Mogao Cave 3

Mogao Cave 3 was built in Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368AD). Cave 3 is a small cave with a truncated pyramidal ceiling. The tent-like square niche in the west wall has a molded landscape and a six armed Avalokitesvara image (without head), the south and north walls inside and outside the niche and both sides of the east wall were used for standing Bodhisanva images of female characteristics such as slender body flower coroneL curving eyebrows, thin eyes and sloping shoulders.
The sidewalls each are occupied by an illustration of thousand-armed and thousand-eyed Avalokitesvara. Take the one on the north wall for example, A standing Avalokitesvara with high chignon is in the center of the gigantic circle, and forty large hands are pained in the innermost circlet with two hands holding a transformed Buddha image on the head. The outermost circlet consists of a thousand hands with an eye in each palm. The head of Avalokitesvara is divided into three layers. The narrow spaces of the two upper comers are occupied respectively by a child-like apsaras, and below them are Laksmi in red and white robes to the left and Vasu mainly in green to the right. On the whole, the hands of Avalokitesvara are dense and orderly, while the ribbons decorated the costumes are numerous and arranged systematically. The color rendering is very simple, only red, white, green and low colors are used, which lends more solemnity to the picture.
Meanwhile, various styles of line drawings are used, such as the twisted reed lines, inflective iron-hard lines, gossamer lines*, and broad top and thin end lines.