Journeys On The Silk Road Part 8

On a clear autumn day, a guide unlocks a door to one of the grottoes. She walks ahead down a narrow pa.s.sage that opens onto a dark chamber. She flashes her torch on the wall. After the dazzling sunshine outside, our eyes adjust to the mute light, and murals in azure, lapis, and ochre emerge from the darkness. Row upon row of painted Buddhas adorn every inch of the walls. The ceiling is covered in images of celestial musicians and dramatic hunting scenes that include a galloping horse invested with the energetic confidence of a Pica.s.so. The magnificence of this grotto alone-like a Buddhist Sistine Chapel-is overwhelming. It is just one of 492 remaining painted caves in the world's greatest gallery of Buddhist art.

Unlike the Sistine Chapel, the artists who painted these are unknown. So many hands have taken part in their creation. First came laborers who chipped and hollowed each cave out of conglomerate rock. Others hauled mud from the Daquan River in front of the cliff, mixed it with straw and lined each cave wall. This created a "canvas," a smooth surface-finished with a thin layer of plaster-over the lumpy rock interiors. Next came the artists who, under the direction of a senior monk, drew and then painstakingly painted the walls and ceilings. Traces of gold and precious stones still adorn some of the images. By the flickering light of oil lamps, they must have looked especially magnificent. Artists also created the painted clay statues of fierce temple guardians, jeweled bodhisattvas and Buddhas of the past, present and future. More than 2,000 statues remain.

We re-emerge, blinking, into the sunlight, and the guide leads the way to another cave behind a nine-story paG.o.da facade. Inside we are dwarfed by a 116-foot Buddha, the largest of three colossal Buddhas at the caves. Elsewhere are an eighty-five-foot seated Buddha of the future, Maitreya, and a fifty-one-foot sleeping Buddha. A smaller sleeping Buddha, forty-seven feet long, is surrounded by statues of seventy-two disciples. Each face reveals a different reaction as they observe the Buddha entering parinirvana-the final nirvana-on the point of physical death.

Paintings on some of the walls are like storyboards on which unfold morality tales and legends of the Buddha. A sixth-century cave depicts a prince being devoured after he offers his body to a tigress so she can feed her hungry cubs. The final scene depicts the prince's brothers making their gruesome discovery and fleeing, their hair raised in horror. Painted when few could read, even an illiterate ancient peasant could grasp this story-a modern-day manga cartoon could not tell it more vividly.

No two caves are alike. Each differs in size and decoration. Some evoke the interiors of tents, their high tapered ceilings painted like the drapery of richly patterned fabric. Yet many share an identical layout-a narrow hallway that opens onto a square chapel with a central altar. Most of the images are Buddhist, but there are also images of everyday life: a butcher cutting meat while three hungry dogs wait expectantly nearby, an artisan making pottery, even a man defecating. There are scenes that recall the ancient travelers from afar who ventured along the Silk Road, including images of big-nosed foreigners. Others portray an ever-present peril that faced Silk Road merchants-bandits. We enter a cave where the evidence of a more recent foreigner is evident. A rectangle on the wall is devoid of the murals that fill the rest of the chapel. The aftermath of Langdon Warner disfigures like a wound.

At the northern end of the cliff is the cave all visitors want to see. Behind its door a narrow pa.s.sageway leads to a large cave containing statues. On the right of the pa.s.sage, about four feet above the ground, is the opening to an antechapel. The painted figures of two attendants-one holding a fan, the other a pilgrim's staff-decorate the antechapel's far wall. They flank two painted Bodhi trees whose leafy branches frame the statue of a seated monk. The figure is Hong Bian, once the most revered Buddhist dignitary west of China's Yellow River. His statue, removed to make room for the scrolls, has been restored to the chapel built in his honor more than 1,000 years ago. The statue of Hong Bian and the painted figures of his two attendants are all that remain within the chapel. The Diamond Sutra and the 50,000-plus scrolls that once filled it from floor to ceiling are spread around the world. The mural and the statue within the niche can't match the splendor of others at the caves. But this empty grotto is the site of one of the Silk Road's most dramatic episodes and the place that has transformed our understanding of a culture unlike any other.

What occupies today's guardians, however, is not what has gone from the caves but how to safeguard what remains. For well over a millennium, the caves survived desert winds, earthquakes, invasion, refugees, pilgrims, and vandals. But their greatest threat in the twenty-first century is from tourism. The trickle of visitors who arrived in the late 1970s, when the caves were first opened to the public, has turned into a torrent. More than 650,000 people arrive each year, eager to see the Silk Road's most magnificent site, and the numbers continue to soar. It seems incredible now that the caves could ever have been abandoned and forgotten. As improbable as the art of the Louvre and the books of the British Library slipping from memory and into a sleep lasting centuries. But having awoken, the danger now is that the caves will be loved to death.

Many of the sacred caves are small, some no bigger than a suburban bedroom. They were never designed to hold large numbers of people. Locals refer to some of the tiny chapels as the "falling-down caves." This is not a reference to Stendhal syndrome-the sense of being overwhelmed by the beauty of art-although it is impossible not to be transported by the exquisite images. Rather, it is the result of too many people in too small a s.p.a.ce breathing too little air, especially in summer when most tourists arrive. Every humid breath expelled by visitors risks damaging the wall paintings. So does the rush of air that changes the temperature each time a cave door is opened. Both activate salt-the caves' great enemy-within the walls. Salt causes the paint to flake and peel from the murals-wiping far more than the sublime smile from the Buddha's face.

How best to deal with so many visitors is a concern for the Dunhuang Academy, the prestigious research inst.i.tute which since 1943 has served as guardian of the caves. Juggling the competing demands of ma.s.s tourism and conservation is tricky, the academy's deputy director, Dr. w.a.n.g Xudong, acknowledges. "One of the most challenging issues we face is the rapid increase in tourists and the influence created by people," he says. "Although the site is large overall, the s.p.a.ce in the individual caves is quite small. So the capacity is definitely limited. One needs to balance enabling visitors to come and enjoy the site, but at the same time not having any destructive influence on it. This is easy to say but difficult to do."

His office is a fifteen-minute walk from the caves and close to the main entrance through which visitors arrive all day, every day. Remoteness was once the caves' great natural protector. Dunhuang was still difficult to reach even two decades ago when w.a.n.g Xudong first arrived after an arduous journey from his hometown four hundred miles away. "The economy was not as developed when I was younger, and it was a long way for us. When I came to work here in 1991, I had to change buses twice and have one overnight stop. Now you have the train and freeways," he says.

Better transport and a prosperous Chinese economy have led to a huge increase in domestic visitors, who comprise about 90 percent of today's overall numbers. The Dunhuang Academy has been working with international specialists, including the Getty Conservation Inst.i.tute in Los Angeles, to strike a balance between conservation and tourism. The Getty's conservation scientist Dr. Neville Agnew, one of the first foreign scientists to work on protecting Chinese heritage sites, says this has involved looking at how many visitors the caves can cope with and how to manage them. After a long day working in the caves, Agnew and his team of specialists gather back at the Dunhuang Academy, where amid laptops and charts, they discuss the day's findings and consider how best to protect the caves for the future.

Agnew explains that China's best-known tourist attractions-Beijing's Forbidden City and Xian's Terracotta Warriors-receive many more visitors than Mogao, but the nature of the caves is different. "The Terracotta Warriors have a big shed over them and people can walk around. Many of the cave temples are relatively small with a narrow entrance . . . The tourist industry says, 'Why don't you take more visitors? Take more visitors.' But you can't do that. The site is very, very sensitive."

Visitors see inside about a dozen caves during a two-hour tour, but plans are underway to limit further the time people spend in the World Heritagelisted caves. There is no suggestion the caves will be closed, as has occurred at France's Lascaux Cave with its prehistoric animal paintings. Closure might be in the best long-term interest of the Buddhist caves, but tourism brings much-needed revenue into Gansu, one of China's poorest provinces.

Tourism is not the only threat to the caves; there is the ever-encroaching sand. The movement of the dunes is imperceptible but relentless. On a ridge above the caves, a fence helps reduce the amount of sand blown over the cliff and into the caves. But no fence can stop the advance of the sands which have reclaimed so many Silk Road towns and treasures over the years. The desert, less than three miles from Dunhuang, is expanding by an estimated twelve feet a year. Rivers have run dry, crops have died and even Crescent Lake has shrunk to a fraction of its former size. The water table has fallen as Dunhuang's thirsty population has expanded from 40,000 to 200,000 in the past fifty years.

Walking along a flat sandy expanse above the grottoes, there is an unearthly silence on a windless day. The visitors to the caves are out of sight and earshot in the valley below. Not a breath rustles the scant vegetation, not an insect hums. It is a silence rare in the modern world with the unceasing throb of traffic, aircraft, computers, and cell phones. Perhaps there was a similar silence when the monk Lezun arrived in 366 and, inspired by his golden vision of a thousand Buddhas, carved the first grotto here. It is not hard to imagine why the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas were created in this place of terrifying beauty on the edge of two great deserts, the Taklamakan and the Gobi. One direction is pancake flat, the other sees rolling dunes that stretch to the horizon. People once came to the caves to pray for their own survival. Perhaps the greatest miracle is that the caves themselves have survived.

Picture this: monks sit cross-legged before a long, low table. The smoke of fragrant incense and the sound of resonant chanting fill the room. The monks' gaze shifts from the golden statues around them to small screens held in the hand of each robed figure. "Thus I have heard . . ." It is hardly as romantic as the image of a monk slowly unrolling a long paper sutra. But far-fetched? Just as handwritten scrolls gave way to printed ones such as the Diamond Sutra, so the book and the printed word are undergoing change every bit as dramatic.

Portable devices such as the Kindle and the iPad are transforming how we read. Will the printed book go the way of ca.s.sette tapes, video recorders, pay phones, and manual typewriters? And will the book-lined study become as quaintly old-fashioned as an overstuffed Victorian parlor? It may be premature to write the obituary of the printed book. Theaters have not emptied with the advent of film, nor have paintings been rendered redundant by digital art.

And yet, so many vital elements in the life story of the Diamond Sutra-printing, libraries, reading, even the use of paper-are undergoing profound change. Paper was once a precious resource. In the year 700, a Dunhuang official lamented that paper was so scarce he could not fulfill his promise to copy a sutra. Today, much of the world's paper is thrown away the same day it is printed. But as forests dwindle and as books and other doc.u.ments increasingly begin life on screen, it is possible that paper and the printed book may become more valued again.

There's no doubt the future will be digital. Libraries are at the frontline in the shift from print as their collections are digitized and made available in cybers.p.a.ce. How best to achieve this is still being debated. As centers of learning and understanding, libraries have always been far more than simply storehouses of books. They are keepers of cultural memory that hold safe what we know and encourage further inquiry.

What is changing is how that cultural memory is accessed. The so-called "Heavenly Library" that exists in the cloud of the internet may make available more works than any single "real" library could hold. The move by Google to scan the collections of the world's great libraries and make them available online remains controversial. Advocates compare the move to the development of Gutenberg's printing press, arguing that it will have a democratizing effect. But critics question whether responsibility for digitizing the world's books should rest with a private company, rather than a public non-profit organization. The political and social consequences of the technology are not yet apparent as the Gutenberg Age gives way to the Google Age. Yet if the past is a guide, these will be far-reaching.

Wading through the reams of Stein's correspondence, so carefully preserved in the Bodleian Library in Oxford and on microfilm in the British Library, the handwritten letter already seems a relic of a bygone era. Perhaps today Stein would blog to keep his friends and backers apprised of his journey, or SMS his friend Fred Andrews for a new pair of spectacles. Even Stein's neat cursive script seems beyond the ability of many of us who are more likely to tap, tweet or text a message on a keypad than pick up a pen. Some might wonder, who needs handwriting in an age of the keyboard? But if we don't need it, how long might it be before the ability to read the handwritten word becomes a rare skill, its form as incomprehensible to an average reader as ancient Sogdian?

The knowledge that everything changes is at the heart of the religion that produced the Diamond Sutra. The scroll itself has undergone so many changes, pa.s.sed through countless hands and survived potential catastrophes. It outlived a 1,000-year entombment on the edge of the Gobi Desert, it evaded the looting of Dunhuang, it could so easily have been lost in a mountain stream, sunk at sea en route to Britain or burned in the bombings of World War II. Miraculously, it survived these trials by earth, fire, water, and air. Of all the paradoxes a.s.sociated with the Diamond Sutra, none is greater than the endurance of this text about impermanence. Having survived its elemental trials, the Diamond Sutra has fulfilled a 1,300-year-old promise: that it be freely available to all.

Postscript Percy Allen became president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Stein was a frequent visitor to his home. An Erasmus scholar, Allen traveled extensively in Europe, where he visited libraries great and small. He died in 1931.

Fred Andrews built a house in Srinagar from where he could see across a valley to Stein's camp at Mohand Marg. He returned to England in 1929. He was technical adviser on his brother George Arliss's 1936 film East Meets West. He died in 1957, aged ninety-three.

Chiang-ssu-yeh (Jiang Siye) remained in Kashgar, where he died in the spring of 1922. Stein felt deeply the loss of his devoted companion and helped pay to transport Chiang's body back to his home in Hunan.

Dash the Great remained in Oxford with the Allens. Aged about fourteen, Stein's favorite fox terrier was run over by a bus in Oxford in 1918.

Florence Lorimer spent three years in Kashmir before returning to London. The "Recording Angel" became a buyer of Oriental carpets for a London department store and later a.s.sistant librarian at the Royal Asiatic Society. Aged forty-five she married a retired civil servant. She died in 1967.

George and Catherine Macartney left Kashgar in 1919. They retired to Jersey in the Channel Islands. Lady Macartney penned a memoir of her Kashgar years, An English Lady in Chinese Turkestan. Knighted in 1913, Sir George died on Jersey in 1945, Lady Macartney nearly six years later.

Aurel Stein's grave was tended for nearly thirty years by an Afghan man named Rahimullah, along with the graves of other foreigners buried in the British Cemetery in Kabul. The elderly caretaker died of natural causes in March 2010. His son Abdul Samay has taken on the role.

Abbot w.a.n.g Yuanlu spent the rest of his life at the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas. He died in 1931. His burial stupa is at Mogao, where visitors pa.s.s it daily on their way to his beloved caves.

Acknowledgments.

A journey across more than a thousand years and several continents doesn't happen without great kindness, memorable encounters and eureka moments. It is a journey that began when a scruffy backpacker set down her rucksack in the shabby surrounds of Kashgar's Chini Bagh in 1989. But the seeds for the book might never have ripened without a fleeting computer image of the Mogao Caves glimpsed during a visit to the Getty's Conservation Inst.i.tute in Los Angeles in 2005.

Since then it has become a shared journey during which we have crossed the dunes of the Taklamakan Desert atop reluctant camels, spent quietly thrilling days absorbed in Aurel Stein's letters in the British Library and Bodleian Library and been captivated by the painstaking work to conserve the Diamond Sutra.

His Holiness the fourteenth Dalai Lama made time in his schedule of teachings to discuss the Diamond Sutra. Others also shared their understanding of Buddhism, including Robert Thurman, Paul Harrison, Gary Snyder, Robina Courtin, Wai Cheong Kok and Yoon S. Han. The Nan Tien temple in western Sydney welcomed us to hear pract.i.tioners chant the Diamond Sutra. Renate Ogilvie graciously related her moving personal story.

At the British Library, Susan Whitfield and Frances Wood were generous in their time and knowledge, illuminating in their responses to queries and made invaluable comments on an early draft of the ma.n.u.script. That said, any errors are our own. Mark Barnard opened the door of his conservation studio to us. Lynn Young pointed us to archival gold, and staff of the Asian and African studies reading room were endlessly helpful.

At the British Museum, Helen w.a.n.g shared her expertise on Stein and Florence Lorimer; and Marjorie Caygill her wartime knowledge. Archivists Stephanie Clarke and Julia Flood were enthusiastic in their support.

We are indebted to Colin Harris at the Bodleian Library and Julian Reid, archivist at Merton and Corpus Christi Colleges, Oxford. Stein's biographer Annabel Walker offered insights into the explorer's life. Medi Jones-Jackson and other staff at the National Library of Wales unlocked their secret wartime tunnel for us, and even provided the hard hats.

In Dunhuang, w.a.n.g Xudong, Neville Agnew and his colleagues from the Getty's Conservation Inst.i.tute explained their work at the Mogao Caves, as did Sharon Sullivan, Kirsty Altenburg and Peter Barker.

In Australia, Edmund Capon, former director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, opened his personal library. Gallery curators Jackie Menzies and Liu Yang shared their expertise, as did Lindie Ward from the Powerhouse Museum. Alan Oakley, former editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, gave the precious gift of special leave to work on the book, which Peter Fray kindly extended.

Anne Coombs provided wise counsel and incisive comments on the ma.n.u.script, as she has during three decades of friendship. Brenda O'Neill's eye for detail was meticulous. Julian Droogan and Mark Rossiter read portions of the ma.n.u.script and suggested improvements. We drew on the specialist knowledge of Victor H. Mair, Lukas Nickel, Mark Allon and Judith Snodgra.s.s. Barbara Harper, Linda Mors, Bob Smillie, Susan Varga, Rae Bolotin, Isabelle Li, Tony Twiss, Philippa Drynan and Sasha Anawalt helped in miraculous ways.

At Lyons Press, Holly Rubino and her team have been enthusiastic in their support. Our agents, Pamela Malpas and Lyn Tranter, have been energetic champions. We are grateful to all who helped us weave together the threads of this Silk Road story.

Endnotes A note on spellings: There are numerous possible renderings of Chinese and Turkic names into English. We have generally used the spellings Stein adopted in his books and letters for events set in his day. (The key exceptions are Dunhuang and Xuanzang.) Elsewhere we have favored contemporary spellings for people and places.

CHAPTER 1: THE GREAT RACE.

"more like a log": Aurel Stein, Ruins of Desert Cathay, vol 1, p 24.

"incapable of facing prolonged hard travel": ibid., vol 1, p 9.

"Sadiq now in Chinese prison": Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Stein MS 3, Macartney telegram, April 10, 1906.

CHAPTER 2: SIGNS OF WONDER.

"I wonder whether you have seen": Bodleian, Stein MS 90, John Lockwood Kipling to Stein, May 16, 1902.

"It was a melancholy duty": Aurel Stein, Ancient Khotan, vol 1, p 502.

"A great many of the grottos": Bodleian, Stein MS 294, application of September 14, 1904.

"It seems scarcely possible": ibid.

"The wide-spread interest": ibid.

"center of intellectual sunshine": Jeannette Mirsky, Sir Aurel Stein: Archaeological explorer, p 210.

"A bold demand": ibid., p 212.

"Rejoice": ibid., p 217.

CHAPTER 3: THE LISTENING POST.

"There is a piece of news": Bodleian, Stein MS 96, Macartney to Stein, January 20, 1905.

"another poacher on your preserves": Bodleian, Stein MS 296, Macartney to Stein, October 16, 1905.

"The sooner you are on the field": ibid.

"The absence of the Professor": ibid., October 19, 1905. Extract from Macartney's confidential report dated October 18, 1905.

"There is a good deal": ibid., November 10, 1905.

"Good morning, old fat-head": Albert von Le Coq, Buried Treasures of Chinese Turkestan, p 76.

"I have never believed": Bodleian, Stein MS 297, Stein to Macartney, February 6, 1906.

"Grnwedel is ill": Bodleian, Stein MS 296, Macartney to Stein, December 29, 1905.

"My own plan now": Bodleian, Stein MS 3, Stein to Allen, January 20, 1906.

"The true race": ibid., January 6, 1906.

"the most timid, unenterprising girl": Lady (Catherine) Macartney, An English Lady in Chinese Turkestan, p 2.

"living newspaper": Aurel Stein, Ruins of Desert Cathay, vol 1, p 122.

"Wolves, leopards, and foxes": Catherine Macartney, An English Lady in Chinese Turkestan, p 40.

"Baby had three falls": Bodleian, Stein MS 96, Macartney to Stein, May 7, 1904.

"They tell me": Catherine Macartney, An English Lady in Chinese Turkestan, p 38.

"I sometimes suspected": ibid., p 131.

"easy-going slackness": Bodleian, Stein MS 3, Stein to Allen, June 25, 1906.

"It cost great efforts": ibid.

Bactrian camels are so critically endangered today that fewer than a thousand remain in the wild. See iucnredlist.org and edgeofexistence.org.

"inordinate addiction to opium": Aurel Stein, Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan, p 116.

"captivating Khotan damsel": ibid., p 466.

"shrivelled up with the cold": Bodleian, Stein MS 3, Stein to Allen, June 2, 1906.

"a hardy plant": Bodleian, Stein MS 37, Stein to Andrews, January 31, 1907.

"lively ways": Aurel Stein, Ruins of Desert Cathay, vol 1, p 116.

"They may turn up": Bodleian, Stein MS 3, Stein to Allen, June 19, 1906.

"The rush past": ibid.

"a cave by the seash.o.r.e": Aurel Stein, Ruins of Desert Cathay, vol 1, p 124.

CHAPTER 4: THE MOON AND THE MAIL.

"One may invade the house": Aurel Stein, Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan, p 184.