Center for the Art of East Asia

A current project, Chinese Buddhist Grottoes: A Sourcebook, is the compilation of a volume on the major Buddhist cave temple sites of China. Begun with a workshop that invited a group of scholar specialists to meet at the University of Chicago in 2019, it will include ten chapters authored by international experts who will produce informative surveys of cave sites in historical and geographical contexts and will provide extensive references for further reading and research. It will be the first volume of its kind in English.

The publication will be edited by Wu Hung and is much anticipated. It has received funding from the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago and from generous private donors.

Buddhist grottoes first appeared as religious monuments on the Indian sub-continent, and with the transmission of Buddhism in the early first millennium, cave temple sites created by devotees to generate Buddhist benefit and express the power of royal patrons spread across Asia. From the fourth century in the early medieval period into later centuries many hundreds of Buddhist caves with carved sculptural images were created in diverse regions of China. Though scholars have carried out much research on Chinese Buddhist grotto sites, to date there has been no single book in English that provides an overview of their artistic production together with a compilation of bibliographic materials.

To fill this gap, the Center for the Art of East Asia at the University of Chicago and has organized a team of scholars to collaborate on compiling and writing a handbook on history of Chinese Buddhist cave temples—art and visual culture. The work will serve as an essential reference to promote further study, research, and teaching of Buddhist art and architecture. The volume will include an introductory essay by Wu Hung and nine chapters by scholar experts on particular cave complexes who will cover art and architectural features and use of materials, and patronage within geographical, and historical contexts.

A planning workshop, held in May 2019 brought a panel of scholars in the U.S. to Chicago to discuss the compiling and writing of such an ambitious work and invited a select group of international experts to participate. The workshop welcomed the university community to attend presentations by the scholars as well as the roundtable discussions.