Collectively regarded as one of China’s great art treasures, the Dazu Rock Carvings comprise 75 sites containing some 60,000 statues, with more than 100,000 Chinese characters forming inscriptions and epigraphs. They were carved into the cliffs of Dazu County, 130 kilometers northwest of Chongqing Municipality in southwest China, from the seventh to 13th centuries.

For geographical and historical reasons, they are less well known than such grottoes as Mogao, Longmen and Yungang in northern China, but the Dazu Rock Carvings are just as important, exhibiting not only fine aesthetic qualities but also widely diverse subjects, both religious and secular. They feature Buddhist, Confucian and Taoist figures but also include monks, monarchs, ministers, military officers, government officials, ordinary people, folk art performers, even jailers and executioners.

The Dazu grottoes are primarily located on Mount Beishan (Northern Mountain), Mount Baoding (Treasure Peak), Mount Nanshan (Southern Mountain), Mount Shizhuan, and Mount Shimen (Stone Gate).

Rock carving, or grotto art, was introduced to China, along with Buddhism, 2,000 years ago. In northern China, the form had two periods of prominence, the Northern Wei Period (386-534) and the Sui and Tang Dynasties (581-907). After a rebellion by An Lushan and Shi Siming, two generals of the later Tang Dynasty, the popularity of grotto art in the north began a gradual decline.

Grotto art had different styles at different times. The Yungang grottoes, created around 1,500 years ago, represent an early stage of grotto art and were greatly influenced by Indian culture. The Longmen grottoes, begun in the fifth century, represent the middle stage of grotto art, blending Indian and Chinese characteristics. The Dazu Rock Carvings represent the highest level of grotto art in the late stage and demonstrate breakthroughs in the form with respect to carving techniques and subject matter.

While the sculptures of the Mogao, Longmen and Yungang grottoes tend to utilize natural caves, many of the Dazu sculptures are on cliff faces. In addition, the Dazu works combine the three-dimensional technology of plastic arts, the techniques of realism, and the use of exaggeration in artistic expression.

The Dazu Rock Carvings strikingly contrast good and evil, beauty and ugliness. They reveal the ingenuity of their artists in subject selection and overall design, as well as craftsmanship in lighting, mechanics and perspective.

The earliest Dazu Rock Carvings date from the Tang Dynasty (618-907), with the main period of their creation beginning in 892, when Wei Junjing, Prefect of Changzhou, commissioned the first carvings on Mount Beishan. After the collapse of the Tang Dynasty, the work was continued by a succession of officials, gentry, monks and nuns.

By the year 1162, 290 niches containing more than 7,000 statues had been carved into a 500-meter long area of the mountain. This grotto has been acclaimed as "a gallery of Chinese Avalokitesvaras" because of its many stylistic statues of the Bodhisattva of Compassion (also known as Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy).

Perhaps most impressive is niche No. 136, displaying a statue of Avalokitesvara sitting cross-legged on a diamond seat, holding the sun and the moon. Her plump face, smooth skin, calm gesture and softly draped clothing add to the image of a tender, loving mother of mankind in her middle age.

During the Song Dynasty (960-1279), a Buddhist monk named Zhao Zhifeng ordered the start of work on the elaborate carvings along a 500-meter U-shaped section of Mount Baoding. He dedicated 70 years of his life to the project, which took from 1174 until 1252 to complete.

The resulting Baoding grotto included almost 10,000 statues and formed a ritual site of Tantric Buddhism, a branch of Buddhism that disappeared 400 years ago in northern China. Many of its carvings depict scenes of daily life and bear inscriptions of religious rules for behavior, teaching people to be good and to avoid being bad.

For example, one set of carvings tells a story about a woman on a farm who lets her chickens peck at earthworms, unaware that they are committing a sin. It conveys the Buddhist doctrine that no living thing should be killed.

The Baoding carvings also incorporate some interesting artistic concepts.

Niche No. 11, showing Sakyamuni (the founder of Buddhism) entering Nirvana, is reminiscent of Song Dynasty painters Ma Yuan and Xia Gui, who employed a simplistic approach to art, painting only a corner or a half of a picture and leaving the rest to the viewer’s imagination. In the niche, only half of a huge reclining Buddha is visible, and only the upper parts of the statues surrounding him can be seen. This implies the boundless size and power of Buddha.

The Baoding grotto shows evidence that its various scenes are correlated as part of an overall design. For example, to the east of the south entrance are four sets of carvings instructing viewers to rid themselves of earthly concerns and accept the Buddhist theory of punitive justice. To the west are three sets of carvings explaining how to discover Buddhism’s truths and obtain enlightenment.

The Baoding site is protected from the elements by a natural ceiling of protruding rock. In addition, some of the carvings incorporate drainage systems to protect them from water erosion. For example, in a scene depicting the newborn Sakyamuni being bathed in spring water, the artists did not carve a waterdrop pattern on the cliff face. Instead, they channeled spring water to flow from the mouth of a dragon image, animating the scene while solving the drainage problem.

Baoding is the largest and best preserved of all Dazu sites, but other sites, especially those at Mount Nanshan and Mount Shizhuan, are noteworthy for their many statues integrating Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism, representing the interplay among different religions in China during the Song Dynasty.

Collectively, the Dazu Rock Carvings have been listed as a national relic under state protection since 1961. In December 1999, they were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.