BEHIND THE SPRAWLING Dunhuang Research Academy, facing the Mogao Caves, lies a hilltop graveyard for the 29 scholars who lived and died there obsessed with understanding its mysteries.
'Dunhuangology has become a cult,' says Professor Sarah Fraser of Northwestern University in Chicago, one of a small group of experts busy transplanting the caves on to an Internet Web site. Colin Chinnery, of the seven-year-old International Dunhuang Project (IDP) based at the British Library in London, says studies of the caves have 'taken off, especially in the past 10 years'.
'Dunhuangology' is the Chinese equivalent of Egyptology or research into the Dead Sea Scrolls - a global effort to understand a key period in ancient Chinese history. The IDP's newsletter has a thousand subscribers worldwide and Professor Chinnery believes another 1,000 'Dunhuangologists' are in China. The international effort is a fortuitous consequence of the dispersal of manuscripts, discovered a century ago by Taoist monk Wang Yuanlu while sweeping out one of the caves in northern Gansu province.
China has retained about half the documents. Of the rest, about 19,000 manuscripts are in Russia, 13,000 are in Britain and others are scattered throughout 11 countries. France has a collection in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France and the Musee National des Arts Asiatiques Guimet, where Japanese monk Kyodo Jiko has spent 10 years ploughing through 40,000 manuscripts. The Japanese are particularly fascinated by Dunhuang. 'It helps us trace the roots of our own culture,' says Mr Jiko.
In the Tang dynasty (618-907), many Japanese scholars studied in China. Some imported Buddhism, establishing prominent branches like the Pure Land sect and Zen. Others returned home to introduce Tang architecture, dress, music, literature and politics. Japanese tourists are the most numerous among foreign tourists who visit Dunhuang.
Chinese fascination originally stemmed from the mural paintings and Dunhuangology was dominated by painters at first. But Chinese scholars have become intrigued by the trove of Dunhuang documents. 'We have reached a new stage. Dunhuang research groups are now springing up in universities all across China,' says Dunhuang scholar Tan Chanxue, who attended a five-day conference last month to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the discovery of the manuscripts.