Illustration
Construction of the famous Leshan Giant Buddha, an enormous statue of a Maitreya (a future Buddha) was started in 713 CE under Xuanzong's reign. A Buddhist monk named Hai Tong began the project to ward off evil spirits from the river at the bottom of the cliffs. This statue of the Maitreya, carved into the cliff, is 233 feet (71 meters) tall and remains a popular tourist attraction today.
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Original image by speedygroundhog. Uploaded by Ibolya Horváth, published on 23 March 2016. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.
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Cite This Work
APA Style
speedygroundhog. (2016, March 23). Leshan Giant Buddha. World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/image/4736/leshan-giant-buddha/
Chicago Style
speedygroundhog. "Leshan Giant Buddha." World History Encyclopedia. Last modified March 23, 2016. https://www.worldhistory.org/image/4736/leshan-giant-buddha/.
MLA Style
speedygroundhog. "Leshan Giant Buddha." World History Encyclopedia. World History Encyclopedia, 23 Mar 2016, https://www.worldhistory.org/image/4736/leshan-giant-buddha/. Web. 30 Jun 2025.
