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Sir Marc Aurel Stein (usually known as Aurel Stein) KCIE, FBA (Hungarian: Stein Márk Aurél) (26 November 1862 – 26 October 1943) was a Hungarian-born British archaeologist, mainly concerned with exploring ancient Central Asia. He was also a professor at various Indian universities.
Sir Marc Aurel Stein (usually known as Aurel Stein) KCIE, FBA (Hungarian: Stein Márk Aurél) (26 November 1862 – 26 October 1943) was a Hungarian-born British archaeologist, mainly concerned with exploring ancient Central Asia. He was also a professor at various Indian universities.
In the early 1900s, a Chinese Daoist named Wang Yuanlu appointed himself guardian of some of the Mogao Caves. Wang discovered a walled up area behind one side of a corridor leading to a main cave. Behind the wall was a small cave stuffed with an enormous hoard of manuscripts dating from 406 to 1002 CE. These included old hemp paper scrolls in Chinese and many other languages, paintings on hemp, silk or paper, numerous damaged figurines of Buddhas, and other Buddhist paraphernalia.<br/><br/> The subject matter in the scrolls covers diverse material. Along with the expected Buddhist canonical works are original commentaries, apocryphal works, workbooks, books of prayers, Confucian works, Daoist works, Nestorian Christian works, works from the Chinese government, administrative documents, anthologies, glossaries, dictionaries, and calligraphic exercises. Wang sold the majority of them to Aurel Stein in 1907 for 220 pounds.
The Taklamakan is one of the largest sandy deserts in the world, ranking 18th in size in a ranking of the world's largest non-polar deserts. It covers an area of 270,000 km2 (100,000 sq mi) of the Tarim Basin, 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) long and 400 kilometres (250 mi) wide. It is crossed at its northern and at its southern edge by two branches of the Silk Road as travelers sought to avoid the arid wasteland.
Image of Avalokitesvara from the Mogao Caves, Dunhuang (910 CE). From Cave 17 at Qian Fo Dong. Collected by Sir Marc Aurel Stein, c. 1902. Avalokiteśvara ("Lord who looks down") is a bodhisattva who embodies the compassion of all Buddhas. He is one of the more widely revered bodhisattvas in mainstream Mahayana Buddhism.
Dandan Oilik is a deserted historical town and desert oasis in the Taklamakan Desert of China. Dandan Oilik was an important (though small) centre of local Buddhism and trade on the Silk Road. Its name means 'Houses of Ivory' and has been the site of a small number of significant archeological finds.<br/><br/> Having been abandoned many hundreds of years ago, the oasis was found and lost to shifting desert sands several times. Most recently, a German expedition led by Christoph Baumer found the city based on the accounts of previous explorers such as Sir Aurel Stein, and uncovered relics dating to the 7th and 8th centuries. They also marked its GPS position, and the city is now being studied by Chinese archeologists.
Manichaeism was one of the major Iranian Gnostic religions, originating in Sassanid Persia. Although most of the original writings of the founding prophet Mani (c. 216–276 CE) have been lost, numerous translations and fragmentary texts have survived.<br/><br/> Manichaeism taught an elaborate cosmology describing the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness. Through an ongoing process which takes place in human history, light is gradually removed from the world of matter and returned to the world of light from which it came. Its beliefs can be seen as a synthesis of Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism.<br/><br/> Manichaeism thrived between the third and seventh centuries, and at its height was one of the most widespread religions in the world. Manichaean churches and scriptures existed as far east as China and as far west as the Roman Empire. Manichaeism survived longer in the east, and appears to have finally faded away after the 14th century in southern China.
The Tangut script (Chinese: 西夏文 xī xià wén) was a logographic writing system, used for writing the extinct Tangut language of the Western Xia Dynasty.<br/><br/> According to the latest count, 5863 Tangut characters are known, excluding variants. The Tangut characters are similar in appearance to Chinese characters, with the same type of strokes, but the methods of forming characters in the Tangut writing system are significantly different from those of forming Chinese characters.
Image of Avalokitesvara from the Mogao Caves, Dunhuang. Collected by Sir Marc Aurel Stein, c. 1902. Avalokiteśvara ('Lord who looks down') is a bodhisattva who embodies the compassion of all Buddhas. He is one of the more widely revered bodhisattvas in mainstream Mahayana Buddhism.<br/><br/> The lesser scenes portrayed around the main portrait show a man in stocks, another menaced by a snake, and a third about to be beheaded.<br/><br/> The Mogao Caves, or Mogao Grottoes (Chinese: mò gāo kū), also known as the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas and Dunhuang Caves, form a system of 492 temples 25 km (15.5 miles) southeast of the center of Dunhuang, an oasis strategically located at a religious and cultural crossroads on the Silk Road, in Gansu province, China.<br/><br/> The caves contain some of the finest examples of Buddhist art spanning a period of 1,000 years. The first caves were dug out 366 AD as places of Buddhist meditation and worship. The Mogao Caves are the best known of the Chinese Buddhist grottoes and, along with Longmen Grottoes and Yungang Grottoes, are one of the three famous ancient sculptural sites of China. The caves also have famous wall paintings.