Longmen was dug by Dayu when he was controlling water, and the legend of fish jumping over Longmen also happened here. Its grottoes began to be excavated during the reign of Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty, flourished in the Tang Dynasty and finally ended in the late Qing Dynasty. After 10 dynasties and 1400 years of construction, it became the longest grotto in the world. A lot of paint is used in the building, but many of it has faded.
Densely distributed on the cliffs of the east and west mountains of Yishui, with a length of 1km from north to south, there are 2345 existing grottoes and more than 1 1000 statues, which are called the three largest grottoes in China together with Mogao Grottoes and Yungang Grottoes, and then the four largest grottoes together with Maijishan Grottoes.
Legend has it that during the flood, both Luoshui and Yishui were blocked to form a big Wang Yang, which was similar to a dammed lake, but it was much larger than the dammed lake at that time.
People were in great pain and drowned many people. Dayu even suffered from the flood, so he led the people to dredge Luoshui first to make it flow into the Yellow River, but Yishui was blocked by Longmen Mountain, so he dug Longmen Mountain to make Yishui and Luoshui flow into the Yellow River together, thus solving the flood here.
The Value Influence of Longmen Grottoes
Longmen Grottoes have preserved a large number of physical materials such as religion, art, architecture, calligraphy, music, costumes, medicine, etc., which reflected the development and changes in China's ancient politics, economy, religion, culture and other fields from different aspects, and made great contributions to the innovative development of China Grottoes.
Longmen Grottoes, with its large scale, magnificent momentum, exquisite carving and rich contents and themes, is regarded as the greatest treasure house of classical art in the world. With its own systematic and unique language of sculpture art, it reveals various laws and rules of sculpture art creation.
Before it, the grotto art mostly retained the elements of Gandhara and Tuodala art, while Longmen Grottoes inherited the remote Indian grotto art, followed the style of Yungang Grottoes, and integrated the advanced and profound history and culture of Han nationality in Wei, Jin, Luoyang and Southern Dynasties.