TUN-HUANG

Pinyin Dunhuang, city in western Kansu sheng (province), China. Situated in an oasis in the Kansu-Sinkiang desert, Tun-huang is at the far-western limit of traditional Chinese settlement along the Silk Road across Central Asia. It was the first trading town reached by foreign merchants entering Chinese-administered territory from the west. In ancient times it was the point at which the two branches of the Silk Road, running around the Tarim Basin on the north and on the south, converged. Tun-huang was first brought under Chinese control in the Han dynasty (206 BCAD 220) during an expansionist period at the end of the 2nd century BC. A Tun-huang commandery was established there either in 111 BC or, according to some accounts, in 9392 BC. A defensive line for protection from the Mongols was built to the north, and a sizable military force was stationed there. After the decay of Han central power, Tun-huang became semi-independent; in the 4th and 5th centuries AD, it successively formed part of kingdoms centred in Kansu. Throughout this period Tun-huang remained an important caravan town and commercial centre for trade with Central Asia. In the late 5th century the Northern Wei dynasty (386534/535) brought Tun-huang back under Chinese domination, under the name Kua-chou. In 618 the area passed to the T'ang dynasty (618907), who renamed it Sha-chou in 633. It remained under T'ang administration until 781, when it fell into the hands of the Tibetans. On the breakup of the Tibetan state in the 840s, Tun-huang nominally reverted to T'ang rule but in fact remained in the hands of local rulers. The Mongols (who ruled China from 1206 to 1368) took the city in 1227, and, after the fall of Mongol rule, the Ming dynasty (13681644) established a garrison there. In the 15th century, however, Tun-huang was overrun by the Turfan kingdom and remained a part of Uighuristan until 1723, when the Ch'ing dynasty (16441911/12) occupied the area. A civil government was restored in 1760. Tun-huang was a great centre of Buddhism from AD 366 to the fall of the Western Hsia dynasty in the early 13th century. It was one of the chief places of entry for Buddhist monks and missionaries from the kingdoms of Central Asia, and these Buddhists founded the first of Tun-huang's cavesknown as the Cave of the Thousand Buddhas (Ch'ien-fo Tung)in 366. From this period onward the town became a major Buddhist centre and place of pilgrimage. There were numbers of monastic communities (many of them non-Chinese) that played a predominant role in local society and to which successive governors were generous patrons. In one of the cave temples a rich collection of about 60,000 paper manuscripts, printed documents, and fragments dating from the 5th to the 11th century was walled up about 1015, to be discovered in 1900. This collection included not only Buddhist but also Taoist, Zoroastrian, and Nestorian scriptures, as well as vast numbers of secular texts. Although most of the manuscripts and documents were sold to foreigners, the caves still contain murals and painted statuary. Many of the nearly 500 caves, collectively referred to as the Mogao Caves, were opened to the public after 1949, and the caves were designated a World Heritage Site in 1987. By the early 1970s Tun-huang's importance as a trading centre had been largely lost, since the new highway and railway across the Uighur Autonomous Region of Sinkiang pass to the north at An-hsi. Pop. (1988 est.) 20,200.