Chapter 17 Chapter 17 The Best of Buddha Sculptures - Leshan Giant Buddha

In addition to grottoes, there are also outstanding achievements in stone sculptures of Buddhist themes in my country. The stone statues of Xiude Temple in Quyang County and the Leshan Giant Buddha can be used as their representatives. The stone statues of Xiude Temple in Quyang County, Hebei Province were first discovered in 1953 under the pagoda base of Xiude Temple in the southwest of Quyang County, and a group were excavated under the site of the Song Dynasty temple in 1954.There are more than 2,200 statues in total in the two times, of which 247 statues contain chronological inscriptions.The statues lasted about 230 years from the third year of Shengui (520 A.D.) of Emperor Xiaoming of the Northern Wei Dynasty to the ninth year of Tianbao of Li Longji (750 A.D.) of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang Dynasty.Generally, it is a single small stone statue with a residual height of 20 to 30 cm.These stone carvings are now collected in the Palace Museum in Beijing and the Hebei Provincial Museum.

The themes of the stone statues in Xiude Temple began with Sakyamuni Buddha and Maitreya Buddha as the main subjects, and then gradually transitioned to Amitabha Buddha and Bodhisattva statues.According to statistics on statues with records, the proportion of Bodhisattva statues carved in each era to the total number of statues was about 35% in the Northern Wei Dynasty, 75% in the Eastern Wei Dynasty, 82% in the Northern Qi Dynasty, and 93% in the Sui Dynasty.That is to say, almost all the statues in the Sui Dynasty were Bodhisattvas.The increasing trend of engraving Bodhisattva images reflects the belief requirements and secularization of the masses of the lower class.In terms of artistic modeling, the statue has also gone through the process of changing from thin and slender to Fang Yi's short and fat, and then to tall and plump.The costumes of the statues are also changing. For example, the Buddhist clothing has changed from the original bodhisattva belt to the style of light and transparent, with simple and sparse clothing patterns.The face of the statue, the solemn and kind face of the Northern Wei Dynasty, has been replaced by the approachable face of the Tang Dynasty.

Why were such a large number of single stone Buddhist statues unearthed in Quyang, Hebei?This is related to the spread of Buddhism and the local stone conditions. In the middle of the 4th century, Buddhism was very popular in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province today; white marble and other marble materials abundant in Quyang and other places were one of the best raw materials for stone statues, which created conditions for Buddhist statues. Among the single stone statues, the statue that can be called the most in the world is probably the Leshan Giant Buddha.The Leshan Giant Buddha is carved on the west wall of Lingyun Mountain on the east bank of the South Minjiang River in Leshan City, Sichuan Province, at the confluence of the Minjiang River, Qingyi River and Dadu River.The Buddha is a seated Maitreya Buddha carved out of the cliff of Qiluan Peak in Lingyun Mountain, so it is also called Lingyun Buddha.The giant Buddha was first chiseled in the first year of Kaiyuan (713 A.D.) of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang Dynasty and completed in the 19th year of Zhenyuan (803 A.D.) of Emperor Dezong of Tang Dynasty, which lasted nearly 90 years.The top of the Buddha statue is covered with a 13-storey building, named "Great Image Pavilion", which was renamed "Tianning Pavilion" in Song Dynasty, and was destroyed at the end of Ming Dynasty.The head of the Buddha is at the same level as the top of the mountain, and the foot is on the big river. The height from the top of the head to the bottom of the foot is 58.85 meters.Among them, the height of the head is 11.7 meters, the width of the face is 7.8 meters, the length of the nose is 3.5 meters, the length of the ears is 6.43 meters, the length of the eyes is 3.3 meters, and the width of the shoulders is 24 meters.There are more than 1,200 buns on the head alone.Two people can stand side by side between the ears, a round table can be placed on top of the head, and more than a hundred people can sit around the feet.The Leshan Giant Buddha is more than five meters taller than the tallest 53-meter-high Buddha in the Babiyang Grottoes on the south side of the Hindu Kush Mountain in Afghanistan. It can be called the largest and tallest stone Buddha statue in the world.On the right side of the statue, there is a nine-curved plank road, from which you can detour down from the top of Lingyun Mountain to the foot of the Buddha by the river.Therefore, most people always like to say: "The mountain is a Buddha, and the Buddha is a mountain", which is graceful and majestic.