The Thousand Buddhas

Synopsis

The purpose of this publication is to place before students interested in Eastern art reproductions of select specimens from among the great collection of ancient Buddhist paintings which in the course of the explorations of my second Central-Asian journey, carried out in 1906–8 under the orders of the Government of India, I had the good fortune to recover from a walled-up chapel at the ‘Caves of the Thousand Buddhas’ near Tun-huang. The essential facts concerning their discovery will be found summarized in Mr. Laurence Binyon’s Introductory Essay.

Those who may wish for details of the circumstances attending it, and for some account of the local conditions which explain the preservation of these relics of ancient Buddhist art in the distant region where the westernmost Marches of true China adjoin the great deserts of innermost Asia, will find them in my personal narrative of that expedition. They have been recorded still more fully in Serindia, the final report on the results of my explorations, recently issued from the Oxford University Press.

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