Climbing vertically up the Mati Temple, the ancient temple's Sanskrit chants echo off the sheer cliffs

Mati Temple, also known as Puguang Temple, was built during the Northern Liang of the Eastern Jin and Sixteen Kingdoms period, and has a history of over 1600 years. The Mati Temple is a Buddhist holy site on the Hexi Corridor in China, known in Tibetan as 'Dzoma Rangjung', meaning 'the place where the Bodhisattva naturally appears'. The Mati Temple grottoes, along with the Yulin Grottoes of Guazhou and the Mogao Caves of Dunhuang, are collectively referred to as the 'Three Great Artistic Treasures of the Buddhist Holy Sites in the Hexi Corridor'. The name 'Mati' comes from a legend where a celestial horse once drank water here and left a hoof print. Ancient people, with their bold imagination, emulated the 'Thirty-Three Heavens' of the heavens and carved out the 'Thirty-Three Heavens' of the human world in Mati Temple. It represents a realm of cultivation in Buddhism. Only by reaching the state of Nirvana and becoming a Buddha can one transcend the three realms and ascend to the Western Pure Land, the 'Ultimate Bliss World'. Time merges into the murals and sculptures, and looking back through the fleeting moments, history meanders like a stream, always leaving traces to follow. The Mati Temple grotto complex has accumulated the essence of a thousand years of historical changes, becoming an important historical and cultural relic on the Silk Road.