The Copper and Iron Buddha Statue in the Wannian Temple is on Emei Mountain, southwest of the county seat of Emei County, Sichuan Province.
Emei Mountain, located about 7 km southwest of Emei County, Sichuan Province, is one of the four famous Buddhist mountains, with the other three being Putuo Mountain in Zhejiang, Jiuhua Mountain in Anhui and Wutai Mountain in Shanxi. As the mountain is undulant and elegant, just like a cicada’s head and a moth’s eyebrows, slim, and pretty, hence, the name Emei means moth’s eyebrows (beautiful eyebrows in Chinese). Emei Mountain has undulant ridges and peaks, heavy rocks and layers upon layers of green, so grand and majestic, being praised as “No.1 Scene in the World”. People began to build temples on the mountain from the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220), and later in each dynasty there were more temples added there. At the beginning, Taoism was popular there, and after the Tang and Song dynasties, Buddhism thrived gradually, and reached its heyday in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).
The Wannian Temple is one of the major temples on Emei Mountain, originally called “Puxian (Samantabhadra) Temple”, established in the fifth year (401) of the Long’an reign of the East Jin Dynasty (317-420) by Monk Mingche. In the third year (876) of the Qianfu reign of Emperor Xizong of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), it was reconstructed and renamed as “Baishui Puxian Temple”. In the fourth year (979) of the Heavenly Kingdom Period of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), the abbot of the temple, Monk Maozhen, was summoned by the emperor to the court, and was awarded by Emperor Taizong, Zhao Guangyi. The emperor sent a high-ranking official, Zhang Renzan, to accompany Monk Maozhen back to Chengdu City, taking 3,000 taels of gold with him. Using the gold, they bought 300,000 jin (15 tons) copper to cast a statue of Puxian (Samantabhadra Bodhisattva) riding a white elephant, 7.35 m in height and 62 ton in weight. The lifelike white elephant is standing on a three-foot table of lotus, with eyes shining, and Samantabhadra is sitting on the elephant, with a golden crown on head, a S-shaped ornamental object made of jade in hand, looking very serene. The statue is proportioned properly and modeled elegantly, being a representative of the art of foundry of the Song Dynasty (960-1279).
The Puxian Temple was burned down many times, but the copper statue remained in good shape. In the 28th year (1600) of the Wanli reign of the Ming Dynasty (1644-1911), it was rebuilt and was granted with a horizontal inscribed board by Emperor Shenzong with characters meaning “Shengshou Wannian Temple”. In order to make the building fire-proof, when revamping it, people adopted the architectural techniques and style of India and Burma: the whole main hall had neither beam nor post, not a single piece of wood was used, thus, it was also called “Beamless Hall”. The hall is 16 m both in length and width. The four walls were made of bricks, which were narrowing down gradually to form a vault on the top. Besides the Statue of Samantabhadra, there are also three thousand iron Buddhas and twelve golden human figures on the top and on both sides in the temple. There are four colored “Flying Asparases” on the vault. The lines are so elegant and free as if dancing in the sky. On the dome are five steeples and some decorations such as the lion, deer and so on, showing a very chic style. In addition to the Beamless Hall, the Main Hall was rebuilt as well after liberation. The Main Hall houses three Buddha statues, namely Vairochana, Sakyamuni and Visvabhu, all of which are gold-plated bronze statues as high as 4.8 m.
(Source: chinaculture.org)
