Beishan: a hill of numbered niches

Stand at Beishan and the first thing the eye finds is order. The carvings were begun in 892 by Wei Junjing, governor of Changzhou, at a stockade he had just built, and the work went on through the Five Dynasties and the Song until 1146, more than two hundred and fifty years, carried on after the Tang fell by gentry, by monks and nuns and by ordinary families. The main face is crescent-shaped and looks west: 460 metres long, seven metres high. In 1952 the county heritage office numbered the sites, giving 1 to 100 to the southern section and 101 to 290 to the northern, and 264 of those numbers carry a statue today.

Behind the numbers is a subject matter that shifts with the section. The southern works belong to the late Tang and the Five Dynasties, the northern ones to the Song. More than seven thousand statues survive, in six families: buddhas, bodhisattvas, arhats, vajra figures, scripture tableaux and figures of living people. About a third of the subjects are esoteric Buddhist, alongside Pure Land, Three Stages and Chan material, and Guanyin runs through the whole register, filling more than half of the Song images. The most cited niche is number 136, the revolving scripture repository, praised for the way it sets movement against stillness.

The main face is not the whole hill. A kilometre west of Fowan, Guanyanpo carries forty-two niches on a rock 34 metres long and six high, cut mainly under the Former and Later Shu and the Song. South-west of the main face, Foeryan holds twenty-five numbered niches on a face 33 metres long but seventeen high, its statues largely of the Five Dynasties with Song work added. Two kilometres east, Yingpanpo has seventeen numbered niches on a wall 25 metres long and fifteen high, named for the soldiers Wei Junjing is said to have quartered there. The register is what makes the hill readable: niche by niche, in order, on one plan.