Yungang

The first comprehensive analysis of its kind in any western language, this volume provides a social art history of Yungang: a fifth-century rock-cut court cave complex, UNESCO World Heritage site, and one of the greatest Buddhist monuments of all time. Recent archaeological discoveries have shed significant new light on the functions of different sections of the cave complex, and it is now possible to understand where the monks lived and translated literary texts. Illustrated throughout, this re-examination of the cave chapels combines previous scholarship with more than a decade of first hand field research, and will raise, and perhaps answer, pivotal questions in art history.