The Thousand-Buddha Cliff is located near Liubu Village, in Licheng County, under the administration of Jinan City, about 33 kilometers southeast of the city of Jinan proper. It stands immediately to the west of the site of the former Shentong Temple , which is now in ruins. The cliff is oriented in the north-south direction.
The first is said to have been carved into the cliff by a 70-year old monk named Sha Dong in the year 619 AD. After a hiatus of 25 years, two more Buddhist sculptures by another old monk named Ming De. Because Ming De felt his live was coming to an end at the time, he also donated money towards the carving of additional statues. However, in the year 657 AD he was still alive and carved more statues and inscriptions into the rock face. Because the official policy during the Tang Dynasty was to encourage conversion to Taoism, the carving of Buddhist statues implied a political risk. Hence, the inscriptions left by Sha Dong and Ming De point out that the sole purpose of the statues was prayer and not the expression of political opinions. Despite these difficulties, the work of carving the sculptures into the was continued by other Buddhist and eventually the Thousand-Buddha Cliff became the largest collection of Buddhist cliff statues in Shandong.
Besides the Buddhist sculptures, there are also secular statues depicting nobility such as relatives of the emperor, government officials, and famous monks. Among those are statues of Princess Nanping , the daughter of Emperor Taizong of Tang and her husband Liu Xuanyi.
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