Wuxiang Mountain Cliff Inscriptions

The inscriptions

The Paper (Nanjing Culture and Tourism Bureau account) reports that Wuxiang Mountain has three cliff inscriptions, all in seal script, and that they are a Cultural Relic Site Protected at the Municipal Level of Nanjing. The three titles are:

凤泉　丹鼎　汙尊铭

Translated: "Fengquan", "Danding" and "Wuzun ming" are the three titles. The third title is kept in the variant form used on the stone and is not normalised here.

A page of the Wuxiang Mountain scenic area official site dated 11 March 2024 places the three inscriptions in the middle section of the Hundred-Step Staircase, around the Stone Guanyin Pavilion, laid out in a tripod formation: "Fengquan" is written horizontally on the left of the rock face; to the south-west stands another boulder about one metre high, carved vertically with the two characters "Danding"; to the south-east is a stone about the height of a person, carved vertically with "Wuzun ming" followed by a main text of 29 characters, "wuzun" meaning a vessel hollowed out of stone. The scenic area site says all three are traditionally attributed to Wang Congshan, magistrate of Lishui in the Jiajing period of the Ming dynasty.

The direct gazetteer record for "Fengquan"

For "Fengquan" there is the earliest gazetteer record known to this library. Volume 5 of the Kangxi Gazetteer of Lishui County, in the "Mountains" section of the Treatise on Rivers and Mountains, records:

無想山南一十五里。山形環抱，與杜城諸山相連。中有唐建禪寂寺及南唐韓熙載讀書台址、大士石像。古桧、銀杏皆唐宋間植。有元謝瑛招雲亭碑記。山頂有泉，下注岩石間成瀑布，明嘉靖間知縣王從善鑿石題曰「鳳泉」，構亭其側，今廢。近多遊人題詠，俱載《藝文志》。

Translated: Wuxiang Mountain lies fifteen li to the south. Its form embraces and joins with the mountains of Ducheng. Within it are the Chan Monastery founded in the Tang, the site of Han Xizai's reading terrace of the Southern Tang, and a stone image of the bodhisattva. The old cypress and the ginkgo were planted between the Tang and the Song. There is a stele inscription on the Cloud-Gathering Pavilion by Xie Ying of the Yuan. There is a spring at the summit, falling down between the rocks to form a waterfall; in the Jiajing period of the Ming the magistrate Wang Congshan cut the rock and inscribed "Fengquan", and built a pavilion beside it, now fallen into ruin. In recent years many visitors have written poems on it, all carried in the Treatise on Literature.

A second entry in the "Springs" section of the same volume is briefer:

鳳泉在無想山。知縣王從善鑿。

Translated: Fengquan is at Wuxiang Mountain. Cut by the magistrate Wang Congshan.

This is first-hand evidence that the two characters "Fengquan" were inscribed on the rock in the Jiajing period of the Ming dynasty by Wang Congshan, magistrate of Lishui; it is a direct record by a contemporary gazetteer, not a later conjecture. "構亭其側，今廢" records that Wang Congshan once built a pavilion beside the inscription, which had already fallen into ruin by the Kangxi era.

Volume 6 of the same gazetteer carries a biography of Wang Congshan, recording that his courtesy name was Chengji, that he was a native of Xiangyang, that he passed the metropolitan examination, and that he took office in the third year of Jiajing. This agrees with the scenic area site, which gives his courtesy name as Chengji and his art name as Fenglin, as to the year he first took office. That biography records only the man and his official acts; it mentions none of the three inscriptions Fengquan, Danding or Wuzun ming. The gazetteer basis for the inscriptions lies only in the two entries of volume 5, and must not be transferred to the biography.

Dating

The era of this entry is given as Ming. Its basis divides into two layers. For "Fengquan" there is the direct record of volume 5 of the Kangxi gazetteer, which places the cutting and inscribing in the Jiajing period of the Ming and so fixes the period; for "Danding" and "Wuzun ming" there is no gazetteer evidence, and their dates rest only on two accounts, the scenic area site's traditional attribution to Wang Congshan in the Jiajing period and the press figure of nearly 500 years. The approximate figure given in the press is not used here to date them.

Protected status and naming

Three writings of the name and the protected status are involved, and this entry records each without merging them:

• The Paper and the scenic area site use "Wuxiang Mountain Cliff Inscriptions" and state that the site is now protected at the municipal level of Nanjing;
• the municipal government's third-batch notice (Ning Zheng Fa [2006] No. 131, 10 June 2006) lists "Wuxiang Temple Cliff Inscriptions" as item 5 in the "caves and stone inscriptions" section, with the period given as Ming and the address recorded as "Wuxiang Temple scenic area, Honglan Town, Lishui County";
• the List of Nanjing Cultural Relic Sites Protected at the Municipal Level published by the Nanjing Municipal Administration of Culture and Tourism likewise uses "Wuxiang Temple Cliff Inscriptions", gives the period as Ming, and records the detailed location as "Wuxiang Mountain scenic area, Honglan Subdistrict".

The latter two are both the municipal protected-site publication and the current list, and the "Wuxiang Temple" and "Wuxiang Mountain" in them refer to one and the same group of inscriptions within one and the same scenic area; the only difference is how the subdistrict name is written, "Honglan Town" in the notice against "Honglan Subdistrict" in the current list. The three writings stand side by side, each recorded in its own original form, and are not counted as merged.

On this it can be decided that the "Wuxiang Mountain Cliff Inscriptions" is not a second, separately protected site. The third-batch notice has two entries for Lishui in the "caves and stone inscriptions" section, "Wuxiang Temple Cliff Inscriptions" and "Qiuhu Mountain Ancient Quarry", and the municipal list likewise lists one row. Neither official record contains any row named "Wuxiang Mountain Cliff Inscriptions", so that name can only be another rendering of the same one: "Wuxiang Mountain" is the name of the mountain and of the scenic area, "Wuxiang Temple" the temple within it, and the address column of the notice uses the temple as the locational description. The history site has a separate entry, "Wuxiang Temple Cliff Inscriptions" (ls:place:wuxiangsi-moya-shike), which records the same group of inscriptions. The two entries are kept as they stand in their own stations, because merging them would mean choosing one id across stations, and related cannot express a cross-station link (this library's validator treats a cross-station related as an error and allows only an absolute URL), so each records the finding in its body text and both cite the same two official records.

Points of doubt

• The years in which "Danding" and "Wuzun ming" were cut have no gazetteer basis. Volume 5 of the Kangxi gazetteer records only "Fengquan" and not the other two titles, so the two layers of evidence must be stated separately and the direct gazetteer record for "Fengquan" must not be extended to cover the other two.
• The figure of 29 characters for the main text of "Wuzun ming" comes from the scenic area site and the press; at the gazetteer level there is no second source.
• The order in which the three were cut, and the technique of cutting them, are not recorded in the sources used.
• The pavilion beside "Fengquan" is recorded by the Kangxi gazetteer as built by Wang Congshan and already in ruin by the Kangxi era; whether it was later rebuilt, and its present state, are not recorded in the sources used.
• Details of the present condition of the inscriptions and their protected area beyond what the scenic area site and the press record are not covered by the sources used.