Since 1900 when the elites in Beijing heard about the Dunhuang Caves, not only the Chinese officials were overwhelmed by this finding, many international sinologists rushed there to excavate further. In addition to documents on a vast spectrum of fields were stored there, the religious images built since the 4th Century by the Han and many other nationalities who might have been living there are such a treasure reservoir for historians of almost all disciplines. As it had been the gateway between China and the Central Asia for millennia, the complexity of multiple languages, religions and nationalities as well as lack of historical records due to its peripheral location made it even more difficult to make a comprehensive viewpoint. Numerous scholars spent all their effort researching in the Dunhuang Academy since its founding in 1944. With the help of abundant research on history and geography, this paper intend to combine the research so far with Buddhist studies and meditation practice, to revisit the oldest three caves built in Dunhuang after the year 366 in hope to possibly figure out what the monks might have been practicing in those caves. One of the most influential monk, Kumārajīva (344-413), lived in the now Xinjiang area between 363 and 401 and he wrote a monumental article on methods in meditation upon arriving at Chang’an on 402. Therefore, this paper will view the imagery in the three earliest Dunhuang caves in the light of Kumārajīva’s Zuochan sanmeijing.
