Dunhuang, located in the western part of China's Gansu Province, was an ancient holy seat of Buddhism and a strategic place on the Silk Road, the ancient trade route along which eastern and western culture was transmitted. Approximately forty kilometres southeast at Dunhuang is a steep cliff with an average height of seventeen metres where, from the beginning of the fourth century, people dug Buddhist caves (mogao ku). A stone inscription made by Li Huairang in 698 states that at that time there were already more than one thousand caves, and for this reason, the Mogao caves have also come to be known as the ‘Thousand Buddha caves’ (qianfodong).

At the beginning of this century, the caretaker of the Mogao caves, a Daoist monk called Wang, unexpectedly discovered another cave through a crack which had opened up. In this cave, which had long been sealed off, were preserved many Buddhist scriptures and other documents, the latest of which date from 1002.