The humanshaped animals in the Mogao Grottoes of Dunhuang have various names, and one of them is the nonhuman man. Strangely enough, this type of image was not restricted to one time or one location, but was found in such places as Luoyang, Xi’an and Taiyuan and given different meanings and names. The North and South Dynasties were the times when Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and Zoroastrianism blended and coexisted, at the intersection of which rose the humanshaped animals in the Mogao Grottoes. People of different worships used the same icon, which caused serious differences among researchers who continued to be confused between icon and conception and between objects and documents. Just as early Christian art distorted Greek and Roman pagan icons, so the former images of gods in China were distorted and diverted in the process of establishing the Buddhist, Taoist and Zoroastrian images, which is just the enlightenment the humanshaped animals in the Mogao Grottoes reveals to us.

the Mogao Grottoes; the image of stone carving; human-shaped winged animal; “nonhuman man”