Background
The Northern Wei was a dynasty founded by the Tuoba, a people of the northern steppe, which united northern China in the fifth century with its capital at Pingcheng, the modern Datong. Buddhism had reached China along the Silk Road from Central Asia and India, and the Wei court patronised it. In 446, however, the emperor Taiwu, under the influence of Daoist and Confucian advisers, ordered a persecution in which monasteries were destroyed and monks killed. His grandson Wencheng, who came to the throne in 452, restored Buddhism.
The Tanyao caves
Around 460 the monk Tanyao, head of the Buddhist clergy, proposed to the emperor that five great caves be cut into the sandstone cliff of Wuzhou hill, west of the capital. These five, now numbered 16 to 20, each hold a colossal Buddha. Their figures are often interpreted as representing the five emperors of the dynasty, in keeping with the Wei idea that the emperor was the living Buddha. The seated Buddha of Cave 20, about fourteen metres high and now open to the air after the cave front collapsed, is the most famous image of the site.
The Buddhas of these caves have broad shoulders, robes that cling in thin parallel folds or leave one shoulder bare, and strong, full faces. Art historians trace their forms to the Buddhist art of Gandhara and Mathura, which reached the Wei through Central Asian intermediaries; the monks and craftsmen at the court included people from Kashmir, Gandhara and the Silk Road oases.
Later caves
Work continued for several decades. The middle-period caves, with elaborate interiors divided into registers of niches, central pillars carved as pagodas, and ceilings with flying celestials, show a growing Chinese character, including figures in Chinese court dress. In 494 the emperor Xiaowen moved the capital south to Luoyang, as part of a policy of adopting Chinese customs, and royal patronage moved with him to the new cave site at Longmen. Smaller caves continued to be cut at Yungang by private patrons until about 525.
Today
Yungang was inscribed by UNESCO in 2001. The caves have suffered from weathering and, in the twentieth century, from coal dust and pollution from the mining region around Datong, as well as from the theft of heads and reliefs, some of which are in foreign museums. Conservation and the rerouting of a road have reduced the damage.
Further reading
- Sen, Tansen. Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade. University of Hawaii Press, 2003
- Neelis, Jason. Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks. Brill, 2011
- Huntington, Susan L. The Art of Ancient India. Weatherhill, 1985
See also
- Buddhism — Buddhism is a religious and philosophical tradition founded in northern India in the 5th century BCE by Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, centred on the Four Noble Truths and a path to liberation from suffering.
- Gandhara — Gandhara was an ancient region centred on the Peshawar Valley, Swat Valley, and Taxila in present-day northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan that served for over a millennium as a crossroads between the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, and the Persian and Hellenistic worlds, and as a major centre of Buddhist art and learning.
- Dunhuang — Dunhuang is an oasis city at the western end of the Gansu corridor in China, a meeting point of the Silk Road routes, whose Mogao caves preserve a thousand years of Buddhist painting and whose sealed library cave yielded tens of thousands of manuscripts.
This entry was last revised on 12 November 2026.