An Accidental Discovery
On June 22, 1900, a Daoist monk named Wang Yuanlu, the self-appointed guardian of the Mogao Grottoes, made a discovery that would reshape the study of the Silk Road. While clearing sand from a main cave (now known as Cave 16), he noticed a crack in a wall. Behind a layer of plaster and murals, he found a hidden, sealed doorway. Opening it revealed a small chamber, about three meters from floor to ceiling, crammed with a solid mass of manuscript bundles nearly ten feet high.
This chamber, now designated Cave 17, had been sealed around the year 1002 CE. The reasons for its sealing are not definitively known. Theories suggest the documents were hidden to protect them from invasion or that the cave was a sacred repository for worn or damaged religious texts. Originally, the cave was constructed in the 9th century as a memorial chapel for a prominent monk named Hong Bian. The dry desert air of the Gobi had preserved the contents in remarkable condition for nearly 900 years. The total number of items found is estimated to be between 40,000 and 50,000.
A Library of the Silk Road
The contents of the "Library Cave" included Buddhist scriptures. The treasure trove included official records, legal contracts, financial ledgers, calendars, medical texts, and even personal letters. The documents create a detailed picture of life in a multicultural oasis town during the medieval period. The collection’s linguistic diversity is immense, with manuscripts written in Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, Sogdian, Khotanese, and Uyghur, among others.
One of the most significant finds is a copy of the Diamond Sutra, an important Mahayana Buddhist text. A colophon at the end of the scroll states it was printed on May 11, 868 CE, making it the world's oldest dated, complete printed book. The 16-foot-long scroll was made using woodblock printing on seven sheets of paper.
Following the discovery, explorers and archaeologists, including Britain's Aurel Stein in 1907 and France's Paul Pelliot in 1908, learned of the cave. They purchased tens of thousands of manuscripts from Wang Yuanlu, which led to the collection's dispersal across institutions like the British Museum and the Bibliothèque nationale de France.