Shijingsi
Mountain monastery known for stone tablets once bearing a hand-carved sutra, most now lost.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Shijingsi in Chengdu tells how a magistrate named Song Sixian, moved by a visit to Tiancheng Temple in 1767, shipped in prized slate from Anhui and set stonemasons to carve the entire Diamond Sutra into thirty-two stone tablets, work so demanding the temple renamed itself in their honor. It follows the tablets through the centuries after, as all but one had vanished by the 1820s and monks had to raise money for replacements just to keep the set whole. Stand in these halls and you're standing inside the ambition of stonecutters who worked a sacred text into permanent rock.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Culture Park （South Gate）
Leafy park set on the grounds of a Taoist monastery famed for hand carved scripture printing blocks.
Gudashengci Temple
Rebuilt Buddhist monastery whose Tang-era walls once held over a thousand murals by sixty-plus master painters.
Chengdu Wu Hou Shrine
Tang-dynasty stone stele carved by three masters, its calligrapher still misattributed by many modern guides.
Zhaojue Temple
Ancient Zen monastery where a banyan tree slowly swallows a stone tablet, fulfilling a monk's centuries-old prophecy.
Baoguang Temple
Ancient monastery with a leaning Tang-era pagoda and a hall of five hundred life-sized clay arhats.
Leshan Giant Buddha
Colossal cliffside Buddha carved above a turbulent river confluence, watching over sailors below.