Niushoushan
Buddhist cultural park and mountain in Nanjing, China
Niushou Mountain, or Niushoushan, located in Jiangning District of Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province, China, is a low hill belonging to the southern branch of the western Ningzhen Hills. Its main peak stands at an elevation of 242.9 meters.
The mountain name literally means the "Ox Head Mountain" because the east and west peaks form the shape of two horns of an ox). The mountain derives its name from its twin peaks, which resemble the horns of an ox.It is also known as Tianque Mountain and is referred to as Niutou Mountain by locals.
The park is newly developed and opened as a tourist attraction in 2014, but the location has been a Buddhist site since the Tang dynasty (618–907AD). However, the original temple was destroyed in the 1850s during the Taiping Rebellion.
Since 2015, the palace has been the shrine for the world's only parietal relic of Buddha (the skull of Shakyamuni), making Niushoushan a sacred location for Buddhists. The relic was found in the Ashoka Pagoda in the underground palace of the Bao'en Temple (the former Changgan Temple of the Song dynasty) in Qinhuai District, Nanjing.
History
Year 317
Emperor Yuan of Jin, Sima Rui, crossed the Yangtze River and established the Eastern Jin Dynasty with its capital in Jiankang (modern-day Nanjing). He planned to construct a pair of ceremonial towers outside the southern gate, Xuanyang Gate (now Zhonghua Gate), as a symbol of imperial supremacy.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Niushoushan” as buddhist cultural park and mountain in Nanjing, China. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as buddhist cultural park and mountain in Nanjing, China. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q122900031. Authority coordinates are 31.913, 118.745. None of the 3 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2014 and 2015.
A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Niushoushan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.