Bingling Temple (Chinese: 炳靈寺) is a series of grottoes filled with Buddhist sculpture carved into natural caves and caverns in a canyon along the Yellow River, it is located in Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture (臨夏回族自治州) in Gansu (甘肅) province, China.
Bingling Temple was firstly built in A.D. 420 at the end of Western Qin (西秦), then the work continued and more caves were added.
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‘Bingling’ in Tibetan means ‘Thousand Buddha’, so Bingling Temple Grottoes are also called Thousand-Buddha Caves.
Bingling Temple lies just north of where the Yellow River empties into the Liujiaxia Reservoir (劉家峽水庫), which is some 100 km southeast of Lanzhou (蘭州), the capital of the province.
Bingling Temple has 183 caves and niches, 694 stone statues, 82 clay sculptures, and 900 square meters of murals.
Some of the murals are still well preserved, the colors are still vivid.
Work continued and more grottoes were added during the Wei (魏), Sui (隋), Tang (唐), Song (宋), Yuan (元), Ming (明), and Qing (清) dynasties. The style of each grotto can easily be connected to the typical artwork from its corresponding dynasty.
