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| 0391 |
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2 |
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Ch'ien-fo-tung so closely in all essential points of archi-
tectural disposition and artistic decoration that a summary
description will suffice. The principal caves are found on
the right bank, ranged in two stories as seen in Fig. 214,
one on a terrace about twenty feet above the river bed,
the other between fifty and sixty feet higher. The five
main caves below are rendered very dark by the verandahs
built in front of them, and comprise, besides the colossal
seated Buddha already referred to, an image of Buddha
recumbent in Nirvana, fully thirty feet long.
Owing to abundant restoration, all stucco images in
these caves bear a modern appearance, while the large
fresco panels in some of them show a style suggesting that
Tibetan influence had asserted itself upon the traditional
local art. These caves, and some five or six smaller
grottoes in the same lower story, seem to receive most
attention from the priests in residence and to attract most
gifts from pious visitors. The former all claimed to have
resided here for over thirty years, and one of them, a white-
haired old man, who had installed himself in the picturesque
little grotto on the extreme left of Fig. 214, was approached
with special reverence by our people from An-hsi and
Ch'iao-tzŭ. Even Chiang, usually so sceptical in regard
to saintly claims, was inclined to let him pass for a 'sage.'
The upper row of caves is approached near this holy
man's grotto by a rough staircase cut from the rock. Then,
crossing a deep fissure of the rock wall by a rickety bridge,
and passing by a cave of which the front part had fallen in,
we arrived at the northernmost of a flight of thirteen cave-
temples, communicating with each other. All of them con-
sist of a cella square or nearly so, varying from twenty to
thirty-eight feet on each side; of a high porch or passage,
sometimes twenty or thirty feet deep, admitting light and
air; of an antechapel in front of the latter, as broad as the
cella, but narrow and opening towards the cliff face by a
big outer porch as seen in the photograph. Communica-
tion between the shrines was originally effected by narrow
passages leading from one outer porch to the other through
the facing part of the rock wall. But in places this had
crumbled away or become unsafe, and a rough tunnel
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814
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