A comparison of the 1500-year-old Guanyin
statue (left) and that of the modern one (right).
What did Guanyin look like 1500 years ago? The answer: a lenient and neat looking man.
Tongliang County of Chongqing Municipality has reached a significant finding after the national cultural relics census - a circular-carved Guanyin statue excavated four years ago is preliminarily confirmed by relevant experts as one of the earliest statues of Guanyin. After making a comparison, the journalist finds that the Guanyin statue made 1500 years ago is quite different from what it is today.
For four years no one recognized the statue
A locked side room in the Lvfeng Temple, Lvfeng Town, Tongliang County houses over ten Bodhisattva statues, large or small. There is a circular-carved Guanyin statue to the rightmost of the room. About one meter tall, it is in the image of a lenient man with a round face and a bun.
It is introduced that it was excavated at the end of 2005 when local residents were repairing the temple. At that time, it was almost complete, yellow, and carved of the commonly-seen red gravel in the local town.
The statue was put aside for about two months until one of the pilgrims donated over 100 yuan to ask for a craftsman to replenish the damaged parts with cement, coat the statue, and apply a layer of bronze powder to the body. Afterwards, the statue was moved to the temple and enshrined there. Until quite recently, local residents still had no idea what the statue was.
One of the earliest Guanyin statues in China
Last November when the third national cultural relics census was carried out, officials in Lvfeng Town reported the statue to the responsible organ in the county. Experts of cultural relics were overwhelmed with joy when seeing the statue in person, as it was probably one of the earliest Guanyin statues in China.
According to the inscriptions on the stone steles preserved in the temple, the Lvfeng Temple was built in the Datong Period during Emperor Wu of Liang's reign in the Southern and Northern Dynasties 1500 years ago. Preliminary researches have confirmed that the statue excavated is the image of Guanyin.
Another question is, why are other statues of Guanyin in the image of a woman? According to Professor Yang Hong, a researcher from the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Buddhism was introduced to China in between the Western and Eastern Han Dynasties or so; before the Tang Dynasty, the statues of Guanyin were all made in the image of a man.
As introduced, the stone statues of male Guanyin found before were made no earlier than the Southern and Northern Dynasties. Therefore, it can be basically confirmed that the Guanyin statue in Tongliang is one of the earliest in China.
Buried at wartime
The statue excavated during construction was accompanied with a statue of Lingguan Bodhisattva, which was found over ten meters away.
Why would these two statues have been buried? According to the Tongliang County Annals, in the late Ming Dynasty, when the eight rebel leaders including Zhang Xianzhong were attacking Sichuan Province, the Lvfeng Temple, covering an area of several hundred mu, was faced with trouble, and most of its buildings were burnt down. The statue of Guanyin, the statue of Lingguan Bodhisattva and a Tang-Dynasty dagoba were then lost their traces. In the past 400 years, local historians have been trying to find them, but all ended up in vain.
Afterwards, experts of cultural relics have found millstones carved with exquisite cloud and lighting patterns at a corner near the temple. After textual researches, they confirm that it is a part on top of the fallen dagoba.
It has been confirmed that the statue of Guanyin, the statue of Lingguan Bodhisattva and the millstone shall be reported to the leadership as significant archeological findings.
