A Mountain Full of Buddha's

by Shirley Moskow

Crossing the bustling railroad depot in Datong, we pass four old men in blue and gray Mao jackets. They sit on their haunches and play a sidewalk card game. They watch us with as much interest as we watch them.

Though barely 170 miles northwest of Beijing and easily reached by rail or air, until recently Datong (pronounced Ta-tung) has been so far out of tourism’s mainstream that it gave the impression of being inaccessible. Even Red Guards on the rampage during the Cultural Revolution paid it scant attention.

As a result, remnants of Datong’s illustrious past as an ancient capital of China survive largely intact, including one of the most remarkable constructions in  China, the Yungang Caves. The mammoth temple chiseled into a living mountain is inhabited by thousands of stone Buddhas.  The eye is dazzled by the multitudes: sitting Buddhas, and standing Buddhas, laughing Buddhas and thoughtful Buddhas, Buddhas of every shape and size.  They are the oldest stone carvings in China.

More than 1500 years ago, during the Northern Wei Dynasty, this remote dot on the map was a splendid city and cultural center that because of its border location played host to many nationalities. Now, travelers are again finding their way to Datong, in northern Shanxi Province, a notch south of Inner Mongolia.  

The mountain-turned-temple is all the more astonishing because the neighboring landscape is peppered with dreary coal mines and miners’ hovels.  Home to one million people, Datong is situated on the Loess Plateau, often called “a sea of coal.”  It is actually about 3900 feet above sea level.

The mountain appears inaccurately named. Yungang means “cloudy hill.” Yet despite the coal mine, on the day I visit the sky is cloudless. In front of the buff-colored mountain, sunbeams dance on the monastery’s tiered roofs, spread like great wings feathered with brilliant blue tiles. raziers

In A.D. 460, Buddhist monks began the temple monastery complex to glorify the royal house, which had established Buddhism as the official state religion, and to sanctify Buddha, The Enlightened One.

For three decades, monks and slaves worked together with simple hand tools to honeycomb the sandstone mountain. They hewed out 53 grottoes and more than 51,000 stone bas reliefs and statues of Buddha, ranging from thumb-size to a 56-foot tall colossus.

The temple is a religious shrine. Nevertheless, imaginative animal masks that ornament the monastery’s facade look down on hurly-burly that calls to mind a county fair. Small arts and antiques shops host a steady stream of browsers and buyers.

Outdoors, child-sized wood chairs accommodate patrons who feast on local noodle and meat specialties at makeshift restaurants, long tables consisting of a board over barrels. Braziers launch fragrant aromas that blend with musky incense from the caves.

Some visitors picnic and play on the trampled ribbon of grass that helps to define the path. Others pose for photographs in front of the caves. Young parents in jeans and Western style fashions dote on their one beautifully dressed toddler. School children in Young Pioneer uniforms -- black slacks and skirts, white blouses and blazing red neckerchiefs -- gleefully scamper over the rough stone steps. Oblivious of distractions, wizened monks, their head shaved, twig-like bodies draped with short brown or blue robes, legs wrapped in matching fabric, feet clad in sandals, pad along, pausing from time to time before the Buddhas. Chimes of temple bells, fragile as soap bubbles, sail the air.

The mood changes at the threshold to the first cave. Thick stone smothers outside sound and light. It takes a moment to recover from the sudden sensory deprivation, just long enough for the spirituality of the space to settle.

In the gloom, this cave resembles a primitive cathedral. Pale light rains from what seems an open clerestory window. In fact, that aperture near the top was the mountain’s original entrance. Slaves, mostly prisoners of war, hacking downward, hollowed out the massive chamber and fashioned the presented entry. A few, more talented captives helped with the carvings.

A huge Buddha occupies the cave’s shadowy center. In the footsteps of ancient holy men, I circle the statue, passing through 15-foot long tunnel at the rear. Formerly used for religious rituals, it is cool and eerie. Heavy blackness echoes with mystical overtones. Voices ascend to the high ceiling and are transformed into prayerful paeans, reverberating  like sutras chanted by Buddhist monks.

Many caves are in remarkably good condition -- jade green paint, gilt, pinks, and yellows are still distinct. Campfires during the Japanese occupation in the 1940s caused smoke damage along the lower part of the first grotto but, fortunately, the bas relief recounting the life of Sakyamuni, the Indian prince who became the Buddha, was not affected.

Chen, our local guide, explained the frieze of small, oblong scenes, likes frames of film that tell Buddha’s story. The first picture shows a woman lying beside a stream and a flying elephant. Chen says, “Buddha was a human being, like us. His father, a king in India, married a woman who didn’t have babies so he took another wife. The second wife was sleeping by the side of the river and a white elephant flying down from heaven deposited a seed in her mouth. When she swallowed it, she became pregnant. That is why the elephant is a holy animal.”

Yungang’s caves depict Buddha in many poses, but other celestial beings abide in the grottoes, too. There are minutely detailed bodhisattvas, disciples who have elected to forego nirvana in order to save others, and arhats, disciples who have achieved total ecstasy. Mean-looking stone soldiers guard some caves; brilliantly painted designs cover several ceilings and walls.

The 48-foot tall seated Buddha in Cave 20, among the oldest at Yungang, is much admired by archaeologists. Wind and water have eroded the cave along with the timber facade that once protected this finely proportioned giant. Only a visor of stone ledge now shields his almond eyes from the sun, where he sits in quiet contemplation, watching and waiting for visitors.

© 1999 Shirley Moskow

-Updated 7-24-99-

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