly more difficult to identify, but this is the usual pairing with Avalokitesvara (who will, in a few hundred more years, change gender and morph into the Goddess or Bodhisattva of Mercy, Guanyin).

The influences mentioned earlier that came from India (and perhaps SE Asia) begin to be apparent in this period and the subsequent Sui, when stiffly posed figures are replaced by more liquid tribhanga stances.

We have almost no records of Maijishan during the Tang, a period during which it was probably in part under the control of the Tibetans as a result of the An Lushan rebellion (An saw an opportunity to swoop in and capture Chang'an and its regions).

Because both Dunhuang and Maijishan were under Tibetan occupation in 845 CE, the year of the great Buddhist persecutions, both were fortunately saved.

Today, we can find some Tang sculptural influence in the powerful modeling of some of the guardian deities, for example, the very large dvarapala on the narrow open terrace from which lead the Seven Buddha Halls.

The Tang poet Du Fu visited the site 25 years later, and wrote a poem entitled "Mountain Temples" that probably is a description of Maijishan.

[5]The Sung dynasty brought major restoration initiatives to Maijishan so that much of what visitors see today are older grottoes with new or replaced Sung-period sculpture.

The most notable change in this period is the shift in emphasis from the Buddha to the bodhisattvas "shown most dramatically in Cave 191 on the extreme western [cliff] face.... "The middle Ming was a period of revival and restoration [remember this is prime earthquake zone]—the last to make any significant mark on Maijishan before the present century.