Song Tuodong Han Wuliang Temple Stone

[Stone reliefs of Wu Liang Temple in the Han Dynasty in Song Tuodong]

Wu Liang Temple is a part of a group of “Stone Carvings of Wu’s Tombs” found in Wuzhai Mountain (formerly known as Ziyun Mountain) in Jiaxiang, Shandong Province. It consists of a pair of stone pavilions, “Wu Liang Stele” and five stone reliefs. Two of them are carved with auspicious pictures, and the other three are carved in four layers (columns) (excluding the statue of the Queen of the West on the spire). In addition to many stories and more than one hundred characters, there are more than two hundred characters on each stone. The contents of the portraits are mostly taken from ancient legends and ancient books such as “Biography of Filial Piety”, “Biography of Lienv”, “Records of the Historian”, as well as descriptions of the life and recreation of the deceased. Rich content and vivid carving
Over the years, the river was diverted, the stone chamber of Wuliang Temple was damaged, and many stone carvings were lost or buried underground. After being visited by Huang Yi in the 51st year of Qianlong’s reign in the Qing Dynasty (1786), Weng Fanggang, Li Dongqi and others proposed to donate money to build the Han studio. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the government repaired it and protected the stone reliefs
The portrait album of the Wuliang Temple in the Forbidden City is a unique copy of Song Tuo, which contains the two columns of portraits of the first stone. The original stone is listed as “Fuxi”, “Zhusheng”, “Shennong”, “Yellow Emperor”, “Emperor Zhuanxu”, “Emperor Ku”, “Emperor Yao”, “Emperor Shun”, “Xia Yu”, and “Xia Jie”; The second column is the four pictures of “Zengzi”, “Minzi”, “Laolaizi”, and “Dinglan” filial piety. The title of the list is clear, and there are postscript of celebrities and observation articles. There are 127 seals, such as “ancient Yanzhou official Ma Zhang” and “Wu Naichen seal”. Rubbings were collected by Tang Shunzhi, Ma Yuelu, Wang Xuejiang, Huang Yi and others. Twenty-nine years later, the Daoguang Emperor of the Qing Dynasty was burned. Li Ruqian got the copy after the fire, and mounted it into a volume, and added an inscription and postscript
This picture shows the remaining seven pictures of emperors and four pictures of filial sons, which can be seen in the form of paper-cutting and mounting before burning. It is very precious. Although it is incomplete, you can still see the carving look of the Han Dynasty stone reliefs. Technically, the contour of the figure is carved with the method of reducing the ground, and then the eyebrows, eyes and clothes are outlined with thin lines, which is vivid and shows the unique simple style of the stone reliefs in the Eastern Han Dynasty
This portrait is recorded in such books as Zhang Yansheng’s “Record of Rare Tablets”, Rong Geng’s “Record of Han Wu Liang Temple Portrait”, Ma Ziyun and Shi Anchang’s “Identification of Tablets”.

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