Bingling Temple
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- The ink inscription of 420 CE in Cave 169 is the earliest precisely dated inscription known from any cave temple in China.
- Cave 169 lies about 40 metres up the cliff, and when researchers first surveyed the site in 1951 and 1952 they could only study it through binoculars.
- The famous inscription was found only in 1963, during a 50-day survey sponsored by the Gansu government that finally reached the high cave.
- Cave 169 began as a natural cavern in the cliff, which craftsmen reinforced and fitted with carved niches rather than cutting it from scratch.
- Only the upper half of the great Maitreya Buddha is carved from the living rock; its lower half was built up from a mud-based mixture.
- Today the complex counts 216 numbered caves and niches, around 1,000 square metres of murals and 56 small pagodas.
- Bingling is ranked among the three great cave-temple sites of Gansu, together with the Mogao Caves near Dunhuang and the Maijishan Grottoes.
- The grottoes have been a nationally protected heritage site since 1961, and since 2017 they have been managed by the Dunhuang Academy.
Why it is worth it
In a side canyon of the Yellow River, where sheer cliffs rise above the water, hundreds of Buddhas look out from niches and caves cut into the cliff. The Bingling Temple grottoes stretch for about 200 metres along the north side of the gorge and end in a great natural recess, where wooden stairways climb the rock face to higher caves and to a colossal figure of the Maitreya Buddha more than 27 metres tall.
Work here began in the early 5th century under the Western Qin dynasty. Cave 169 preserves an ink inscription dated to 420 CE, the earliest dated record at the site. Carving went on for more than a thousand years, through the Northern Wei, Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, and each period left work in its own recognisable style. In art-historical terms Bingling stands midway, both in geography and in style, between the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan and the great cave temples of central China at Yungang and Longmen. Earthquakes, erosion and looting have taken their toll, yet 694 stone statues and 82 clay sculptures survive, together with wall paintings. Many niches are framed in the shape of an inverted-bowl stupa, a form rarely seen in other Chinese grottoes.
The site has borne several names. It was first called Tangshu Cave, from a Qiang word for "demon cave"; in the Tang it was the Longxing Temple and under the Song the Lingyan Temple. The present name dates from the Ming, and is usually explained as a shortened Tibetan expression meaning "ten thousand Buddhas", though some scholars trace it instead to an old place name of the region. In 2014 Bingling was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as part of the Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an-Tianshan Corridor.
Getting there
The grottoes lie in Yongjing County, Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu, about 100 km south-west of Lanzhou, just above the point where the Yellow River flows into the Liujiaxia Reservoir. Boats cross the reservoir from Liujiaxia, the county seat; a winding road also reaches the site. Linxia is about 27 km away. Lanzhou Zhongchuan International Airport (LHW) is about 94 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Bingling Temple is a series of grottoes filled with Buddhist sculpture carved into natural caves and caverns in a canyon along the Yellow River. It lies just north of where the Yellow River empties into the Liujiaxia Reservoir. Administratively, the site is in Yongjing County of Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture in Gansu province, some 100 km (62 mi) southwest of Lanzhou. This temple, along with other sites along the Silk Road, was inscribed in 2014 on the UNESCO World Heritage List as the Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an-Tianshan Corridor World Heritage Site.
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