Yixian glazed pottery luohans

A set of life-size glazed pottery sculptures of luohans usually assigned to the period of the Liao dynasty (907–1125) was discovered in caves at I Chou (I-chou, Yizhou) in Yi xian or Yi County, Hebei (simplified Chinese: 易县; traditional Chinese: 易縣; pinyin: Yì Xiàn), south of Beijing, before World War I. They have been described as "one of the most important groups of ceramic sculpture in the world." They reached the international art market, and were bought for Western collections. At least eight statues were originally found, including one large fragment which was long thought to have been destroyed in Berlin during World War II, but has been sighted in Russia recently.

Others are now in the following collections: the British Museum in London, two in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Penn Museum, Philadelphia, Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City, the Musée Guimet in Paris, and a Japanese collection. With the example lost in Berlin, this makes a total of ten figures. There are fragments probably from the same set in other collections. The circumstances of the find, and the subsequent events as the figures reached the art market, have been the subject of much scholarly investigation, without being entirely clarified.

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