The thousand-handed Guanyin mural on the south side of the east wall of the third cave in Xixia can be said to be a masterpiece reflecting the scientific and technological history of Dunhuang Grottoes. The painter drew an object in the social life at that time in each hand of Guanyin, leaving us with many images of industrial and agricultural production tools and other objects. And most of them are two identical pictures, which are symmetrical to each other. Among them, the brewing map and the wrought iron map are the most famous and cherished by domestic and foreign historians of science and technology. Dr Joseph Needham, a world-renowned expert in the history of science and technology and the author of The History of Science and Technology in China, spoke highly of these two paintings. He verified that the brewing device was a distiller for brewing soju. In the Forged Iron Map, the vertical trapezoidal wooden bellows is used to blow air on the smelting furnace. A wooden fan was recorded in China in 1044. By the Yuan Dynasty in the early14th century, wooden fans were used to "drain water". China used wooden fans for smelting, five or six hundred years earlier than Europe. This advanced blast technology appeared in the distant Xixia Silver Iron Furnace, indicating that as early as 8,900 years ago, the blast box had been widely popularized in China. There are also two square-headed ships with special structures in the picture. Belonging to agriculture, there are two ploughing maps and two "stepping maps" for processing rice. There are also plows, rakes, hoes, shovels, wooden barrels, saws, hoes, pliers, Mo Dou, rulers, scissors, ironware and other production and living appliances. Guanyin also contains many figures, animals, flowers and plants, melons and fruits, food, buildings, weapons, utensils, musical instruments, umbrellas, bottles, plates, cans, pots and other containers, as well as sun and moon graphics and so on. A dazzling array of things. These images are excellent materials for us to study the social life and the development of production technology in Xixia period.
There are pictures reflecting ancient science and technology in murals of past dynasties, and there are also scenes of agricultural harvest in caves 20, 36 and 38 of the Five Dynasties. There are also pictures of releasing horses, herding cattle, pulling donkeys up mountains, milking cows, drawing water from wells, stables in the yard and raising livestock. A large number of costumes, exquisite algae wells, decorative patterns, brocade and dyed patterns show the technical level of textiles such as silk in previous dynasties. Various architectural forms are also reflected in murals. Some changes have also attracted ancient land and water vehicles, such as cars and boats. Health care contents include washing, bathing, shaving, shaving, gargling, brushing teeth and so on. Among the murals in Cave 35 in the early Song Dynasty, only two palaces, such as Sagittarius Palace, replaced the astronomical images of the zodiac, which is a kind of originality among similar themes at home and abroad. There are also some pictures of the sun and the moon in the murals of the Five Dynasties, the Song Dynasty and the Yuan Dynasty. There are many weapons in murals of past dynasties. In particular, in the Northern Wall of Cave 33 in the Five Dynasties, grotesque monsters attacked Sakyamuni with various weapons. These all reflect the development of ancient science and technology from different aspects.