Rupestral Sculptures of Dazu

The rupestral sculptures of Dazu (大足石刻; Pinyin: Dàzú Shíkè), located in the County of Dazu, close to Chongqing in China, form an exceptional series of religious sculptures dating mainly from at the 14th century. They were registered on the Liste of the world heritage of UNESCO in 1999.

Oldest from these works to 650 go back approximately, but most remarkable were realized with and centuries, period of full artistic blooming of the Chinese rupestral sculpture. One counts 75 protected sites, sheltering at the same time statues, with the number of: approximately 50000, and of the inscriptions and epigraphs, formed of more than: 100000 Chinese characters.

These sculptures are particularly remarkable by the great richness of their subjects, so much religious as secular, which make the synthesis between the Bouddhisme, the Taoïsme and the Confucianisme, but also offer a representation of the life at that time, as well of the princes and public figures that people of modest means.

They are distributed on the escarpés sides of five mountains of the surroundings of Dazu :

mount EIB (EIB Shan): a cliff of 300 m length shelters more: 10000 sculptures, of which more half represent subjects related to Buddhism tantrique ;
mount Baoding (Baoding Shan): the site, located at the edge of a U-shaped throat, shelters two groups of sculptures, considered as the apotheosis of the Chinese rupestral sculpture, among which the “Avalokitesvara with: 1000 arms” (actually: 1007) are particularly remarquable ;
mount Nan (Nan Shan): the site shelters sculptures of the 12th century, which depict mainly subjects taoïstes ;
mount Shizhuan (Shizhuan Shan): the site shelters sculptures of the end of the 11th century, which separately represent Buddhist images, taoists and confucianistes ;
mount Shimen (Shimen Shan): the site shelters sculptures of first half of the 12th century, which represent Buddhist subjects and taoists.

External bonds

Card of the World heritage
Documents of evaluation of the ICOMOS (1997 and 2000)
rupestral sculptures of Dazu (ChinaToday)
Site of information (in Chinese) -

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