The Mogao Caves, also known as the Thousand Buddha Grottoes or Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, form a system of 500 temples 25 km southeast of the center of Dunhuang, an oasis located at a religious and cultural crossroads on the Silk Road, in Gansu province.
The caves are commonly referred to in Chinese as the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, a name that some scholars have speculated to have come from the legend of its founding, when a monk Yuezun had a vision of a thousand Buddhas at the site. This name, however, may have come from the large number of Buddha figures at the site, or the miniatures figures painted on the walls of these caves as these figures are called “thousand Buddhas” colloquially. The name Mogao Caves was used in the Tang dynasty, where ‘Mogao’ refers to an administrative district at the site during the Tang dynasty.
