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Introduction
The
Library Cave is another name of the 17th cave of the Mogao Grottoes.
It is famous for the discovery of thousands of ancient sutras, documents,
art works and other cultural relics here.
For
some reason, this cave was shut down and became a sutra cave in
the early 11th century. Because no trustworthy records were discovered,
the time and reason for its closure became a complicated legal case
of history.
On
June 22, 1900, Wang Yuanlu, a Taoist living in a Dunhuang temple,
accidentally discovered the Library Cave and unearthed over 50,000
pieces of sutras, documents, embroideries, silk paintings, paintings
on paper and musical and other instruments. This world-shocking
discovery provides numerous rich valuable materials for the study
of history, geography, religion, economy, politics, nationality,
language, literature, art, science and technology of China and Asia
as a whole.
Unfortunately, under the particular historical circumstance wherein
the late Qing Government was corrupt and incompetent and the western
powers were invading China, explorers from the Britain, France,
Japan, Russia and other countries, soon after the discovery of the
Library Cave, came to Dunhuang one after another,and cheated Wang
Yuanlu out of a large amount of Dunhuang relics, with the result
that the majority of the relics were plundered and scattered around
the world and only a small part remains at home.
The
first person came to loot Dunhuang relics is a British man, Stein.
Following him came the French, Paul Pelliot. Later, many other so-called
explorers swarmed to Dunhuang and pillaged relics of Dunhuang. They
were from Japan, Russia, the United States and so on.
Here
we'd like to introduce to you their plundering behavior one by one.
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