Police are scratching their heads after ancient Buddha statues in Southwest China's Sichuan Province were beheaded, the media reported.
It was discovered on Sunday that a total of ten Buddha statues carved into a cliff-face in Jiajiang county's Pangpodong scenic spot had been damaged.
There are 53 Buddhas sitting along an 8-meter cliff, 26 on the top row and 27 on the bottom. Each one is about 50 centimeters tall.
Clefts made by tools can be seen on the necks of the headless statues, which date back to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the Huaxi Metropolis Daily reported.
Police are investigating.
"It's a shame," Zhou Mingcheng told local police on Sunday morning when reporting the case. Zhou's father was the one who first noticed what had happened to the Buddhas.
An inscription on the wall next to the red sandstone figures says that the sculptures were created in 1522.
After the vandalism was discovered, the local relic preservation department designated a person to watch over the Buddhas.
Pangpodong was supposedly home to Pang Degong, an honorable man from the Late Eastern Han Dynasty (184-220), who was a friend of Zhu Geliang, a famous politician and scholar immortalized in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Netizens strongly condemned the perpetrators. "How daring they are. Aren't they scared of retribution… the heads of the Buddhas are priceless," "moubuyao" posted on Sina Weibo.
Another user said, "I bet people who believe in Buddhism wouldn't dare buy those heads, but they are useless to people who don't believe."
Religious artifacts are often targeted by crooks. Fujian Province police detained a man in February on suspicion of stealing 10 Buddhas from different temples since 2016.
