Доклады Международного конгресса ИИСАА. Т. 1

III. Far East, South and South-East Asia / Дальний Восток, Южная и Юго-Восточная Азия 566 Proceedings of the International Congress on Historiography and Source Studies of Asia and Africa.Vol. I. 2020 originally intended for the medita- tion of the famous monk Hongbian (?–862), who headed the Buddhist community in Shazhou (now Dun- huang) during the Tang dynasty 1 . After the death of Hongbian, this small cave in the northern wall of the corridor of cave № 16, was devoted to his memory by rela- tives and students by putting up a very realistic statue of the monk and installing a stone slab. In the XI century, monks of the Mogao caves gathered thousands of man- uscripts and drawings made on silk and paper that had been accumu- lated over many years into this par- ticular cave and buried the entrance to it, hiding trace of the treasures’ resting place by covering the newly erected wall with paintings. Since its sensational discovery almost 900 years later, it has become known as the “library of the Mogao Caves” ( 莫高窟 藏經洞 mogaoku zangjingdong ) or the “Dunhuang Library” ( 敦煌藏經洞 dunhuang zangjingdong ) and opened a completely unique world to researchers. Regarding the question of why the documents and relics were so reliably hidden, scholars put forward two main hypotheses. According to the first of them, the monks hid the treasures before leaving the monastery for an extended period of time, for unknown reasons. According to another hypothesis, the monks hid these documents and sacred relics because of the dangers associated with military conflicts, nomadic raids, and trade caravans traveling along the routes of the Great contain numerous data on history, geography, religion, economics, ethnography, linguistics, literature, art, science and technology of China and the “Western states” of Central Asia from the time of the Northern dynasties (386–581) to the Northern Song era, as well as Taoist, Buddhist and Confucian philosophical thought (Ahmetshin N. H . Tayny Shelkovogo puti [The mysteries of the Silk Road]. Moscow: Veche, 2002. P. 383; Dmitriev S. V. Peshherniy kompleks Dunhuan. Istoriya i izuchenie [The cave complex of Dunhuang. His- tory and study] // The East. Afro-Asian societies: history and modernity . 2011, № 4. P. 108). 1 He was appointed as Chief Buddhist Priest in the region of the Hexi Corridor after the successful uprising of Zhang Yichao against the power of the Tibetan rulers in 848. See: Ahmetshin N. H . Tayny Shelkovogo puti. P. 75. Fig. 1a. Entrance to cave № 16–17, where the “Dunhuang Library” was discovered in 1900