About the Exhibition

The Yunju Temple in Fangshan, Beijing, was built by the respectable monk Jingwan of the Sui Dynasty. Master Jingwan learned from the lesson that many paper and wood-carved Buddhist sutras were destroyed during the campaigns to exterminate Buddhism in the Southern and Northern Dynasties. However, many stone sutras were preserved, therefore, stones were used to inscribe sutras for better preservation.

The activity of sutra inscription reached its peak from the Kaiyuan period of the Tang Dynasty to the Liao Dynasty. Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty once gave the “Kai Yuan Da Zang Sutra” to the Yunju Temple as the base for inscription, while the “Qi Tan Zang” was used as the base during the Liao Dynasty. Both Buddhist sutras have been lost now, and the Fangshan stone sutra of the Yunju Temple has become the best version for proof-reading instead of other versions of Buddhist sutras. During the Liao Dynasty, the Sutra Cave was filled with stone sutras inscribed in the Tang Dynasty, so a new cave was dug under the mountain to store additional stone sutras. The sutra inscription activity continued until the Ming Dynasty, with a total of 14,278 stone sutras produced. At the same time, 22,000 volumes of paper sutras and more than 77,000 wood sutras were housed, making it the largest collection of Buddhist sutras in the world.

This is the only museum in the world that exhibits stone sutras, paper sutras and wood sutras. It is also the oldest and largest stone inscription library in the world, creating a major cultural miracle in the history of the Chinese nation and even human civilization.

The exhibition is a public welfare project aiming to promote Chinese culture. It is intended to let the audience understand the thousand-year history of sutra inscription at the Yunju Temple and appreciate the splendid inscription culture, the importance as a place of national treasures, the unique cultural heritage of famous ancient temples in the north, and the profoundness of the Fangshan stone inscription culture. The audience is presented with a cultural feast that integrates ideological, artistic and ornamental qualities.

The “Stone-inscribed Buddhism Da Zang Sutra” was first inscribed in the Daye Period of the Sui Dynasty (605 AD). Master Jingwan and others inscribed sutras on stones to protect the Dharma. The sutra inscription went through six dynasties, including Sui, Tang, Liao, Jin, Yuan, and Ming, and lasted for 1,039 years. 1,122 Buddhist sutras, 3,572 volumes, and 14,278 blocks were inscribed. Such a large-scale inscription with such a long history is a rare feat in world cultural history. It is comparable to the world-famous Great Wall and the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and is a rare and precious cultural heritage in the world. It is known as “Beijing’s Dunhuang” and “The Best in the World”.

“Fangshan stone Sutras” is a Buddhist classic that has lasted for thousands of years since the Sui and Tang Dynasties. It not only contains extremely rich historical information in areas such as Buddhist research, political history, social economy, as well as culture and art, it also has important cultural and artistic value in the art of calligraphy.