The Longmen Grottoes (pinyin) or Longmen Caves, Chinese Buddhist shrines in Henan province, China. Housing tens of thousands of statues of Buddha and his disciples, The images, many once painted, were carved as outside rock reliefs and inside artificial caves excavated from the limestone cliffs of the Xiangshan and Longmenshan mountains. There are as many as 100,000 statues within the 2,345 caves. Dating from the Northern Wei Dynasty in 493 AD.