Fahua Temple Grottoes

Fahua Temple Grottoes

Fahua temple, formerly known as Sleeping Buddha Temple, is famous for its grotto art. It is located at the foot of Luoyang mountain, five kilometers east of Anning City. Here the trees are green, the birds are singing, the cave springs are deep, and the rock walls are cut. On the cliff, the ancient caves are dotted with carved stone Buddhas in various shapes and lifelike. It is one of the few cave Arts in ancient minority areas in China. In 1965, it was listed as a key cultural relic protection unit at the provincial level.

geographical position

Luoyang mountain, also known as the chicken collar, is just a stream away from the west mountain. It is east-west and concave in the middle and south of China. The original fahua temple was built on the rock in this concave place, opposite to the xiaotaohua village. Standing at the south entrance of the village, you can see the buildings in the emerald cluster clearly.

Status quo of temples

Today, the temple has been destroyed, and the caves above the cliff still exist. Inside the original site of the temple, there is a 60 meter wide, 5 meter deep flat house with a corridor outside for visitors to rest. On the right rear side of the house is the steep cliff facing the uphill path, which is often called Dongya; on the left rear side of the house, the stacked cliff hidden in the cluster is called Nanya, which is all red sandstone. The grottoes are carved on the East and South cliffs. In front of the right side of the building, there is a cave spring, which covers an area of about 2 square meters. The spring water in the cave drips down from the spring wall and comes into the cave. The water quality is pure, cool and sweet, which is called "perfume well" by local villagers.

Characteristics of temples

On the East Cliff, there are 3 Grottoes on the right and 19 Grottoes on the left, with a total of 22 niches. The second cave on the right is larger, slightly lower and juxtaposed. There are bodhisattvas' Dharma images carved inside. They all wear corollaries and shoulder length cassocks. There are two layers of aperture on the back. The upper ring is peach shaped and is pressed on the lower ring. The one with a slightly higher halo is Guanyin Bodhisattva, who sits on the lotus with a cassock; the other is dizang Bodhisattva, who holds mani beads in his right hand, holds Baozhuang (broken) in his left hand, sets his right leg, hangs his left leg and steps on the lotus. Each of the two Bodhisattvas is about 1.5 meters high, which is the largest statue in fahua Temple next to Sleeping Buddha. At the top left of the niche of Guanyin Bodhisattva, there is a cave, only 0.5 meters high, with a Bodhisattva figure inside.

Cave 19 on the left is slightly higher, with 18 Arhats carved on the inside, so it is also called Luohan cliff. The grottoes are divided into three layers with uneven arrangement. There are 9 niches on the top layer, 6 niches on the middle layer and 3 niches on the lower layer, with a total of 18 niches. Each cave is about 0.8 meters high, with an arched roof and a arhat carving of 0.6-0.7 meters inside. The 18 Arhats have different shapes and expressions and are skillful in carving. On the lower right side of the 18 arhat caves, there is a cave about 1.3 meters high, in which there is a Bodhisattva about 1 meter high, whose name is unknown.

In the middle of the first floor of the Luohan niche, there is a rectangular stone tablet about 60 × 40 cm, on which are two regular script characters "evening photos", written by Gao Qian, the governor of Anning in the Qing Dynasty, dated in 1705. "Sunset" is one of the eight scenic spots in Anning. When the setting sun goes down to the west, the afterglow gilds the niches and adds infinite mystery to the stone Buddha. According to folklore, the spectacle of "late photo" only appears once in 60 years. On the evening of the second day of the vernal equinox, when the sun fell behind in the west, it would rise again. It would gather sunlight in the valley and dye all the layers of forest. As a result, the walls of the hall were brilliant and the Buddha statues were covered with gold. People also made up a beautiful myth of "Sutra drying stone" for the huge stone lying on the back of the Buddha niche on the South Cliff. It is said that when the Tang monk came back from the West and passed through the Shahe River, he met a strange man and fell into the water. His disciples fished out the scriptures from the river and spread them on the rock. When the sun was setting, the master and his disciples were very anxious. Suddenly, the setting sun rose again, shining back on the cliff and drying the Scriptures. But when they took the scriptures from the rock, the bottom pages were broken and couldn't be taken down. So far, Sanskrit marks are still left on this "Sutra drying stone".

Walking along the mountain path from Dongya to Nanya, there are two caves adjacent to each other. Inside, there is a picture of Sakyamuni Buddha's asceticism. The right cassock is on the left side, with his hands on his knees and his head down in meditation. The neighboring grottoes are engraved with milk offering by a shepherdess and the Sutra of a green cow. The shepherdess wears a long, wide sleeve dress with a bowl in her hand. She is closely followed by a buffalo behind her. She carries the scriptures on her back and touches the shepherdess with her horn. The meaning is profound. Unfortunately, the horn has been broken. Further to the southwest, there are four Grottoes on the slightly higher cliff. Three of them are empty, while in the larger one, there is a fine carved Sleeping Buddha. The Sleeping Buddha is 4.25 meters long and 1 meter high. It has a full heaven, a square nose, two earlobes and shoulders, curly hair as beads, a full-length cassock, bare chest and bare feet, a right hand slightly supporting the back of the brain, and a quiet and serene manner. The technique of carving Sleeping Buddha is exquisite, simple and elegant, and the knife technique is exquisite, which can be compared with the Sleeping Buddha in the western suburb of Beijing. Every sunny day, when the sun rises to the East, the morning light is shining on the reclining Buddha, which shows the Buddha's kindness and detachment.

Ten meters south from the Sleeping Buddha niche, there is a huge sand mound standing upright, 5 meters high and 4 meters long. It is made into a two-layer ladder shape, on which is engraved the famous inscription of King Yu, which describes the process of Dayu's flood control. This is a Yu stele carved during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty. In the 15th year of Jiajing (1534), Zhang Su, a county man, found Yu Wang's stele in Yuelu Academy of Changsha, with tadpole characters of 9 lines and 77 characters. So he expanded the full text. The rubbings were brought back to Anning in the winter of 1536. He asked Yang Shen, the number one scholar in exile, to interpret the inscription and engrave it at the foot of Luoyang mountain.

Temple History

Fahua temple was first built in Song Dynasty. According to the general annals of Yunnan by Yongzheng of Qing Dynasty, "fahua temple was built in Luoyang mountain, ten miles east of the city, by Duan family of Dali of Song Dynasty.". In Xianfeng Period of Qing Dynasty, the temple was destroyed. After the 1980s, the cultural relics management committee of Anning County strengthened the protection of this historic site, such as road construction, tree planting, platform construction, railings protection, etc., and planned to rebuild the temple according to its original appearance.

Historical relics

The grotto art of fahua temple and the extension of Yu's stele are valuable cultural relics, which attract scholars, scholars and scholars from all over the world to visit.

Grotto damage

At 9:11 a.m. on October 10, 2016, a well-known local blogger in Yunnan @ broadcast the news that the Kunming version of "Longmen Grottoes" was on the verge of destruction. Subsequently, the upstream news Chongqing Morning Post reporter learned from the culture, sports and Tourism Bureau of Anning City, Yunnan Province that the cultural management department of the Bureau has intervened in the investigation of the damage of the fahua Temple Grottoes exposed on the Internet, and will release the handling results according to the relevant situation.

Address: five kilometers east of Anning City, Kunming, at the foot of Luoyang mountain

Longitude: 102.5343

Latitude: 24.917809

Ticket information: no ticket required.

Chinese PinYin : Fa Hua Si Shi Ku