Shizhuan: Confucius, Laozi and the Buddhas in ten niches

Shizhuan is not a famous hill. It stands in Fo hui village of Sanyu town, about twenty kilometres south-west of Dazu town, and its ridge line curls round like seal script, which is where the name comes from. The cliff beside the Fotui Temple carries ten numbered niches and more than two hundred statues, cut between 1082 and 1096 under Yan Xun, lord of the Tonggu drum-stone estate. The face runs about 130 metres, stands three to eight metres high, and holds nothing that could be called a large image. Its value lies in the company it keeps: of ten niches, not one repeats the subject of another.

Niche six is the reason people make the detour. It is 1.94 metres high and 3.25 wide, and it holds Confucius seated in the middle with four characters naming his title cut beside his head. Down the flanks and across the side walls stand his ten disciples, each holding a court tablet in both hands. A Confucian niche inside a Buddhist cliff is rare enough to be remarkable, and this one was cut in the same campaign, by the same workshop, as the Daoist and Buddhist caves around it. Inscriptions on the neighbouring niches credit a carver from Yueyang named Wen Wijian, who signs himself together with two men, Ju'an and Juli.

Across from Confucius, niche eight holds Laozi seated with seven immortals and masters standing on either side, all of them carrying tablets, their names cut beside their heads. Niche seven holds the three bodies of the Buddha, Vairocana, Shakyamuni and Ruishena, across a face 6.36 metres wide. Niche nine is Ksitigarbha, mild-faced and dressed as a monk, with the ten kings of hell seated five to a side. And there is the medicine: niche four, a panel only 0.19 metres deep, for the king of long life, and niche one, the mother of Hali, 2.10 metres high. Ten niches, ten subjects, one campaign.