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A huge stone toad, two meters long and one meter wide, crouches on the slope of Mount Kongwang, about 100 meters to the south of the Buddhist reliefs. The toad, in fact a rock of granite carved in the shape of a toad, is about 1,800 years old, as old as the Buddhist reliefs that date from the East Han Dynasty (25 - 220 AD).

The Chinese regard the toad as an auspicious animal. In ancient times, local people worshiped the stone toad as something with divine power, hoping that it would help ward off disasters caused to their homeland by tidal waves and storms.

Below the Buddhist reliefs there is a stone elephant 2.6 meters tall and 4.8 meters long, much larger than a real elephant. The stone elephant has four carved lotus flowers underfoot, suggesting that it is a piece of Buddhist art as the elephant symbolizes the power of Buddhism and the lotus flower is the religion’s sacred flower. Like the stone toad, it is a natural rock carved in the shape of an elephant. On the upper part of a front leg there is the carved image of an elephant trainer, with a T-shaped hair bun and small belts round the ankles. Images of elephant trainers are often seen in brick carvings unearthed from Han Dynasty tombs.

The elephant should be the largest of all stone art objects of the Han Dynasty found so far across China if it dates from 1,800 years ago, as experts suggest.