In the Mogao Grottoes of Dunhuang,there are more than two hundred caves with murals concerned with music and dance.The author of the present paper thinks that the formation of the music and dance murals is decided by the four factors:①it is a result of the development of the Chinese traditional musical paintings.②There is a profound rational connotation.The main point is the combination of the Confucian musical ideology and Buddhism.③The music and dance murals are of the symbal character. ④The artists made use of artistic imagination and exaggeration to portray images of music and dance.The development of music and dance murals can be categorized as follows:early stage,midde stage,flourishing stage and late stage.Finally,the author points out that in Dunhuang murals,there are fourteen types of scheme illustrating the images of music and dance.
