1/10/2023 0 Comments The lost caves of tibet![]() ![]() These caves range from small, artificial shelters that served as hermitage or meditation sites to large, deep, subterranean passages that contain altars, statues, and wall paintings made over the past 800 years. © 2003 by the Archaeological Institute of AmericaĪ/0305/abstracts/guge. One of Tibet’s most important cave systems is the Guru Rinpoche complex 30 km southeast of Lhasa in the Yarlung Tsangpo river drainage. Xiong Lei is a reporter for Beijing-based China Features. These caves contain numerous Buddhist sutras, documents. "Having studied the lost kingdom for a decade now, I've mainly discovered that the questions continually raised about Guge have far outnumbered our answers." This is a fascinating documentary on the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang, in todays Xinjiang Province of China. Lara, always intrigued by those old stories, is ready to have a trip there and discover more about all of this. "What is certain is that findings at Guge so far are only the tip of an iceberg," says another researcher. Thirty-nine years ago, a Buddhist monk meditating in a cave on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau found something strange: a human jawbone with giant molars. But the caves were carved into a hill of conglomerate rock, and the weathering of the soft conglomerate puts the survival of this sacred art at great risk. According to an old myth, it is believed that a long, long time ago, 4 masks, which used to keep an evil demigod imprisoned, were lost in 4 different locations of Tibet by unknown forces. ![]() Though it was the least studied of the several hundred candidate sites, the experts decided it was of vital importance. ![]() Grainy, shaky footage of Tsaparang showed a massive mountaintop fortress with lavishly painted interiors, surrounded by soft clay cliffs peppered with caves. "They only happened to see some scenes of the ruins in a documentary film taken by a crew in the 1950s," says Zhang Jianlin, a research professor with Xi'an Archaeology Institute in Shaanxi, who has worked on the ruins, some twelve hundred miles from the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, since the late 1970s. When China's State Council declared Tsaparang one of the country's first official cultural heritage sites in 1961, no expert on the panel that compiled the list had ever been to the former capital of the Guge kingdom in western Tibet. (Note that buying article below does NOT include images.) Maratika cave (also known as Haleshi/'Literally Astonishing' in Nepali or Chiwa Tarjé/'Elimination of Death' in Tibetan) is one of the most widely revered and captivating pilgrimage destinations in Nepal’s sacred landscape. According to legend, there is a sacred cave within this hill, which was once the dwelling place of Avalokitevara (known also as Chenrezi in Tibetan). (Jin Shijzi/ImagineChina)įor more exclusive images, see the May/June 2003 issue of ARCHAEOLOGY. Tsaparang castle, as viewed from one of the hundreds of frescoed caves pockmarking the soft clay hills that surround the 900-foot-high citadel. Archaeologists are rediscovering the glories of a great Tibetan dynasty, forgoten for centuries. ![]()
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