Liujiamiao stone carvings: the earliest cliff statues in Rongchang are here

Original link: https://macin.org/2022/09/19/liu-jia-miao-shi-ke/

Let me first let you know, where is the town with the longest history in Rongchang?

It is not Wanling, a 4A-level scenic spot that everyone talks about, its history can only be traced back to the Southern Song Dynasty; nor is it the Wu family that always wanted to be independent, it was built in the Ming Dynasty.

The answer is Panlong . Changyuan Town was located here before the mid-Tang Dynasty . It was the seat of the state government of Changzhou Prefecture, and there are still ancient Changzhou ruins.

The place to be explored today is Qilong Village in the north of Panlong Town, which borders Wujia Town and is close to the Huangjuetan Reservoir.

I heard that there are cliff stone statues here, which can be traced back to the late Tang, Tang and Five Dynasties, which is the best proof of the long history of Panlong.

Although a layman does not understand the artistic value, he has seen many stone carvings, whether it is the four major domestic grottoes Longmen, Yungang, Maijishan, Mogao Grottoes, or the famous Dazu Rock Carvings, or even the Tonggu Mountain in Rongchang. Grottoes or Yuanjue Grottoes Temple are really different from cloud and mud in terms of aesthetics, so I didn’t have much hope before visiting.

After driving an hour to Qilong Village , I was shocked before I saw the stone carvings. I stopped and got off the car and thought I had broken into the Peach Blossom Garden.

The houses are neat and tidy, with seven or eight blocks lined up. It is not a small courtyard, but a small courtyard shared by everyone. The plastic floor in the small courtyard has a table tennis table and a badminton court, and there is a vegetable garden not far away. There is a guard dog lying at the door of each house, and it is not vicious but just wagging its tail happily or lazily.

It was almost dusk, the children were playing and playing, and the parents were calling home with their rice bowls. The smoke from the cooking smoke curled into the sunset, and a quiet and vivid pastoral picture slowly unfolded.

Walking through the forest along the trail, there are free-range chickens clucking under the forest, big white geese clucking, grapefruit trees are beginning to bear fruit, bamboo forests are rustling under the evening wind, and the road turns to the reservoir. It is the largest reservoir in Rongchang, Huangjue Beach.

Because of the severe drought this year, the water level has dropped a lot, and the extremely steep cliffs have leaked about seven or eight meters. A stone wall appeared in front of him, and the Liujia Temple stone carvings arrived.

At first glance, the scale of the Liujiamiao stone carvings is relatively large. Although it is not as good as that of Baoding Mountain, there are still six niches, and each niche has dozens of statues.

From the time of the statue in the first niche, the hands and hands uttered the sound of admiration: the middle is so weathered that it is difficult to see the appearance. It is estimated that the three saints of the West, Amitabha, Avalokitesvara and Mahasattva, are engraved on the main wall of the Three Saints Cave in the West, while the two sides are beautiful. Standing there is the ten saints Guanyin, with a full face, gorgeous body decoration, streamers around the body, and bare feet on the lotus.

Beneath Guanyin is a row of statues of donors, which are seriously weathered, but it can be seen that they are wearing hair accessories in the style of the Tang and Song Dynasties.

There are inscriptions at the entrance of the cave, but I can’t tell the difference because of my lack of skills. I can only recognize “the thirteenth year of Shaoxing”, when Yue Fei was just murdered on trumped-up charges.

Going forward, I saw another inscription that was much clearer. It was written on the Bodhisattva of Sending Children, and the inscription was Qing Guangxu, but there was no figure of Bodhisattva Sending Children at the scene.

Moving on, I saw a few statues with completely unknown reasons. I felt that they looked more like Taoist figures from the instrument they were holding. However, the first few niches were Buddhist Mahayana, but it might just mean that the Buddha statues in these niches were not. excavated at the same time.

Going to the last niche, the content is also very rich. Looking at the structure of the upper, middle and lower layers, the lower layer describes hell, which must be the story of the past and present life of the Buddhist cycle of cause and effect.

The Liujiamiao stone carvings have not yet been excavated by archaeologists, but they have been included in the 14th Five-Year Plan for the protection of cultural relics in Chongqing, which means that there will be stories that can be tested in less than three years. I am excited to wait and see.

On the way back, we met 75-year-old Grandpa Liu. We asked him about the Buddha statue. The first sentence he said was “this is the Bodhisattva turned over.”

The people living in this area are all Liu family who came from Huguang to Sichuan, so this temple is called Liujia Temple. Later, after liberation, the temple was also demolished, and later it was used as a kitchen. During the special period, the heads of the bodhisattvas were almost gone.

However, in the age of wind and rain, it is also the compassionate heart of the Bodhisattva that people who escaped hid in Buddhist shrines to shelter from the wind and rain. Now the good deeds done by the Bodhisattva are rewarded, so it is said that the Bodhisattva has turned his body.

According to Grandpa Liu, there are still nearly ten shrines after liberation. During the past few decades, some people have chiseled the grottoes of the last shrine, Liuwang Temple, into stones for building bridges and paving roads. There may be many manifestations of pregnancy.

The bodhisattva may not care, the bodhisattva stepping on the lotus will use a way you don’t know, to pass you through life after life, waiting for you to clear and bright.

Finally, list some data out.

At present, there are 5,986 cave temples and cliff statues in the country. There are 716 cave temples registered in Chongqing, which is one of the areas with the most abundant cave temples in China.

Among them, there are 6 national key cultural relics protection units, 22 municipal-level cultural relics protection units, 167 district and county-level cultural relics protection units, and 521 general immovable cultural relics. In Rongchang, there are about 20 cave temples and stone carvings, including 2 district-level cultural preservation units.

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This article is reprinted from: https://macin.org/2022/09/19/liu-jia-miao-shi-ke/
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