The pagoda is situated in Shita Temple in Gaoxing Township of Qionglai County, Chengdu. The stone pagoda was built in 1169 of the Southern Song Dynasty, and the present pagoda retains its original features. The horizontal board above the door on the first storey still bears an inscription made in the Song Dynasty.
The pagoda stands some eight meters away from the temple's entrance, on the extension of the temple's axis, and, like the temple, it faces forty degrees northwest. Such a layout retains the custom of putting the pagoda in front of the temple.
The red-sandstone, square, multi-eave structure, seventeen meters high, has thirteen pent roofs. The base, built of plain flat stones, is half a meter aboveground with sides measuring some six meters long each. It supports a two-level square Sumeru pedestal, the lower level bigger than the upper one. The pedestal is carved with fine designs and niches for Buddhist statues.
The square first storey has a niche in the center of each side with a Buddhist statue in it. Above each niche is a vertical stone inscribed with the name of the pagoda, the year and month of its construction and the names of the people who made the inscriptions. The inscriptions show that it took four years to construct the pagoda.
Worth noting are the steps on the huge Sumeru pedestal, rare in other ancient pagodas in China. Projecting above the niches on the first storey of the Sakya Buddha Pagoda is a wide, eight-tiered, stone pent roof that is also supported by columns along the veranda. The four corners of the pent roof bend upwards in the architectural style of south China. The other twelve stone pent roofs are very close together, since each storey is only about half a meter high.
Carved on each side of each storey are three niches for Buddhist statues. The balconies from the second to the sixth storey are progressively wider, while those from the seventh to the twelfth storey are progressively narrower, making the whole pagoda look like a huge and graceful shuttle. The steeple is formed by two inverted stone bowls crowned by a stone bead.
