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[[underlined]] Chapter XI. [[/underlined]]   220.

wide sandy river-b^[[e]]d a dozen miles or so west of the present city of Ta T'ung. After the removal of its capital to Honan, the dynasty began a similar series of sculptured grottoes (extended in^[[|]]later centuries) at Lung Mên, the "Dragon Gate", some ten miles south of Lo-yang (see page 11). About these two sets of grottoes, and about the remarkable school of Buddhist sculpture which grew up during the Northern Wei Dynasty, much has been written. Inspired in its origins perhaps by contacts with regions in the distant west, like the ancient Buddhist center of Khotan (once included in the Northern Wei dominions), this art was in its further development distinctly and unmistakably indigenous to northern China; and from it, in the main, sprang the glories of the sacred sculpture of the great T'ang Dynasty, a century and more later.
     In addition to the matter of excavating in the debris----composed largely of fallen sculptured façades---along the foot of the cliffs at Yün Kang (see pages 5 [[underlined]] sq. [[/underlined]] and [[underlined]] 14 sq. [[/underlined]]), I wished to investigate the abandoned site of the ancient Northern Wei capital, and also the grave-mounds of some of the dynasty's earlier emperors and their consorts, said to exist in/ [[strikethrough]] amhilly [[/strikethrough]] an upland region known as the Fang Shan [[2 Chinese characters]], a number of miles to the north of Ta T'ung. I had also heard a rather indefinite but nevertheless highly interesting rumor to the effect that somewhere in the vicinity of the same city, in a hill called the Chin Shan [[2 Chinese characters]] or "Golden Mount", were three sculptured cave-temples of the Northern Wei period but even earlier than those at Yün Kang. These, I was told, had never been seen by a foreigner, and were quite unknown to the outside world.
    I hoped too that we might be able to locate sites belonging to the ancient kingdom of Chao [[Chinese character]] (403-222 B.C.), many centuries earlier still; for I knew that included in its dominions had been the territory

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