The Buddhists
took advantage of this conception to construct, with money from the
emperor, the vast and famous cave-temple of Yuen-kang, in northern
Shansi. If we come from the bare plains into the green river valley, we
may see to this day hundreds of caves cut out of the steep cliffs of the
river bank. Here monks lived in their cells, worshipping the deities of
whom they had thousands of busts and reliefs sculptured in stone, some
of more than life-size, some diminutive. The majestic impression made
today by the figures does not correspond to their original effect, for
they were covered with a layer of coloured stucco.

We know only few names of the artists and craftsmen who made these
objects. Probably some at least were foreigners from Turkestan, for in
spite of the predominantly Chinese character of these sculptures, some
of them are reminiscent of works in Turkestan and even in the Near East.
In the past the influences of the Near East on the Far East--influences
traced back in the last resort to Greece--were greatly exaggerated; it
was believed that Greek art, carried through Alexander's campaign as far
as the present Afghanistan, degenerated there in the hands of Indian
imitators (the so-called Gandhara art) and ultimately passed on in more
and more distorted forms through Turkestan to China. Actually, however,
some eight hundred years lay between Alexander's campaign and the Toba
period sculptures at Yuen-kang and, owing to the different cultural
development, the contents of the Greek and the Toba-period art were
entirely different. We may say, therefore, that suggestions came from
the centre of the Greco-Bactrian culture (in the present Afghanistan)
and were worked out by the Toba artists; old forms were filled with a
new content, and the elements in the reliefs of Yuen-kang that seem to us
to be non-Chinese were the result of this synthesis of Western
inspiration and Turkish initiative. It is interesting to observe that
all steppe rulers showed special interest in sculpture and, as a rule,
in architecture; after the Toba period, sculpture flourished in China in
the T'ang period, the period of strong cultural influence from Turkish
peoples, and there was a further advance of sculpture and of the
cave-dwellers' worship in the period of the "Five Dynasties" (906-960;
three of these dynasties were Turkish) and in the Mongol period.

But not all Buddhists joined the "Church", just as not all Taoists had
joined t