To celebrate the Beijing Olympics, Dunhuang academy held a photo exhibition recently, showing 22 Dunhuang murals featuring painted ancient sports. Wrestling, horsemanship, throwing spear and archery were involved in these murals, among which the most prominent, “The Illustration of the Maitreya”, a fresco from Mogao Grotto of late Tang Dynasty (618-907), portraying a torch bearer holding aloft the torch on it.

A mural about a torch bearer of late Tang Dynasty (618-907) from No.85 grotto of Mogao grotto in Dunhuang

Dunhuang grottoes were continuously carved from the middle of 4th century to 14th century and nearly 50000 square meters of murals have been handed down. A wide range of folk sports were usually as the theme of these murals, including archery, wrestling, swimming and Wushu (martial art), acrobatics and so on, even some Olympic events can find their origin from these murals.

Archery

To train the soldiers, the government of Han Dynasty held the competition for archery annually, which was part of a traditional military system. Every participant was allowed to shoot 12 arrows in the competition; with more than 6 arrows hitting in the target the participant would be given a prize of money, furloughs or a promotion.

A Mural about Archery of Northern Zhou Dynasty (557-581) from No.290 grotto of Mogao grotto in Dunhuang

Basically, archery in Han Dynasty has already possessed the attributes of modern athletic sports, very close to the archery competition of Olympics.