Mount Lu (Daoist heritage)庐山（道教遗迹）
- Type
- Daoist Sacred Mountains
- Location
- China · Jiangxi · Jiujiang · South of Jiujiang City; the main peak, Hanyang Peak, rises 1,474 meters
- Coordinates
- 29.56, 115.99 Map ↗
- School
- Lingbao (Numinous Treasure) School, Quanzhen (Complete Perfection) Daoism
- First built
- Eastern Jin and Southern Dynasties · Lu Xiujing of the Liu Song built Jianji Temple on Mount Lu, where he edited the Daoist scriptures and compiled the Catalogue of the Scriptures of the Three Caverns; eighth of the Thirty-six Lesser Grotto-Heavens, the Grotto-Heaven of Cavernous Numen and Perfection
- Heritage status
- UNESCO World Heritage Cultural Landscape (1996)National Scenic Area
Overview
Mount Lu is famed above all for its Buddhist and Confucian associations, but it is also an important mountain in the history of Daoism. Tradition holds that in the Zhou dynasty the brothers of the Kuang clan built a thatched hut and cultivated the Dao here, giving the mountain its alternate name Kuanglu; in the Eastern Jin the Daoist physician Dong Feng practiced medicine and planted apricot trees on its southern slopes. In the fifth year of Daming of the Liu Song (461), Lu Xiujing, answering an imperial summons, withdrew into reclusion below Jinji Peak on Mount Lu and built the Jianji Temple, where he collated and edited the scriptures of the Three Caverns and compiled the Catalogue of the Scriptures of the Three Caverns, the earliest catalogue of the Daoist Canon in China; Mount Lu thus became the center for the systematization of Daoist scripture in the Southern Dynasties. In the Tang, Lü Dongbin is said to have cultivated the Dao and attained immortality at the Immortal's Cave on Mount Lu; the mountain preserves the Immortal's Cave, the Imperial Stele Pavilion (where Emperor Hongwu of the Ming erected a stele for the Immortal Zhou Dian), and the site of the Taiping Palace, among other relics; in the Song, the Taiping Xingguo Palace was an officially sanctioned great temple of Jiujiang. Mount Lu is ranked as the eighth of the Thirty-six Lesser Grotto-Heavens, the "Grotto-Heaven of Cavernous Numen and Perfection." In 1996 Mount Lu was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape.
Highlights
- Site of Jianji Temple
- Immortal's Cave
- Imperial Stele Pavilion
- Site of Taiping Palace
- Bailudong Academy (Confucian)