Chinese archaeologists believe that a newly-discovered Buddhist grotto in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region offers proof that the Muslim- inhabited area was under Chinese rule 1,300 years ago.

The grotto, nested in a 60-meter cliff in Kuqa County, the site of the ancient Qiuchi State, contains a number of exquisite frescos and Buddha statues similar to those in the world-famous Dunhuang grottoes, which were built mainly during the Tang Dynasty in neighboring Gansu Province.

Especially noteworthy is that many of the frescos were inscribed with Chinese characters used by people of the Han nationality, China's predominant nationality. The inscriptions clearly show nine Han surnames, suggesting that the cave was jointly built by Han people from different families. The experts surmised from some of the name combinations that Han and local ethnic people may have married.

Judging from the style of calligraphy, archeologists believe that the inscriptions were written in the golden age of the Tang Dynasty (618-907).

This is the first time that Chinese archeologists have discovered a significant presence of the Han culture in an area essentially inhabited by Uygur Muslims and other ethnic minorities.

"The discovery has been heralded as the most profound historical testimony of the close relationship between Xiyu (the ancient term for the Western Region, or areas west of Yumenguan including what is now Xinjiang and parts of central Asia) and China's central government during the Tang Dynasty," said Chen Shiliang, a research fellow at the Grotto Research Institute of Xinjiang.

"It supplies an important clue for the study of joint development of Xinjiang by various nationalities and the cultural exchanges among people with different ethnic backgrounds," he added.

The 4.6-meter-long and 3.4-meter-wide cave was found accidentally by a young man of Uygur nationality, Abul'ahat Memet, who was digging medicinal herb on a cliff in Kuqa, a prosperous town on the ancient Silk Road.

The murals depict various familiar Buddhas worshipped by people of the Han nationality, including Ambitabha and Mahasthamaprapta. They portray a total 260 lifelike figures in different poses and with various expressions. Many of the people are plump, reflecting the Tang Dynasty's preference for heftiness as the highest form of beauty.

Also found in the same area were some iron and copper workshops and ruins of a castle which the archeologists believe was a military site where soldiers of the Tang Dynasty were stationed.

The findings verify historical records which say that the central government of the Tang Dynasty set up a prefectural government in Qiuchi to handle defense and administrative affairs of the Western Region. An estimated 30,000 soldiers were dispatched to the area at that time, followed by a tide of Han monks, craftsmen and their families.

Cultural relics experts theorized that the soldiers and craftsmen from the central part of China built the grotto and castle in the 7th century.

The local government has put up a door at opening of the grotto, copied the calligraphy and paintings on the fresco and sent some of the Buddhist statues to a nearby research institute to ensure their safety, said Guo Mengyuan, a cultural relics expert in Xinjiang.

"We will take measures to control the temperature and humidity in the cave to prevent the paint on the fresco from peeling off," he added.