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Located in the mountains of Yunnan, China, the Qiongzhu Temple (Qiongzhu si 筇竹寺) houses a collection of fantastic Buddhist statues. This Thousand-Armed Guanyin icon is surrounded by over 200 arhat disciples, comprising part of a Five Hundred Arhat collection over a century old.

While the temple was founded in the 13th century, a devastating fire allowed major reconstruction and expansion projects under the Qing Emperor Guangxu. Three new buildings, completed in the 1880s, were used to for housing newly commissioned clay statues of the Five Hundred Arhats.

The photos seen here were printed in L’Illustration, reputedly the first international illustrated magazine published out of Paris. This issue was released in December 1927, containing what the editor believed were otherwise unpublished photographs of Qiongzhu Temple.

The French text cites the Samaññaphala Sutta to give context to the arhats, who are the Awakened disciples of the Buddha. In East Asian, the arhats are often shown as having curious physical characteristics; here we can spot one arhat with a long, craning arm reaching up to hold the moon.

In addition to the main hall, the arhat statues were further divided between two halls on temple grounds, each constructed with three rows of shelving to hold the numerous icons. Each painted statue is about one meter in height.

Records reveal the images were made by an artist from Sichuan, Li Guangxiu, who along with several assistants crafted the arhat icons over a period of seven years (1883-1890).

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