Dunhuang (dūn huáng 敦煌) joss, all painted sculptures made of mud, are divided into single and group ones, and have vivid shapes and different presences with the tallest to 33m and shortest to 0.1m only.
In Dunhuang’s 492 grottoes, almost every one of them has flying gods. Flying gods in early caves are stocky with a big mouth and big ears, which is evidently influenced by the flying gods in the Indic and Western Region. However, the artistic image since the Tang Dynasty (táng dài 唐代) (618—907) has completely had the Chinese style, which is without wings and feathers but with flyaway dress and colored ribbons.
According to local legend, in 366 AD a Buddhist monk, Le Zun (lè zūn 乐僔) , had a vision of a thousand Buddhas and inspired the excavation of the caves he envisioned. The number of temples eventually grew to more than a thousand. As Buddhist monks valued austerity in life, they sought retreat in remote caves to further their quest for enlightenment. From the 4th until the 14th century, Buddhist monks at Dunhuang collected scriptures from the west while many pilgrims passing through the area painted murals inside the caves. The cave paintings and architecture served as aids to meditation, as visual representations of the quest for enlightenment, as mnemonic devices, and as teaching tools to inform illiterate Chinese about Buddhist beliefs and stories.
The murals cover 450,000 square feet. The caves were walled off sometime after the 11th century after they had become a repository for venerable, damaged and used manuscripts and hallowed paraphernalia.
Buddhist cave art originated in the second century B.C.E. in Maharashtra, India - an area of commercial importance for trade flows between north and south India. Between the inception at the older site at Ajanta and the completion of further ones at a nearby site at Ellora in the eighth century, some 63 caves were excavated and painted.
With 492 painted grottoes, the Mogao Grottoes have more than eight times as many grottoes as those at India's primary two sites. That said, the Mogao Grottoes should not be understood as an isolated endeavor within China. They are merely the best example of an astonishingly widespread Buddhist cave movement in this nation.

敦煌莫高窟

      莫高窟属全国重点文物保护单位，俗称千佛洞，被誉为20世纪最有价值的文化发现，坐落在河西走廊西端的敦煌，以精美的壁画和塑像闻名于世。它始建于十六国的前秦时期，历经十六国、北朝、隋、唐、五代、西夏、元等历代的兴建，形成巨大的规模，现有洞窟735个，壁画4.5万平方米、泥质彩塑2415尊，是世界上现存规模最大、内容最丰富的佛教艺术圣地。近代以来又发现了藏经洞，内有5万多件古代文物，由此衍生专门研究藏经洞典籍和敦煌艺术的学科——敦煌学。但在近代，莫高窟受到骗取、盗窃，文物大量流失，其宝藏遭到严重破坏。1961年，莫高窟被公布为第一批全国重点文物保护单位之一。1987年，莫高窟被列为世界文化遗产。是中国四大石窟之一。
敦煌莫高窟是甘肃省敦煌市境内的莫高窟、西千佛洞的总称，是我国著名的四大石窟之一，也是世界上现存规模最宏大，保存最完好的佛教艺术宝库。