Since last year, his institute and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Archaeology have been working together on a program to look into the Jinta Temple grottoes, as part of the Mati Temple complex, and a comprehensive, systematic research report will be published next year.

The report will be the first of its kind to introduce detailed information on the grottoes of the Jinta Temple.

With over 200 sculptures and a number of murals of different dynasties, it is known to have kept the only domestic hanging sculptures of flying apsaras, spiritual beings in Hindu and Buddhist mythologies that take the form of beautiful females. They were built 300 years earlier than flying apsaras murals of the Dunhuang frescoes, according to local media.

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