Mogao Cave 17 Library Cave

Record summary

Mogao Cave 17, commonly called the Library Cave, was sealed around the early eleventh century and rediscovered in 1900. It contained tens of thousands of Buddhist, administrative, literary, and religious manuscripts in Chinese, Tibetan, Khotanese, and other languages, along with paintings and textiles. The reasons for sealing the chamber, the history of its accumulation, and the circumstances of dispersal by twentieth-century expeditions remain debated. It is crucial for comparing textual transmission and multicultural frontier life, but catalogues and institutional histories must be read alongside the objects themselves.