China News Service, Hangzhou, June 17 (Jiang Yangye Pan Shan) The new discovery conference of the 18 Arhats of Wuyue Kingdom in Yanxia Cave, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province was held in Hangzhou on the 17th. For the first time, the newly discovered sculpture inscriptions of the Xihu Scenic Area Yanxia Cave were exhibited. The statues of Arhats in Yanxia Cave are indeed a combination of eighteen statues of Arhats carved in the Wuyue period.
This is the earliest extant example of the "Eighteen Arhats" statue in China, and this discovery is of great significance for solving the problem of the origin of the "Eighteen Arhats".
There are a large number of Buddhist cave cliff statues preserved in the Nanshan area of West Lake in Hangzhou, which are located in the southern mountainous areas such as Nan Gaofeng, Manjuelong, Phoenix Mountain, and Yuhuang Mountain. Among them, the statues of Yanxia Cave, Ciyunling and Tianlong Temple are representative. .
These cultural relics have absorbed and integrated the Liuhe Pagoda, Leifeng Pagoda ruins and other representative cultural and historical sites, providing special witness and inheritance for the "West Lake Cultural Landscape" as a world cultural heritage, and also endowed it with extremely profound Cultural content.
Hangzhou Yanxia Cave is a natural limestone cave. It is famous for the Buddhist statues carved in the Wuyue Kingdom period.
The sculpture of Yanxia Cave is part of the “Sculpture of West Lake Nanshan”, a national key cultural relics protection unit in China.
For a long time, scholars from the two schools have been arguing whether the Arhat statues in Yanxia Cave are "16 Arhats" or "Eighteen Arhats".
From January to February 2021, during a special survey organized by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage of China, Li Yuxin, director of the History and Cultural Relics Department of the Zhejiang Provincial Museum, accidentally discovered a number of Luohan portraits in the niches in the Yanxia Cave that can still be interpreted, and Identify part of the text.
After learning about this situation, the Qianjiang Management Office of the West Lake Scenic Area immediately organized a joint study with the Zhejiang Provincial Museum to explore the newly discovered inscriptions.
According to the staff of the Qianjiang Management Office of West Lake Scenic Area, the titles of the eight Wuyue statues exhibited this time were announced for the first time, confirming that the Luohan statues in Yanxia Cave are indeed a combination of eighteen Luohan statues carved during the Wuyue Kingdom period.
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