Rituals in the Last Days of the Dharma: Connections Between the Thousand Buddhas of Zhag Cave in Western Tibet and Silk Road Relics at Dunhuang

The Zhag Cave in western Tibet, dated to the 11th to 12th centuries, features four walls fully adorned with images of the Thousand Buddhas of the Bhadrakalpa (Fortunate Aeon). According to the Tibetan inscriptions, the arrangement of the Thousand Buddhas creates a circumambulatory space for worship and confession, enabling practitioners to purify their sins. Four aspects of the Zhag Cave are comparable to those of Dunhuang. First, among the inscriptions is the Pratītyasamutpāda-gāthā, elaborated in the Śālistamba Sūtra, the Tibetan manuscripts of which have been unearthed in both western Tibet and Dunhuang. Second, the way of depicting Thousand Buddhas on four walls inside the cave could be found in earlier caves from the 5th to 6th centuries at Dunhuang. Third, the specific practice of only depicting the Bhadrakalpa Thousand Buddhas on the walls parallels similar caves from the mid-10th to early 13th centuries at Dunhuang. Fourth, the motifs depicted along the wall edges correspond with the prevalent themes found in the Bhadrakalpa Thousand Buddhas transformation tableaux during the 9th to 13th centuries, reflecting the apogee of Bhadrakalpa Thousand Buddhas devotion. These connections prompt us to think about the ways in which Western Tibet was part of the Silk Road network. I argue that this shared iconographic and ritual framework embodies the intertwined religious practices of the Dharma-ending Age (Mofa 末法) thought and Buddhist revival movements along the Silk Road, explaining these complex interconnections between the Zhag Cave and the Dunhuang relics within the broader context of religious beliefs and socio-cultural patterns.