Buddhism was transmitted from India to China in the late Western Han Dynasty, and Buddhism reached its peak in China during the Sui and Tang dynasties, and Buddhism developed more prosperously in Ancient Shanxi, and left many temples. There is a Longquan Temple in Taiyuan Taishan, which is recorded to have been built in the early Tang Dynasty, later destroyed in the Battle of Jinyuan, and rebuilt during the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty.
preface
This Longquan Temple is the architectural style of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, but also the national certification of the national key protection of cultural relics, in 2008 because this temple was built on the mountain, usually very inconvenient to use water, so decided to build a reservoir around the temple, after the selection of the site this project began.
Dig a cistern to discover the dungeon
At that time, the construction team members carried out normal construction, in the process of digging the reservoir, first found a dungeon, at this time the entire excavation process was first suspended, because this major discovery, immediately reported to the local cultural relics department, this side is also waiting for the cultural relics department to identify and then decide whether to continue to carry out excavation work.
The local cultural relics bureau soon arranged archaeologists to come to the site of Longquan Temple, after the archaeologists cleaned up the site, according to the shape of the entire underground palace, it was judged that this was the base site of the pagoda of longquan temple, and below this was a underground palace, the underground palace was designed for a hexagon, in the face of the situation at that time, the reservoir could only be re-sited for excavation, and the underground palace on this side also had to be excavated.
A small coffin was found under the underground palace
This pagoda should have collapsed during the Jinyuan War, and was buried when the Ming Dynasty rebuilt it, and this time Fang found that it was also because of the need to dig a reservoir. During the excavation of the dungeon, a small coffin was found from the dungeon, and the outermost layer of rafters was wooden, because it had been buried for too long and had already decayed.
Archaeologists carefully removed the copper rafters inside, and could see that the copper rafters had been gilded, but because of the age of too long, the outer layer of gilding had also been mottled and peeled off. And this copper rafter is also very small, 21 centimeters long, which is a big difference from the size of the common coffin, and he has several layers inside in addition to the decayed wooden rafter. And each layer is very exquisite, the pattern on the copper rafters and the bodhisattva shape, the inner layer is a silver coffin with a lot of gems on it, and the innermost layer is a gold coffin with a bow.
It took 12 years to open
This release is 12 years, until 2020 in archaeology there is a new technology, the ribbon completely withdrawn from the golden coffin, this method not only completely preserves the ribbon, but also uncovers the secrets inside the golden coffin. After opening the golden coffin, inside are 23 well-preserved crystal clear relics.
summary
Many people think that because of a ribbon, it took 12 years for the Buddha relics inside the golden coffin to be seen again, which is incredible. In fact, the significance of this ribbon is extraordinary, because in the excavated cultural relics, this kind of package has not been well preserved before, so the ribbon on this golden coffin is of great archaeological significance.
Moreover, if you rush to open the ribbon at that time, you will definitely damage the ribbon, which is very harmful to cultural relics, so in that year, it was better not to open the golden coffin, but also to keep the ribbon wrapped around the golden coffin completely. The significance of archaeology is to protect cultural relics as much as possible, rather than destroying cultural relics in order to open the golden coffin, so it is better to wait than to destroy cultural relics.
【References】Records of Taiyuan County