No other four-sided square pillar-shaped shrine of this style appears to be recorded. An early Northern Wei example of a square four sided shrine comprising five tapering blocks in the Gansu Provincial Museum, is illustrated by Matsubara, Chugoku Bukkyo Chokoku Silun, Illustrations, vol.1, pl.152. There are fragments of four-sided stupas, notably the Trubner shrine at the Metropolitan Museum of Art of massive size, but without any remaining traces of any images it would once have housed (probably free standing), illustrated by Wai Kam Ho, 'Notes on Chinese Sculpture from Northern Chi to Sui. Part I: Two seated Buddhas in the Cleveland Museum', Archives of Asian Art XXII, (1968-69), pp.6-55. Cf. the four fully carved sides of a base in marble dated A.D. 559 in the Tokyo National Museum, illustrated by Matsubara, Chugoku Bukkyo Chokoku Silun, Illustrations, vol.2, pls.394 and 395 with scenes from Sakyamuni's life including his birth, lustration the Sermon at Deer Park and his parinirvana where the original composition of the lost images must have been equally complex.

In the Northern Qi, Mofa (the docrinal belief in the Apocalypse and impending end of the Buddhist Law) caused enormous upheavals in Buddhist faith. Around the Hebei area, where the making of marble images predominated, this resulted in the creation of multiple images so that where before single images or trinities were worshipped, main groups on votive shrines expanded to accomodate five, seven, or even nine images with a number of supporting smaller figures now obscure in meaning. Cf. a large stele illustrated by Matsubara op.cit.,
pl.418 with a central Buddha flanked by two smaller Buddhas and two bodhisattvas below 12 apsaras and a stupa, the reverse with a seated Maitreya Buddha under a double tree; cf, ibid., pls.424 and 425 for a stele with seven images from the Hebei Provincial Museum where the lower register is carved with dvarapalas flanking lions and a central censer. Another massive stele with five images was exhibited at Eskenazi, Chinese Art from Tombs and Temples, 1993 Catalogue, no.44, with a meditating bodhisattva carved as the principal image on the reverse side under a bodhi tree; cf. Matsubara, op.cit., fig.421 and 422 for two views of a marble stele in the Cleveland Museum of Art with a central crossed legged Buddha (Maitreya probably) flanked by two arhats and two bodhisattvas and a grouping of the seven Buddhas of the Past ranged around the halo; the reverse with a central Buddha seated in dhyanasana (very probably Sakyamuni) flanked by two mediating bodhisattvas with Three Buddhas of the Past among the leaves of the tree; cf. a stele with seven images sold in these rooms, 29 October 1995, lot 636.

It is clear that the marble sculptures from the Hebei of this period sought to represent more powerful groupings, and also that the images of Maitreya as bodhisattva and as Buddha were in ascendancy at this time very possibly because the coming of Maitreya as Buddha of the Future as had been foretold, would bring to an end the period of Mofa and signalled an earthly Millenium over which he would have ruled. The many forms of Maitreya images seem to bear this out. Most unusual is the combination on the stele from the Cleveland Museum referred to above where He is shown in crossed-legged posture as a Buddha and in multiple form on the reverse in his last incarnation as the meditating bodhisattvas flanking Sakyamuni; the present four-sided shrine depicts Maitreya in at least two forms, as the meditating Bodhisattva under the double dragon tree, and as Maitreya Buddha seated in European posture. The identities of the other two Buddhas are less clear, but the multiplicity of the images in such numbers on a four-sided shrine appears to be unique and probably combined as a strong talismatic force against the effects of the Apocalypse