Yungang’s Five Caves: The Intersection of Faith, Power, and Survival

Today, we’ll talk about how five monumental Buddha statues modeled after Northern Wei emperors were created to protect Buddhism during times of persecution and ensure the dynasty’s legacy endured well into the future.

Transcript

Yungang’s Five Caves: The Intersection of Faith, Power, and Survival

Today, we’ll talk about how five monumental Buddha statues modeled after Northern Wei emperors were created to protect Buddhism during times of persecution and ensure the dynasty’s legacy endured well into the future.

On May 11, experts and scholars from China, Japan, Italy, and other countries gathered in the city of Datong, central China’s Shanxi Province, for the 2025 Grotto Temple Protection and Inheritance Academic Symposium. The event focused on the conservation and innovative transmission of cultural heritage.

Regarded as one of the cradles of Chinese civilization, Shanxi is home to numerous grotto temples. Among them, the Yungang Grottoes in Datong, which is recognized as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site, features 45 caves and more than 51,000 statues dating back more than 1,500 years.

The Yungang Grottoes feature many caves that were carved during different periods, but the most striking of these are Caves 16 to 20. These five earliest grottoes are collectively known as the “Five Caves of Tanyao,” named after the designer and builder of these five Buddha statues.

Let’s first talk about Tanyao. Due to the distant era he lived in, historical records are scarce. It is generally believed that Tanyao was a foreigner – a high-ranking monk from Central Asia or the Western Regions – because he lived during the time when Buddhism was spreading from the West into the Central Plains of China. Tanyao initially oversaw the construction of the Tiantishan Grottoes in present-day Wuwei of western China’s Gansu Province. These are considered the earliest grottoes in China and are known as the “ancestor of grottoes.” They were built under the Northern Liang regime, founded by a branch of the Xiongnu people during the chaotic period of the Sixteen Kingdoms.

In those war-torn times, political powers in the north rose and fell in quick succession. Various ethnic regimes competed to adopt Buddhism in order to assert cultural dominance and meet the spiritual needs of the populace.

However, Buddhism did not bring lasting stability to Northern Liang, which soon was conquered by the Northern Wei. The Northern Wei was a pivotal dynasty in Chinese history, ending the disunity of the Sixteen Kingdoms and unifying the north. Later, the Northern Wei implemented a policy of sinicization, playing a crucial role in the continuation of Han Chinese culture. Yet, it was also one of the bloodiest dynasties in Chinese history: of its 14 emperors, 10 died unnatural deaths, and only 4 died of natural causes – and even then, they died young. According to traditional Chinese beliefs, very few of them could be said to have died a “good death.”

So why did this happen? Many later scholars attribute it to a policy established by the founding emperor of Northern Wei, Tuoba Gui. The policy can be summarized as this: “When the son is honored, the mother must die.” The purpose of such a policy was to prevent empress dowagers and their clans from interfering in state affairs. As a result, when a crown prince was appointed, his birth mother would be executed. This practice had been used before – most notably by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty – but only in an isolated case. In Northern Wei, however, it became institutionalized and applied consistently, making the palace a place of unending bloodshed from the very beginning of the dynasty.

Tuoba Gui, Emperor Daowu of Northern Wei, was the model for the famous colossal open-air Buddha in Cave 20 of the Yungang Grottoes. He founded the Northern Wei at the age of 15 and began a series of military campaigns, defeating nearly all neighboring regimes and laying the foundation for his dynasty. But in his later years, his temperament changed drastically, and he began killing indiscriminately. After appointing his son Tuoba Si as crown prince, he had the boy’s mother executed. The young prince was devastated, weeping uncontrollably. And fearing his father’s wrath, he fled the palace.

Soon after, Tuoba Gui imprisoned another favored concubine – possibly planning to make her son, Tuoba Yu, the new crown prince. This incited Tuoba Shao, a hot-tempered 16-year-old prince, to break into the palace overnight and kill his father with a single strike. Thus, the great founding emperor Tuoba Gui met a violent end at the age of just 39. Ironically, in the context of Northern Wei emperors, this already made him one of the longest-lived rulers – second only to one other.

Tuoba Si later returned to the capital with his troops, killed his brother Tuoba Shao to quell the rebellion, and ascended the throne as Emperor Mingyuan. Tuoba Si was considered a relatively good emperor, but he reigned for only a little over a decade before dying of illness brought on by the rigors of war. He was only 32 at the time.

The successor, Tuoba Tao, became the third emperor of the Northern Wei and was famously known as Emperor Taiwu. He was a formidable and powerful ruler who, during his reign, unified northern China and pushed his military campaigns from the Yellow River region all the way to the banks of the Yangtze River. As mentioned earlier, it was Emperor Taiwu who conquered the Northern Liang kingdom.

After the fall of Northern Liang, Tanyao – the monk who had once overseen the construction of the Tiantishan Grottoes for the Liang royal family – became a captive. Whether as a master craftsman or an accomplished monk, he was exactly the kind of high-level talent the Northern Wei dynasty urgently needed. Tanyao was taken to the Northern Wei capital of Pingcheng, modern-day Datong, where he received generous treatment and established connections with the ruling Tuoba family.

Emperor Taiwu had a profound impact on Chinese history – not only for unifying the north but also for initiating the first of the four major anti-Buddhist persecutions in Chinese history, known collectively as “the four suppressions of Buddhism.”

Since its founding, the Northern Wei dynasty had seen its emperors deeply revere Buddhism. So, why did Tuoba Tao turn against it? The turning point came during a campaign to suppress a rebellion. While dealing with the unrest, Emperor Taiwu discovered that a temple in present-day Shaanxi was secretly stockpiling weapons, providing financial support and shelter to the rebels. Known for his ruthless disposition, Taiwu flew into a rage and ordered a crackdown on Buddhism.

Unlike later anti-Buddhist campaigns, which mainly forced monks to return to secular life and reclaimed temple-owned land for economic reasons, this first persecution was brutal: countless monks and nuns faced death – their lives hanging by a thread.

Fortunately, at that time, Emperor Taiwu’s crown prince, Tuoba Huang, was serving as regent in the court and responsible for carrying out the emperor’s orders. Tuoba Huang knew his father was acting out of rage, and while he had no choice but to enforce the decree to suppress Buddhism, he was a devout believer himself. So, when it came to execution, he deliberately slowed down the process, causing delays and reducing the severity of the measures. This gave Tanyao and a number of other eminent monks the opportunity and time to escape from Pingcheng.

Nevertheless, this maneuver ultimately brought disaster upon Tuoba Huang. His political enemies, especially Zong Ai – the emperor’s favored eunuch – seized the chance to accuse one of the crown prince’s trusted ministers of plotting rebellion. Enraged by the supposed betrayal, Emperor Taiwu immediately ordered the execution of the minister. Tormented by fear and grief, Tuoba Huang soon fell seriously ill and died.

Upon his son’s death, Emperor Taiwu was filled with regret. Zong Ai, realizing that the emperor might now take revenge for the crown prince’s death, decided to strike first. He entered the palace and assassinated Emperor Taiwu. And so, the once-mighty Tuoba Tao died in confusion and betrayal at the hands of a eunuch at just 45 years old, which ironically, was long enough to make him the longest-lived emperor in the history of Northern Wei.

After Emperor Taiwu’s death, Zong Ai installed the late crown prince’s younger brother on the throne. Yet within six months, Zong Ai killed the new emperor as well. The court officials, shocked that Zong Ai had now murdered two emperors in succession, finally rose up, executed Zong Ai, and enthroned Tuoba Jun – son of the late crown prince Tuoba Huang. He became known as Emperor Wencheng.

Emperor Wencheng is remembered in history for two particularly notable achievements. One was his marriage to Empress Feng, a woman of the Feng clan who would later become the famed Empress Dowager Feng – a key figure who promoted the full-scale sinicization of Northern Wei and played a pivotal role in preserving Han Chinese civilization. The other was his complete reversal of Emperor Taiwu’s anti-Buddhist policy, instead becoming a vigorous supporter of Buddhism.

He appointed the eminent monk Tanyao as “Sramana General-in-Chief”, the highest-ranking official in charge of all Buddhist and Daoist affairs across Northern Wei. Upon taking office, Tanyao established formal institutions, secured stable economic support for temples, and organized the large-scale translation of Buddhist scriptures. But most importantly – and getting to the main point of today’s podcast – he initiated the excavation of the Yungang Grottoes.

Having personally witnessed the bloodshed and terror of the anti-Buddhist persecutions, Tanyao constantly feared that such tragedies might one day return. Seeking to allow Buddhism to permanently take root in China and be spared from destruction by future emperors, he drew inspiration from the Indian and Central Asian practice of carving monumental grottoes. His idea was simple but powerful: if the Buddha statues were carved large enough – grand and imposing – they would awe officials and the public alike, and would be physically difficult to destroy. Even if someone wished to erase them, it would take enormous effort.

But beyond size, Tanyao had an even more ingenious idea. He proposed modeling each of the Buddha statues after the physical likenesses of the five emperors of Northern Wei up to that point – from the dynasty’s founder Tuoba Gui to the reigning Emperor Wencheng, Tuoba Jun. This way, the images would not only serve their religious purpose but also honor imperial ancestors, ensuring that future rulers – even if they turned against Buddhism – would hesitate to destroy what were essentially portraits of their forefathers.

This plan won the full support and approval of Emperor Wencheng. Thus, Tanyao began excavating the first five caves of the Yungang Grottoes – Caves 16 to 20 – each corresponding to one of the five emperors. Within two of them, he incorporated some especially thoughtful design elements.

Among the “Five Caves of Tanyao,” the largest Buddha statue is naturally that of the founding emperor, Daowu (Tuoba Gui). But what about the third emperor – Emperor Taiwu, Tuoba Tao – who was infamous for persecuting Buddhism? How could he be portrayed as a Buddha? Yet, since he was the reigning emperor’s grandfather, leaving him out was not an option. So, Tanyao came up with a clever solution: he dressed the statue in a heavy “Thousand-Buddha Robe,” adorned with over a thousand small Buddha heads, symbolizing the immense karmic debt Tuoba Tao owed to the Buddhist community. The statue’s hands were posed in a gesture of repentance, and the weight of the robe represented the lasting burden he was to bear.

As for the fourth emperor, who was placed on the throne by the eunuch Zong Ai and quickly killed by him, Tanyao made a significant adjustment. Instead of portraying this short-lived ruler, he replaced him with a statue of the late Crown Prince Tuoba Huang – Emperor Wencheng’s father. After all, it was Tuoba Huang who had slowed the enforcement of Emperor Taiwu’s anti-Buddhist decree, saving countless monks and nuns, though at the cost of his own life. Still, since Tuoba Huang never officially became emperor, his statue was made slightly shorter than the others – subtly indicating that even a Buddha must compromise with worldly rules, and that even sanctity bends before imperial power.

Tanyao’s approach, even by modern standards, proved remarkably effective. His “Five Caves” sparked a wave of Buddhist grotto carving throughout northern China. Over the next century, the Yungang Grottoes expanded from the original five caves to 45 major caves and over 200 subsidiary niches. Buddhism flourished across China alongside this monumental artistry. With Emperor Xiaowen’s later reforms and the relocation of the capital from Pingcheng to Luoyang, a new golden age began – marked by the grand, centuries-long excavation of the Longmen Grottoes.

Today, both the Yungang and Longmen Grottoes are UNESCO World Cultural Heritage sites, admired around the world. And in the Five Caves of Tanyao, the five great Buddhas – modeled on emperors who witnessed the rise, fall, and revival of Buddhism – still sit in solemn majesty, silently watching the tides of Chinese history. 

Well, that’s the end of our podcast. Our theme music is by the famous film score composer Roc Chen. We want to thank our writer Lü Weitao, translator Wang Yuyan, and copy editor Pu Ren. And thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, please tell a friend so they, too, can understand The Context.