The first biography of West Sky Garan
Monasteries in Buddhism are places dedicated to Buddhas and bodhisattvas, dwellings built specifically for Buddhas and bodhisattvas, and places where monks live, live and practice.
In ancient times, the temple was originally the name of the official office, and in the Han Dynasty, the official office in charge of the rituals of the imperial court was called Hongluo Temple, and the official office in charge of the ceremonies of the temple was called Taichang Temple.
When Buddhism first spread, there were no temples in China today, and monks from the West were generally placed in Hongluo Temple. According to legend, in the tenth year of Yongping of the Eastern Han Dynasty (67), Western monks came to Luoyang with scriptures on white horses to spread Buddhism, lived in Hongluo Temple, and the next year changed the official office to a Buddhist temple, named after the white horse, called the White Horse Temple, which is the earliest Buddhist temple recorded in Chinese Buddhist history.
When Buddhism was introduced to China, Buddhist temples became the center of Buddhist activities, and were the bases for Buddhists to carry out idolatry and religious activities, thus forming a rich Buddhist monastic culture, and the architecture, sculptures, paintings and gold and stone inscriptions in the temples have become precious cultural heritage of ancient China.
During the Eastern Han Dynasty, Buddhism was introduced to Shanxi, and in the long feudal era, the Buddhist culture in Shanxi was extremely prosperous and prosperous, and it was one of the important bases for the development of Chinese Buddhist culture.
(Luoyang White Horse Temple)
The state of Buddha during the Sui and Tang dynasties
Just when Buddhism in Wutaishan was very prosperous, the Emperor Wudi of Zhou destroyed Buddhism (574), which caused the decline of Buddhism in Wutaishan. Until the first year of the emperor (581), Emperor Wen of Sui issued an edict: "Each of the five tops will set up a temple, set up a statue of Manjushri, and three monks in each degree, and order the matter to be burned." "This is the beginning of the construction of monasteries on the top of the five platforms.
The Sui Emperor also believed in Buddhism, and he personally visited Wutai Mountain to spend the summer worship of Buddha, and ordered the construction of palaces and temples throughout the country; The Sui Emperor not only believed in Buddhism, but also advocated luxury, built a lot of civil engineering, and the Buddhist temples in Shanxi continued unabated, and Buddhism in Shanxi was more prosperous than in previous generations.
After Li Yuan established the Tang Dynasty, he regarded Wutai Mountain in the territory of Taiyuan Prefecture as the "land of dragons". Among the more than 20 emperors of the Tang Dynasty, most of them revered Buddha except for Wuzong's anti-Buddha, so that Chinese Buddhism entered the most prosperous period, and it was also the heyday of Wutaishan Buddhism.
(Wutaishan Taihuai Town)
Known as the Hedong region in the Sui and Tang dynasties, Shanxi was an important military and political place in the north, and the construction of Buddhist temples was particularly prosperous, and famous temples spread throughout the province. According to the statistics of successive monks and Fang Zhi, there were more than 290 Buddhist temples built in Shanxi in the Tang Dynasty, and the scale was more grand than the previous generation, expanding from the original one temple and one courtyard to one temple and several courtyards, and even one temple with dozens of courtyards.
After more than 1,000 years of historical precipitation, there are still a large number of Buddhist temples remaining in the land of the Three Jins, and Chinese Buddhist temples integrate foreign Buddhist culture with China's inherent traditional culture to create a splendid Buddhist temple culture and become the common cultural heritage of mankind. In particular, the main hall of Tang Jiannan Temple and the east hall of Foguang Temple, which were called "the two Tang Temple, treasures in the world" by the late president of the Buddhist Association of China, can be described as Buddhist temple boutiques.
Liang Lin's road to Tang
The story of Liang Sicheng's discovery of Foguang Temple on Wutaishan has always had a legendary story that has been widely circulated. It is said that Liang Sicheng discovered Foguang Temple when he saw the mural of Wutaishan in Cave 61 of Mogao Grottoes in Bo Xihe's "Dunhuang Catalogue" and used it as a "travel guide".
In his 1945 book "Notes on the Architecture of Foguang Temple on Mount Wutai", he wrote: "The Dunhuang stone chamber mural Wutaishan picture contains the 'Temple of Great Buddha Light'. At that time, the temple was depicted thousands of miles away in the desert, and it was a famous temple of the Tang Dynasty, and it can also be enshrined here. Six years later, Liang Sicheng reiterated this point in "Ancient Chinese Architecture as Seen in Dunhuang Mural Paintings", and this time, "Wutaishan Map" became a "travel guide" for discovering Foguang Temple.
In June 1937, Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin (the investigation team of the China Construction Society) and their wife started from Taiyuan with the belief that "the domestic temple must have Tang structure", they first took a car, but halfway through the road they had to change to a pack mule, along the deserted mountain road, into Wutai County, Shanxi. After a short rest, they did not rush to Taihuai Town, which is full of temples and incense, to worship the Buddha and pray for blessings, as most people do, but on the steep and rugged mountain road outside Wutai Mountain, they walked in a roundabout way, as if they were looking for something.
At dusk, they were attracted by a temple: "In the Foguang Mountain, about five kilometers northeast of Nantaidou Village, Garan is arranged according to the mountain rock, and the main hall is on a high platform, overlooking the courtyard, surrounded by twenty or thirty old pines. A story high, majestic, sturdy and simple bucket arch, far-reaching eaves, you can see the age at a glance. But can it be older than the oldest wooden structure we've found before? ”
With a belly full of questions, Liang Sicheng and his party walked into the main hall, and the tall Buddha statue looked down on them condescendingly, as if they were in a fairy forest. Among these large statues, a statue of a faithful woman at the left end of the altar is the size of a life-size person. "This statue is full of human nature, and it is very different from the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas." The monks nearby told them that the statue was the Empress Wu, who usurped the throne in the Tang Dynasty.
In the following days, while surveying, they looked for ink on the girder - they found the name "female disciple Ning Gongyu" on the back beam of the temple, and the Tang stone carved scripture building in the temple also engraved "female disciple Ning Gongyu", the two are exactly the same, and more valuablely, this stone scripture clearly records the time of the construction of the temple: the eleventh year of Tang Dazhong, that is, 857 AD - by this time, the construction date of the main hall of Foguang Temple (now known as the East Hall) has been determined.
Liang Sicheng later wrote: "This is not only the only wooden temple of the Tang Dynasty that we have visited for many years, it is not only the first treasure of ancient architecture in China, but also the most precious thing in the feudal cultural heritage of the mainland." ”
Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes Cave 61 mural painting of Wutaishan in the picture of "Temple of Great Buddha Light". Image from Zhao Shengliang, editor-in-chief "Dunhuang Mural Wutaishan Map"
Fanling Baosha Foguang Temple
Foguang Temple is located on the mountainside of Foguang Temple, 6 kilometers northeast of Doucun Town, Wutai County, which is the western foot of the southern platform of Wutai Mountain. The temple is built on the mountain, surrounded by peaks on the northeast, southeast and north, and open land on the river bank to the west. The temple is surrounded by pines and cypresses, and the environment is extremely quiet, and the temples preserved in the temple are the best physical materials for studying the history of ancient Chinese architecture.
According to legend, Foguang Temple was founded in the period of Emperor Xiaowen of Northern Wei (471~499), and the "Legend of Ancient Qing Liang" recorded that when King Yan Dongchang traveled to Fo Guang Mountain, "he encountered the light of the Buddha, the mountains and forests were all over the place, because of the name of Foguang Temple", at that time, Foguang Temple only had "three Buddhist halls, more than ten monastic rooms, solemn and solemn, and clear forests".
During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the name of Foguang Temple often appeared in the biographies of Buddhist monks, and the great virtues of high monks were endless, becoming one of the ten major temples in Wutaishan. In the Tang Dynasty, "Hedong Jiedu made Pei Du play Wutai Mountain, Foguang Temple, Qingyun, and now Manjushri rode a lion in the air, and followed by thousands of people." The envoy was sent to offer ten thousand bodhisattvas, and Qingyun appeared in the monastery every day" (The Legend of the Song High Monk, vol. 27). Foguang Temple is far from Chang'an, and the "Xiangrui" in the temple can reach Chang'an and spread to the court, which shows the influence of the temple at that time.
Aerial photograph of Foguang Temple
layout
The Foguang Temple during the Sui and Tang dynasties was grand in scale, and the main building in the temple was a "three-story seven-room Maitreya pavilion, 95 feet high." Seventy-two statues, ten great dragon kings of sages, all dressed strictly." In Cave 61 of the Dunhuang Grottoes, there is a mural of Mount Wutai painted in the fifth dynasty or early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, and a mural on the west wall is 5 meters high and 13.5 meters wide, covering an area of more than 60 square meters to form a three-story platform.
There is a shadow wall built in front of the mountain gate, with the inscription "Foguang Temple", after entering the mountain gate, the three-story platform is arranged in a stepped shape, and a central axis leads from west to east to the east hall. On the first floor platform is a wide courtyard, with the Dharani Sutra building built in the fourth year (877) of Emperor Qianfu of Tang Dynasty in the middle of the courtyard, the Wenshu Hall built in the fifteenth year of the Jintianhui (1137) on the north side, and the building opposite it on the south side no longer exists.
On the second floor platform are modern reconstructed wings, and there are buildings behind the wings, forming two cross-courtyards in the north and south. The north wing is a monastic monastery built in the Ming and Qing dynasties, with a fragrant wind and rain building in the courtyard, which is the Tibetan scripture building of Foguang Temple, and there is still a huge Tang Dynasty lotus pillar base in the courtyard, with a diameter of 1.05 meters, which may also be the relics of the seven three-story Maitreya pavilions of Foguang Temple before the Tang Huichang extinction.
The third platform is made of earthen cliffs, protruding abruptly, with steep stepping classes in the platform and stone caves on both sides, and the east hall is located on this platform, overlooking the whole temple, which is very magnificent.
East Hall of Foguang Temple
East Basilica
The east hall is seven rooms wide, 34 meters long, four rooms deep, 17.66 meters long, and a single-eaves hall-style roof. There are five rooms in the front eaves of the main hall, including the bright room, the second room and the tip room, equipped with heavy panel doors, and behind the door panel there are ink book inscriptions of tourists from the Tang Dynasty and its descendants, indicating that the door panel is still the original of the Tang Dynasty.
There are 22 eaves pillars around the main hall, with foreheads between the pillars, and the gold pillars of the inner groove, which form a two-layer column network inside and outside the hall, which are connected with each other by beams to form a tight whole. On the column network is the paving layer, that is, the bucket arch structure, and the top layer is the roof truss. The three-layer structure of column network, paving and roof truss forms a stable large wooden structure.
The hall has a flat (ceiling) floor, which divides the beam frame into two parts: the open and the grass. The grass is located on the ceiling, the processing is relatively rough, the part of the beam frame on the ridge is a triangular structure, by two diagonal braces against the ridge, Tang Dynasty called forked hands, this is a traditional practice formed since the Han Dynasty, has been used until the Tang Dynasty, the fifth dynasty, the Northern Song Dynasty after no longer use this practice, so this practice can be used as one of the architectural identification marks before the Tang Dynasty.
A total of seven kinds of bucket arches are used on the inner and outer pillars of the east hall, and the seven paved bucket arches of the capitals are double-copied and double-lowered, and 2.02 meters are singled out, which is the most singled out layer and the farthest distance among the existing ancient buildings. The quaint and huge bucket arch supports the far-reaching eaves, thick columns, simple door and window decoration and stretched and gentle roof, constituting the majestic and unique architectural style of the Tang Dynasty hall.
Inside the East Hall
The main hall has a concave shaped Buddhist altar with a width of five rooms and a depth of one room, and 37 painted sculptures of the Tang Dynasty exist. There are 5 main statues on the front of the altar, 3 seated statues of Shakya, Maitreya and Amitabha Buddha in the middle, and Puxian and Guanyin statues on both sides. According to the configuration of the Buddhist temple, the Buddha should be served by Manjushri and Puxian, but the configuration in Foguang Temple is Puxian and Guanyin.
Experts believe that it is mainly because Mount Wutai is the ashram of Manjushri, and Manjushri, as the main statue of Mount Wutai, cannot be set as a waki attendant according to the convention, so it was changed to Puxian and Guanyin waki. The most prominent symbol of the statue is the crown of Kannon decorated with a statue of Amitabha Buddha.
In front of the main statue there are 2 statues of servants and offering bodhisattvas, and there are 2 disciples on both sides of Shakya. Guanyin and Puxian rode lions and elephants respectively, and there were fangs and fangs in front of their mounts. There is one king in each of the two corners of the front altar. It is particularly noteworthy that there is a statue of a lay believer on the south side of the Buddhist altar, which is the main benefactor of the reconstruction of the hall, Ning Gongyu, like sitting cross-kneeled on the ground, with knotted hair, wide clothes and belts, dignified face, eye level, and a very peaceful demeanor, which is an elegant image of a middle-aged woman of the Tang Dynasty.
There are Buddhist platforms under the two gables and under the back wall of the main hall, on which there are 500 arhats shaped in the Ming Dynasty, and 297 statues exist. Under the sills of the front eaves of the hall, there is a statue of the senior monk who presided over the construction of the East Hall in the Tang Dynasty. Yuan Cheng is the image of a middle-aged monk, dressed in a monk's robe, sitting cross-kneeled, with a calm expression and a calm demeanor, which is a fine work of early realistic portraits of Chinese figures. There are also Buddhist-themed murals preserved on the back of the Buddha seat and the arched eye wall of the main hall, which is the only Tang Dynasty mural in the existing wooden temple in China.
Wenshu Hall
Wenshu Hall is the side hall of Foguang Temple, located on the north side of the first floor platform, sitting north facing south. The main hall is seven rooms wide, 31.56 meters long, four rooms and eight rafters deep, and has a single eaves hanging from the top of the mountain, which is the largest side hall among the temples of Wutaishan Mountain. The front eaves of the main hall are equipped with panel doors, and the two ends of the front eaves are equipped with mullioned windows, and the capitals are applied with five paved bucket arches, and the Ming second room is equipped with 45-degree oblique arches, which are gorgeous and exquisite, which is a unique structural form in Liaojin architecture. The appearance of Wenshu Hall is thick and simple, and there is nothing special about it compared with the hall of the Liaojin period in Shanxi, but its internal beam structure is an isolated example of ancient Chinese architecture.
In order to worship the Buddha, the column reduction and column shifting method is adopted, and only four gold pillars are used in the 550-square-meter hall, and the space in the hall is extremely spacious. Due to the change of column network caused by column shifting and column reduction, the beam structure has also undergone corresponding changes. A huge inner forehead is erected on the inner column, which is up to 14 meters long.
The large inner forehead with three long spans was used on the inner column of the rear eaves, and the oblique wood was added between the inner foreheads to transmit the load, forming a roof truss form similar to the modern "herringbone truss", and this complex longitudinal frame structure is enough to show that the craftsmen at that time had a considerable understanding and mastery of the characteristics of wooden structures, so as to create this unique example of ancient Chinese architecture.
There is a fan wall between the back pillars of the Wenshu Hall, and a Buddhist altar in front of it, with statues of Manjushri riding lions and statues of Bodhisattvas and children, with dignified shapes and rich costumes, which should be the works of the Jin Dynasty. The surroundings of the main hall are painted with five hundred arhats, painted for the fourth year of Ming Xuande (1429).
Ancestral Tower
A hexagonal brick pagoda located in the southeast corner of the East Hall is the only remnant of the Foguang Temple before the Tang Huichang extinction, and the monks called the Ancestral Pagoda.
The tower has a hexagonal plan, with a tower room in the first floor of the tower, and a ticket door on the southwest side, and the door is decorated with flame-shaped coupon surface decoration. The eaves of the tower body are stacked with a layer, and the middle is decorated with brick carved bucket arches, nine on each side, with three layers of lotus petals and stacked astringents, forming a two-story eaves, and the eaves are equipped with a girdle and a two-story tower. The plan of the two-story tower is also hexagonal, with leaning columns at each corner of the tower, and the capitals, columns and bases are bound with covered lotuses, which is rich in ancient Indian style.
The west side of the tower is equipped with a fake ticket door, and the forehead is decorated with flame-shaped coupon faces, and the door is half-open. The pagoda part consists of a base, a bowl and a jewel. The shape of the pagoda is peculiar, only the Dunhuang murals have a similar tower shape, and the flame-shaped decorations, lotus pillars and lotus petals on the ticket gate are all in the style of the Northern Dynasty period. Although there is no documentary evidence to prove its exact date, its elegant and peculiar shape and decoration are enough to prove that it is a fine piece of the early brick and stone towers on the mainland.
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