Guyang Cave

The Guyang Cave is the oldest in the Longmen complex, begun before the Northern Wei emperor transferred his capital to Luoyang in 494 CE and continuing for several decades thereafter. It contains some of the finest early Wei-style Buddhist carving, with a formal, angular quality that distinguishes it from the more flowing Tang work visible elsewhere in the site. The main niche contains a large Buddha with the distinctive elongated face and stylised drapery of the Northern Wei aesthetic; the surrounding walls are covered with hundreds of donation niches carved by nobles and officials commemorating their piety.

The twenty calligraphy inscriptions that made this cave famous among scholars are cut into the upper registers of the walls and require some squinting to read — the characters are incised rather than painted, and the lighting in the cave is often poor. Bring a torch if you want to examine the calligraphy closely. The cave is one of the larger ones in the complex and is usually less crowded than Fengxian Temple and Wanfo Cave.

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A story
The twenty calligraphy inscriptions known as the "Longmen Twenty" were carved into the walls of Guyang Cave between 495 and 520 CE by donors commemorating their contributions. Later scholars identified them as masterpieces of the Wei-style regular script — a form of calligraphy that became the foundation of one of the two main streams of Chinese character writing. For centuries, students of calligraphy made rubbings of these inscriptions to study from; the practice removed enough surface stone that some inscriptions are noticeably shallower than they were a hundred years ago.

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