Breaking the Seal of a Thousand Years: Buddhist Manuscripts from Dunhuang

About the exhibition

Dunhuang, an oasis city in China's Gansu Province, was a gateway on the Silk Road, and the Mogao cave temples were carved there over many centuries. One of those caves, Cave 17, known as the Library Cave, held tens of thousands of objects sealed for close to a thousand years. Its chance discovery in 1900 gave rise to the field of Dunhuang studies.

This small display in the Central Asia room on the museum's third floor centers on four handwritten Buddhist sutra scrolls that the Yi Royal Household Museum bought during the Japanese colonial period. The museum says they are on public view for the first time, following a research report on the scrolls that it published in 2025.

The room lists three groups and eight objects. Among them are copies of the Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom, the Great Perfection of Wisdom Sutra, the Shurangama Sutra and a Sutra of Buddha Names, shown with a work the museum titles Meditating Monk.

The display is in the free permanent galleries, so it can be part of any visit to the museum.