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Rawak Stupa

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Rawak Stupa, Buddhist archaeological remains in Xinjiang, China.

The Rawak Stupa is a Buddhist stupa on the southern rim of the Taklamakan Desert, about 40 km north of Hotan in Xinjiang. Its cruciform base, with staircases protruding on each side, carries a dome about 10 m high and 23 m wide, set on a platform roughly 5 m tall inside a rectangular courtyard about 50 by 43 m. The courtyard wall, near 3 m high, held stucco statues and wall paintings.

The Rawak Stupa was built in the Kingdom of Khotan, probably between the 4th and 5th centuries; Aurel Stein proposed a late 3rd to early 4th century date. Its cruciform base with four staircases follows the stupa form described in the Divyavadana. Wang Shouchun of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences attributed the abandonment to a shift in the river course, while Sun Bin argued that religious warfare left too few people to maintain the site.

The name Rawak means "pavilions" in the local language, and the site is also called Lawak, Lowak or Yaowak. The courtyard wall carried ochre-toned murals and red-clay reliefs in Gandharan style, now largely eroded. In 2016, objects unearthed here were shown in the Palace Museum exhibition "Brahma and the East".

The site lies about 40 km north of Hotan in Luopu County, on the western and southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert east of the Yurungkash River, at roughly 1,290 m elevation. The west courtyard wall is buried in sand and the south wall is badly weathered, while the east and west walls survive to nearly 3 m; walkways were built from 2010 for visitors. Wind and water erosion and looting pits still affect the mud-brick and stucco remains, so keep to the paths.

Aurel Stein reburied the 91 stucco statues he excavated in 1901 under sand to protect them, trusting a future local museum to recover them. When he returned in 1906, treasure seekers had stripped the walls to bare brickwork; only his photographs survived. The sand that filled the ruins had also held the stuccos up where they would otherwise have collapsed.

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October 25, 2026 20:46
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« Rawak Stupa - Buddhist archaeological remains in Xinjiang, China » is provided by Around Us (aroundus.com). Images and texts are derived from Wikimedia project under a Creative Commons license. You are allowed to copy, distribute, and modify copies of this page, under the conditions set by the license, as long as this note is clearly visible.

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