The Maijishan Grottoes are an elaborate array of rock-cut ceremonial chambers, containing over 7,200 Buddhist sculptures and 100 square meters of murals located in Tianshui, northwest China. These grottoes were first constructed during the Later Qin era, a state of Qiang ethnicity of the Sixteen Kingdoms, around AD 384–417.
Carved into the soft red sandstone cliff of a hill named Maijishan, which translates to “wheat stack mountain,” these grottoes rise 142 meters above the Xiaolongshan forest on the northern side of the Qinling Mountain Range.
The sculptures and murals within the grottoes illustrate the phased development of Chinese sculpture and architecture. The earliest examples show an influence of Indian design, while later works exhibit Central Asian influences and eventually more prominent native Chinese styles. All designs are dedicated to the pursuit of Buddhism, depicting scenes from the birth of Siddhārtha Gautama to the bodhisattvas on their path toward Buddhahood.
The most active period of construction occurred during the reigns of the Northern Wei (AD 385–534), Western Wei (AD 535–556), and Northern Zhou (AD 557–581) dynasties. Maijishan continued to undergo alterations and additions up until the Qing dynasty (AD 1644–1911).
Maijishan also has a semi-mythical beginning. Around AD 402, two eminent monks named T’an-Hung and Xuangao established a monastic community of about 300 disciples, as recorded in “The Biographies of Eminent Monks of the Liang Dynasty – Liang Gao Seng Zhuan.”
T’an-Hung later traveled south to Cochin China and committed suicide by self-immolation. This act was recounted in a morbid passage from a poem: “saw Hung with a golden body, riding very swiftly westward on a golden deer.” The fate of the monastic community is speculative; it may have been suppressed in the year 444, but there is no archaeological evidence to confirm its existence.
