Looming at over 230 feet tall, the behemoth Leshan Giant Buddha is by far the tallest Buddha statue in the world. It is a stalwart sentinel, overlooking the tempestuous waters where the Dadu, Minjiang, and Qingyi rivers meet in Sichuan, China.

This confluence had been the site of several boating accidents, where river travelers met grizzly fates. The locals blamed an angry water spirit for their sailors’ misfortune. So, to quell the demon, a monk named Haitong committed to constructing a statue in the likeness of Buddha, in the year 713 B.C.E.

Legend has it that Haitong spent 20 years collecting alms to construct the temple. When government officials heard of the hefty sum the monk had collected, they tried to extort it from him. Rather than give in to their shakedown, he offered them one of his eyes, which he gleefully plucked out of his own head. Shocked by the sight of the bloodied eyeball and by the monk’s resolute convictions, the would-be swindlers fled the scene, and Haitong’s project continued.

The Buddha’s giant head reaches 48 feet in height and stretches 33 feet across, adorned with 1,021 meticulously carved buns in its hair. Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images

The statue took 90 years and the collective efforts of thousands of artists, engineers, and laborers to complete. Towering 233 feet into the sky, the Leshan Giant Buddha stands as the world’s tallest pre-modern statue, made almost entirely of red sandstone from the cliff face it is carved from, with the exception of its mud-covered wooden ears.

The Buddha’s giant head reaches 48 feet in height and stretches 33 feet across, adorned with 1,021 meticulously carved buns in its hair. Each hand, resting peacefully on the statue’s knees, extends 10 feet, while its mighty shoulders span an incredible 92 feet.

Local lore tells of the statue’s massive nails, each one large enough for a grown person to sit on. Hidden gutters concealed around the buddha allows for the drainage of rainfall, protecting the statue from the worst effects of erosion and weathering.

While the sandstone was soft and easy to carve, this presented issues with the buddha’s durability, which engineers answered by embedding bronze and iron supports within its structure, viewed as a wonder of engineering considering the technological capabilities of the time.

Carving the colossus from the rock face resulted in large sandstone boulders, which were strategically placed in the riverbed below. These wave breakers effectively altered the rivers’ flow, calming the raging waters and thus helping create safer passage for boats to navigate.

Towering 233 feet into the sky, the Leshan Giant Buddha took 90 years and the collective efforts of thousands of artists, engineers, and laborers to complete. Photo by TPG/Getty Images

The site remains a place of pilgrimage for monks and sailors alike, with rituals regularly performed to commemorate the sanctity of the Buddha statue. While Haitong himself died before the completion of his project, his disciples saw it through to the end on his behalf.

In 1996, the Leshan Giant Buddha and its surrounding area were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, ensuring the preservation of Haitong’s legacy for generations to come.

Sometimes, archaeology gets big. In Huge! we delve deep into the world’s largest, towering, most epic monuments. Who built them? How did they get there? Why so big?