Liang Sicheng (1901-1972), who studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University in the United States, was a pioneer in the study of ancient chinese architecture and the founder of modern architectural education, and devoted his life to promoting the cause of modern Urban Planning and the protection of historical relics in China. In 1950, the Dunhuang Institute of Cultural Relics held a Dunhuang Art Exhibition in Beijing, and the then director Chang Shuhong invited Mr. Liang Sicheng to write an introduction to Dunhuang architecture, which was written by the author and published in the fifth issue of the second volume of the "Cultural Relics Reference Materials" published in 1951. We hereby reprint it for the benefit of our readers.
Ancient Chinese architecture in Dunhuang murals
Text / Liang Sicheng
Drawing by Liang Sicheng From The History of Chinese Architecture in Images
What we already know
The main feature of Chinese architecture
Before discussing the architecture seen in Dunhuang, I must first briefly describe the characteristics of the Chinese architectural tradition.
By 1450 BC at least, Chinese architecture had definitely formed its unique system. In the structure of individual buildings, it consists of three main parts, namely the pedestal, the roof and the roof. The pedestal is mostly made of masonry, but occasionally made of wood. The roof is built on a pedestal, with wooden pillars on which beams and fangs are placed to support the roof. The roof was mostly covered with tiles, but it was originally thatched.
In larger and more important buildings, the junction of columns and beams is often used as a transition part. The columns and beams of the roof constitute the skeleton of the house and support the weight above; between the columns, they can be flexibly distributed according to the conditions needed, or build walls, or install doors and windows, or completely open (such as pavilions).
Eastern Han Dynasty Pottery House Datong City Museum Collection
As for a dwelling, official office, palace or temple, it is made up of a number of individual main buildings, such as halls, halls, pavilions, etc., together with the upper auxiliary buildings, such as the box, the gallery, the courtyard door, the wall, etc., which are connected in a circle, leaving a vacant space for the courtyard, or a number of connected courtyards.
The initial formation of this garden was undoubtedly aimed at defending. The expression of this same purpose is carried out from one dwelling to an entire city. With the development of political organization, within the cities, the ruling class was able to suppress the people with the force of the army or the "police" and implement the so-called "rule of law", so that within the cities, the defensive nature of the courtyard gradually decreased, and only the interior and exterior were separated, and the public and private were divided (the Dunhuang murals provide an example of the evolution of this development step).
The city gate in the Dunhuang murals
For example, the Weiyang Palace and Jianzhang Palace in the Han Dynasty were themselves a city with several courtyards; after the Song Dynasty, the "palace" had shrunk, equivalent to the courtyard of the group, located within the imperial palace, and it no longer had to have its own defensive equipment.
The Forbidden City in Beijing, which is divided into several "palaces", is an example of the evolution of the palace after the Song Dynasty. In other ancient cultures, there were also defensive courtyards, such as in Egypt, Babylon, Greece, and Rome. But in China, we have grasped the advantages of the courtyard deployment, abandoned its defensive deployment, and retained the inner tranquility of its beautiful corridor, which can provide the residents with the specialty of "outdoor life" in the courtyard, which has been preserved and used to this day.
For thousands of years, the plan of Chinese architecture, with the exception of a few exceptions due to special circumstances, has not been associated with several wooden skeleton buildings to form courtyards. This most basic feature of Chinese architecture is applied equally to religious and non-religious buildings. Since we can see the situation in the early days of Buddhism because of the Dunhuang murals, we can say with certainty that religious and non-religious architecture has not been fundamentally different in China since the beginning.
Bingling Temple Cave 3 Tang Dynasty Single Eaves Pagoda
There are probably two main reasons for this. The first is because of the function. Unlike Christianity or Islam, Buddhism rarely has the ritual of praying or listening to lectures in groups of tens or hundreds of people. Buddhism is dedicated to Buddha statues, the "dwellings" of Buddhas, which are similar to ancient Greco-Roman temples. The second reason is that the original Buddhist temple was remodeled by government offices or residences. The official offices of the Han Dynasty were mostly called "temples". Legend has it that the first Buddhist temple after Buddhism first entered China was the White Horse Temple, because the Western White Horse Was driven by the Scriptures, the Hongxu Temple was initially stopped, and the official Hongxu Temple was renamed the White Horse Temple of religion. Later buildings for Buddhism were called temples, which was the name of the official office of the Han Dynasty.
The Luoyang Jialan Chronicle records that jianzhong temple "was originally the residence of the eunuch Sikong Liu Teng... The front hall is a Buddhist hall, and the back hall is a lecture room"; "Wishing Temple, Zhongshu Sheren Wang Yishe House Establishment" and other records of the construction of the temple, there are many records. The buildings of Buddhist temples, official offices, and residences were basically indistinguishable from each other when Buddhism first entered, and they can be used interchangeably; this is still largely the case to this day.
Several pieces about the Wei tang wooden architectural figures
Important references
Our knowledge of the image of wooden buildings in the five or more dynasties of the late Tang Dynasty is extremely poor. The oldest images are only a few rare drawings on Spring and Autumn bronzes. In the Han Dynasty, only the few surviving stone ques, stone chambers, and excavated Ming and lacquerware were relied upon. Jin, Wei, Qi Sui, mainly the grottoes and reliefs of Yungang, Tianlong Mountain, and Xiangtang Mountain in the north and south, and several mausoleums in the Han River Basin of Korea, such as the so-called "Heavenly King's Land Shrine" and "Double Tomb". In the Tang Dynasty, although there were more and more brick towers, the eaves of the caves such as Yungang, Tianlong Mountain, and Xiangtang Mountains were gone, and the main historical material was the Dunhuang murals. In addition to the murals, there is only a Buddhist temple from 857 AD and a few scattered materials that can be used for reference and comparative study.
In the Dunhuang murals, architecture is one of the most common themes, because the buildings are most commonly used as disguises and the background of various story paintings. In the most typical pure land change after the Middle Tang Dynasty, the background is mostly composed of brilliant and gorgeous pavilions. In the earlier murals, such as the story paintings of the narrow banners of the Wei and Sui Grottoes, and the story paintings of the small squares on both sides of the Pure Land after the Middle and Tang Dynasties, the buildings painted are relatively simple, but most of them depict the relationship between life and architecture at that time, providing us with valuable information on the other hand.
Cave 148 of Mogao Caves Single-eaves wooden tower
One of the best examples to compare with simpler buildings like Dunhuang is the Northern Wei Ningmao Tomb Stone Chamber excavated in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, USA. According to Ning Mao's epitaph, this stone chamber was built in 529 AD. On the four walls of the stone chamber, the shape of a wooden frame is carved, with a barrel tile roof; there are carved "murals" inside and outside the wall, and there are also houses of the same style. There are prominent herringbone-shaped buckets under the eaves. These features are very similar to the simple buildings seen in the Dunhuang murals.
Architectural image on the stone chamber of the Northern Wei Ningmao Tomb
A rare reference belonging to the Sheng Tang Dynasty is the inscription of the Buddhist temple on the lintel stone of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda of Xi'an Ci'en Temple. The columns, foliage, buckets, pedestals, rafters, roof tiles, and cloisters on both sides are drawn with extremely precise lines. Built during the Chang'an period (701-704) of the Tang Dynasty, the Big Wild Goose Pagoda is speculated by the engineering intractable location of the lintel stones and the style of the Buddhist halls depicted in the drawings (compared with the later buildings and the nara period objects in Japan). From this map, we can obtain comparative research data about two hundred years earlier than most of the disguised maps of Dunhuang.
Shaanxi Xi'an Ci'en Temple Big Wild Goose Pagoda lintel stone carved figure elevation line diagram
There is only one physical object of wood structure at the end of the Tang Dynasty that we know. In June 1937, a team of the China Construction Society used the "Wutai Mountain Map" of Cave 61 as a "travel guide" to "discover" the main hall of Foguang Temple, the only known Tang Dynasty wooden building in China, near the village of Waidou in Nantai. There, we not only found a Tang Dynasty wooden structure, but also a Tang Dynasty statue, mural and inscription in the hall. The tang dynasty's books, paintings, sculptures, and construction, four kinds of art, gathered in one hall, as far as the author knows, it is still the only example. At that time, we studied foguang temple, and the Dunhuang murals were the main data for our comparison; now that we have returned to Dunhuang as the theme, the main hall of Foguang Temple is our indispensable reference material.
The main hall of Foguang Temple in Wutaishan, Shanxi, painted by Liang Sicheng
Before the "discovery" of the Tang Dynasty Buddhist Hall of Foguang Temple, our understanding of the image of wooden architecture in the Tang Dynasty and before, except for a few existing asuka period (552-645), Nara era (645-784), and early Heian period (784-950) imitating Sui and Tang dynasty architecture, the only information is dunhuang murals. Since the "discovery" of the Buddhist halls of the Foguang Temple in China, we have indeed obtained a rare example of the late Tang Dynasty; but because it is only a lonely Buddhist hall standing in the architectural environment changed by later generations, although it allows us to see the tang dynasty's large wooden structures and details; to understand the full picture of the tang dynasty architectural image, we must rely on the rich information provided by the Dunhuang murals. Moreover, because the main hall of Foguang Temple was built in 857 AD, it belongs to the same era as the largest part of dunhuang's pure land in disguise. We can compare it with the buildings depicted in the murals to know that the buildings in the paintings are faithfully depicted, which proves the importance and reliability of the materials in the murals.
Hokkaido Hall of Todaiji Temple, Japan The imitation Tang dynasty wooden structure that has survived from the 8th century AD
In 895 AD, the Late Tang Dynasty Amitabha Pure Land Moya Shrine in BeiyaFowan, Dazu County, Sichuan Province, and many of the smaller Pure Land Moriya Niches seen in the Thousand Buddha Cliffs of Leshan and Jiajiang Counties are also valuable materials that can be compared with dunhuang murals and their architecture. In these niches, we see exactly the same layout as the Dunhuang mural in disguise. Behind the Buddha statue, the background of the pavilion corridor is shown, and there are layers of railings in front. This kind of "three-dimensional" mural on the stone carving, because it shows the three-dimensional of the same theme, can be an excellent reference for studying the buildings in the Dunhuang murals.
The second information that can be used for reference is the record in ancient books. From books with relatively rich materials, such as Zhang Yanyuan's "Records of Famous Paintings of Past Dynasties", Duan Chengshi's "Records of Youyang Miscellaneous Tricks and Pagodas", Guo Ruoxuan's "Pictures and Pictures", we can also get a lot of information about the relationship between Buddhist temples and murals and architecture in the Tang Dynasty. From these three books, we can find many types of buildings, such as courtyards, halls, halls, towers, pavilions, buildings, middle three doors, corridors, etc.
Part of the south wall of The 25th Cave of Yulin Cave
The image of these types of architecture can be clearly seen by the Dunhuang murals. We also know that all these buildings can be found, and most of them have frescoes. The location of the painting, not only on the wall, is simply everywhere that can be painted, and the subject matter is also very extensive. For example, both sides of the door, inside the hall, under the porch, between the temple windows, inside the tower, on the door leaf, under the fork hand, on the column, on the eaves, and even the barrier version, the hook rail, can be painted. The themes include Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, various pure land changes, benxing changes, gods and ghosts, landscapes, aquatic tribes, peacocks, dragons, phoenixes, to ward off evil spirits, and even the "King of the Country (Khotan) and his relatives" painted by Wei Chi Yi monk at the Feng'en Temple in Chang'an, and the "Western Regions Map" painted by Yang Tingguang of Luoyang Zhaocheng Temple. It is known that in ancient architecture, not only frescoes were generally decorated, but also the location and subject matter of frescoes were unrestricted.
The above-mentioned figurative and written materials are important circumstantial evidence of the buildings depicted in the Dunhuang murals and the remaining eaves of several caves outside the caves.
In addition, the countless Liao, Song, Jin, and Yuan buildings and the Song section of the "Building the French Style" are the posterity materials we want to use for comparison.
All that has been mentioned above is the knowledge we have gained from the Chinese architectural tradition outside dunhuang, but now let us concentrate on the materials that Dunhuang can provide us with, and see what we can get and what value they have.
The south wall of the 25th cave of Yulin Cave is viewed with immeasurable life changes
From the architectural drawings seen in the Dunhuang murals, in terms of the deployment of the courtyard, the type of building, and the construction situation, the following can be obtained:
Courtyards formed around several buildings are characteristics of Chinese architecture, that is, the characteristics of the layout of Chinese buildings. Most of these gardens have a central axis (mostly north-south). The main buildings are placed on this line, and the left and right are symmetrically and evenly arranged with secondary buildings. To this day, Chinese architecture, from the Forbidden City of the Ming and Qing dynasties in Beijing to the entire city of Beijing, as small as a house, still maintains this feature.
The large galan painted in the upper part of the fourth painting on the left side of Dunhuang Cave 61 has three courtyards; the central courtyard is larger, and the left and right courtyards are smaller, and each courtyard has its own courtyard wall. Caves 146 and Cave 205 also have similar paintings, although they are also three courtyards, but they do not stand on their own four walls, and three walls are attached to each side of the central compound to form two attached courtyards.
Part of Mogao Cave Cave 205
Located in the center of this type of courtyard is the main hall. The courtyard is surrounded by a cloister; the outer columns of the corridor are blocked by walls, so the cloister is also the outer wall of the courtyard. In the middle of the façade is the first and second floor doors or gatehouses, one or three. There are also buildings like a door or apse after the main hall, corresponding to the front door. In the left and right cloisters in front of the main hall, there are sometimes two doors on the left and right, and there are also two floors. The four corners of the façade have two corners. The general layout of the courtyard four corners of the building, at least in form, still preserves the relics of ancient defense. However, this kind of deployment has been rare after the Song and Yuan dynasties, and only the Qufu Confucius Temple and the Shenyang Beiling Tombs have preserved this style.
The sixty-first cave "Wutai Mountain Map" has about sixty places of Garan, most of which are the same configuration; among them, the "top of the south platform", before the main hall, there is a three-story tower on the left and a heavy building on the right, which is very similar to the plane configuration of Horyuji Temple (7th century) in Nara, Japan, and Japanese architectural historians believe that this configuration is a feature of the Southern Dynasty, not owned by the North, and we have strong evidence here, proving that this configuration is also used in the North.
Mogao Caves Cave 61 Da Qingliang Temple part
As for the configuration of the civilian residential plan, it can be glimpsed in many small frames on both sides of the disguised drawings. Although most of them are fragments of palaces or residences, a corner or a part, the courtyard often depicts the daily life of the occupants, and its configuration is basically similar to the distribution of Buddhist temples.
In various disguised drawings, the architectural background of the central part is also the center of the main hall, followed by many apse, with corridors on both sides, and the corridors are folded forward, and there are heavy pavilions on the left and right, which is the internal scene of the above courtyards. Paintings of this layout, counting hundreds or more, should be the most common configuration of palaces or Buddhist temples at that time, so there is such a common performance.
The layout seen in the murals of the Ajanta Cave Temple in India is mostly based on earthly life, and there are Buddhas or Bodhisattvas appearing high in the background, as opposed to dunhuang where Buddha statues are seated. In the Han portrait stone, many of the Queen Mother of the West are centered, sitting in the pavilion, facing each other left and right, and even sandwiched with trees, which is basically the same layout as the Dunhuang Pure Land in disguise, so that we cannot help but think that the Pure Land of the Dunhuang murals was originally a descendant of the Queen Mother Yaochi. In fact, they are just the epitome of the magnificent palace on earth.
The type of individual building
Such as halls, floors, corner towers, doors, que, corridors, towers, platforms, walls, walls, bridges, etc.
(1) The temple
The Buddha Hall, the Main Hall, and the Hall all belong to this category. A temple is a primary or secondary building within a wall. The plane is mostly rectangular, and the longer side is mostly three or five. Most of the main halls in the center of the disguised figure do not have walls. Occasionally, if the wall is painted, the wall is only at the left and right ends, and in the middle front, beware of opening the door between the two rooms, and opening the window between the second, similar to the current general method. Smaller houses are depicted in the secondary drawings next to them, and the use of walls is more common. The halls and houses seen in the Wei and Sui caves are very similar to the Ningmao Stone Chamber in Luoyang, both in structure and form.
The main hall of the five-bay hall of Cave 148 of Mogao Caves
(2) Floors
Han portrait stones and excavated Hanming artifacts have made us know that China's multi-storey houses have a long history. In the Dunhuang murals, the floor has become a typical building. Whether it is the main hall, the auxiliary hall, the middle three doors, and even the cloister and corner tower, there are two or even three floors. Each floor of the upper floor is made up of three basic parts of Chinese architecture — the pedestal, the roof, and the roof – which are stacked on top of each other: the pedestal on the upper floor takes the form of "sitting flat", and the roofs of each floor take the form of "waist eaves" except for the roof of the top floor; each floor is surrounded by railings. There are also floors on the city gate, which are based on the city gate, and its upper level is exactly the same as the upper floor of the upper floor.
Yulin Cave Cave 25 South Wall Pedestal and Steps
The most special heavy building in the mural is the octagonal two-story building behind the Statue of the Pure Land Buddha on the right wall of Cave 61. Both the base plan and the eaves plan of the building are composed of many arcs. All the columns, fangs, roof ridges, cornices, etc. are all curves. In the whole building, except for the pillars and shu columns of the railings, it seems that there is no straight line. The corner of the house is upturned, unlike all the buildings in Dunhuang. Under the eaves seems to be covered with a curtain. This peculiar building may be made of traditional Chinese wooden frames, and this strange structure can be taken, on the one hand, it can indicate the resolute self-confidence of ancient craftsmen in tradition, boldly using infinite wisdom to deal with new problems; on the other hand, it can also see the high adaptability of traditional Chinese wooden frames. This architectural structure, because it is not usually adopted, can prove that it is just an attempt. The results are not satisfactory.
(3) Corner Tower
There are corner towers at the four corners of the courtyard wall and at the four corners of the city walls. The corner tower of the courtyard is exactly the same as the general floor structure. The corner towers of the city walls are based on the city walls, and the upper floors are exactly the same as the upper floors of the upper floors.
Part of Cave 172 of Mogao Caves
(4) Gate
The gate of the building in the mural, that is, the middle three doors, three doors, or the three major doors as called in the "Records of Famous Paintings of All Dynasties", occupies the same position as the gate in today's Chinese architecture, becoming a major building. The plan of the gate is also rectangular, with one to three widths, and the door leaf is installed between the columns of the vertical midline. The gate also has a masonry pedestal, with stone steps or ramps to lift and lower, and some around the railing. The main gate also has two floors, which can be proved by the records of the "Records of Famous Paintings of the Past Dynasties" such as "Wu (Daozi) Painting God Under the Three Gates of Xingtang Temple" and the actual door of Horyuji Temple in Nara, Japan.
Part of Cave 445 of Mogao Caves
(5) Que
In the Dunhuang Northern Wei Grottoes, Que is a common painting subject, such as the 254 Caves, next to the main buildings, there are buildings that resemble Que, and there are Que-shaped niches on the walls of the 254 Caves. Next to the que, there is also the sub-que. Between the two passes, there is a roof eaves. Que is a pair of buildings separated by the roadside of Han Dynasty palaces, temples and mausoleums, and is common in Han portrait stones. In kind, there are more than ten Han tombs and cliff tombs in Shandong, Sichuan and Xikang. However, there is no eaves between the two ques, which is in line with the meaning of "que que ye". It is slightly different from what dunhuang has seen. After the Sui and Tang dynasties, the original type of que was no longer found in Chinese architecture. In the Tombs of Qi Liang in Nanjing, the place of que was given up to shinto stone pillars, which may later be transformed into Huabiao, as seen before Tiananmen; it has changed from a building to an architectural carving. Its development in the other direction became the archway of the future generations. What Dunhuang saw is a good example of a transitional pattern. As can be seen in the murals, que is still a common type in the field of the Northern Wei Dynasty.
(6) Corridor
The gallery is almost an indispensable unit of composition in the composition of the Chinese architectural complex. Its location and structure, and abundant light make it the most ideal "gallery", so countless famous teachers have painted walls on the gallery, improving the status of the gallery in the architectural complex. From an architectural point of view, the gallery is a narrow and long connected building, also framed with a wooden structure, covered with a roof; on the outward side, the wall is made between the columns, and the window is also opened between the columns; the inward side is completely open. The gallery is mostly connected by one main building to another, so the outer wall of the gallery is often the outer wall of the complex. It is a traffic lane on rainy and snowy days.
Part of Mogao Caves Cave 321
It is also the ideal place to line up honor guards when performing solemn ceremonies. Later, many temples were also a street market during the temple festival, such as the Daxiangguo Temple in the Song Dynasty.2000 (Kaifeng).
(vii) Tower
Among the ancient architectural objects, the largest number of existing pagodas. It is the most material-rich type in the study of ancient architecture. Although the concept of the tower was imported purely from India, in Chinese architecture, it is the most outstanding example of a national form of architecture created on the basis of the original Chinese, combined with foreign factors, suitable for existential conditions.
Part of Cave 103 of Mogao Caves
(8) Taiwan
There is a type of towering building in the frescoes, with the lower part or masonry wrapped into a very high pedestal, such as an isolated city tower; or on the ordinary pedestal, the wooden pillar is a high foundation, and the upper part is sat flat, and the temple is built on the same side. Because it could not be determined by its name, it was tentatively called The Platform. According to the heavy buildings seen in the frescoes, there are eaves on the lower columns, and the eaves are sat flat above the eaves. However, the double tower in this type of Dunhuang mural has no eaves on the lower column, but is directly installed to sit flat and has a railing around it, thus making people speculate that the platform is not used for residence. The stolen goods stored in the Fu Lier Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Sui Dynasty stone carvings stolen from the Nanxiangtangshan Grottoes in Ci County, Plain Province, have the same wooden flat sitting platform.
It is known from ancient texts that Tai was a very common type of architecture in ancient China, but it has been rare in later generations. From this common type of Dunhuang mural, it is speculated that the ancient platform may have been like this, or one of them was like this. As far as Tuancheng in Beijing, the Shenggu Temple in Anping County, Hebei (1309), all built a group of buildings on a high platform, perhaps another kind of platform.
(ix) Walls
As described above, the cloister is used as a wall, mostly because of the wooden frame of the colonnade, and there are also brick walls in the frescoes, but they are rare. In front of some dwellings, wooden fences are also found in frescoes.
Part of Cave 85 of Mogao Caves
(10) City
Although the ancient Chinese cities did not generally use bricks to build walls until the Ming Dynasty, but from the Dunhuang murals, the brick-wrapped cities existed before the Tang Dynasty. There are many cities seen in the murals, most of which are square, with city gate towers on both sides or in the middle. Most of the buildings depicted in the frescoes are faithful in proportion, but the walls clearly have a tendency to emphasize height, so that the city gates are extremely high and narrow. The inside and outside of the building foundation are slightly thicker than the city wall, and the lower part is large and small, and the score is significant. The foundation of the building sits flat on the bucket and builds the building. Most of the buildings are five wide and three deep. Sit flat surrounded by railings. There are buckets under the eaves of the pillars, and the roof is mostly topped by the mountain (that is, the nine ridges). The city gate cave is narrow and high, and it is trapezoidal without issuing coupons. The Jindai Gate of the Tai'an Dai Temple, which was demolished not long ago, is still in this style. There are also gates that do not make trapezoids or issue coupons, but are made of wooden beams. The beam is divided into two layers, and a bucket is used between the two floors, as seen on the doors of many Hanya tombs in Pengshan County, Sichuan.
As for the door nails, heads, and horns on the door leaf of the city gate, they are the same as those used today. There are also waist walls and battlements on the city walls. As for the Great Wall and enemy platforms that were common in later generations, they are not found in the murals.
Part of Mogao Cave 217 Part Of Mogao Cave 217
The corner tower is a must for every city corner depicted in the mural. The walls of the temples in the frescoes must have corner towers, and the walls must be even more so. It can be seen that in the plane configuration, from a courtyard to a city, the basic principles are the same and consistent. It also shows the legacy of ancient defensiveness. The existing Ming and Qing Dynasty corner towers, the plane is more composed of rulers, along with the corners of the city wall. The Dunhuang murals are relatively simple, with the same structure as the city gate tower mentioned above and slightly shorter than the city gate tower.
One of the most peculiar cities in the frescoes is the one seen in Cave 217. The city is clearly a western view. The gates and the houses in the city are obviously composed of coupons, which can be seen by the semi-circular roofs of the gates and houses in the city and the ticket doors on both sides of the houses.
(xi) Bridges
Found in many places in the mural, it is all made of wood, the bridge deck is slightly arched, and the railings are protected on both sides. Such bridges are still extremely common in Japan today.
Fu Xi Nian's Note:
On the general discussion of the architecture before the Tang Dynasty, Mr. Liang Sicheng has written two articles. The first was "The Buddhist Temples and Palaces of the Tang Dynasty as We Know It," published in 1932 in the first issue of the third volume of the Journal of Chinese Construction Studies. The second, this article, was published in the 1951 issue of The References for Cultural Relics, Vol. II, No. 5. This article is published later, including the content of the previous article and has developed, and the era has also expanded to the Northern Dynasty to the early Song Dynasty, so it is included in the anthology (referring to the Complete Works of Liang Sicheng, China Architecture and Building Publishing House, 2001).
(Author: Liang Sicheng)
(Source: Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, Peking University)
(Transferred from: Silk Road Heritage)