Source: Shanxi Yuncheng TV Station "Millennium Hedong" National Security Yuncheng - Yongji Qiyan Temple
At the top of Zhongtiao Mountain in the south of Yongji City, 49 pagodas have been restored; the thousand-year-old famous Chaqi rock temple, which was extremely prosperous during the Sui and Tang dynasties, is now gone, and few people know about it. Which monks are buried under these stupas? What is the relationship between the ancient temple and the stupa? Tracing the relics of the national security and opening up the dusty history, the "Millennium Hedong" "National Security Yuncheng" series tells you the story of the royal temple Qiyan Temple and Tallinn.
There is a Xiasi Village in Hanyang Town, Yongji City, and the name of the village is taken from a famous local temple in the Sui and Tang Dynasties, Qiyan Temple. Qiyan Temple Tallinn is located at the top of the south of Yongji City, zhongtiao Mountain, and is home to senior monks of the past.
Former secretary of the village branch of Xiasi Village, Ku Xiaosuo
Dawn: Master Ku, when did this Tallinn return to this look?
Ku Xiao Lock: This was built last year.
Dawn: What was it like in the first place before it was repaired, at that time?
Ku Xiao Lock: Most of them are buried in the soil, and the bottom is in the soil.
Morning Dawn: What emerges from the ground is the spire.
Ku Xiao Lock: The blackened spire in the back, which was exposed to the ground, was buried in the soil like a white.
The Tallinn body protection and restoration project was completed at the end of 2017, and some of the restored Tallinn have begun to take shape.
Qin Xiaoge, a villager in Xiasi Village, once helped the engineering team to restore Tallinn to transport materials, and the experts and scholars involved in the restoration told a lot about the relevant historical materials of Qiyan Temple and Tallinn at the scene, and listened to it a lot, and Qin Xiaoge often served as a temporary explainer here.
Villagers of Xiasi Village Qin Xiaoge
Dawn: It's really just a little bit from the inside of the earth
Qin Xiaoge: Well, little by little, it's cut out
Dawn: Machine or labor
Qin Xiaoge: This also dares to use machines, and when you go to the tower, you must use people to clean up, these are all national treasures, and they have been dug for more than 40 days.
Chenxi: This is from the Ming Dynasty?
Qin Xiaoge: Yes, you see this horse, this horse means to lead the way in front, and the person in the back is sitting on it.
Morning Dawn: This is what it was before, we haven't touched it yet, right?
Qin Xiaoge: I haven't moved
Morning Dawn: How many underground parts were there when this was dug
Qin Xiaoge: See that eaves, the black eaves there
Morning Dawn: The whole digging is so deep
Qin Xiaoge: Right
Dawn: Which are the original bricks?
Qin Xiaoge: This is all
Dawn: Are they a whole or have dispersed?
Qin Xiaoge: A whole
Dawn: It's a whole
History records: Qiyan Temple was founded in the Northern Zhou Dynasty, initially as lingju Temple, the Sui Dynasty changed its name to Qiyan Temple, after the prosperity of the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the Jin Dynasty was destroyed, the Yuan Dynasty was restored, the Qing Dynasty declined again, spanning nine dynasties for more than 1400 years, occupying an important position in the history of Chinese Buddhism.
Qin Xiaoge: From here to the kiln in the west
Dawn: Both
Qin Xiaoge: It's all towers, and when you get there, it's still a tower, this temple is big, this is a royal temple.
Morning Dawn: These tombs are all monks of those monasteries
Qin Xiaoge: Abbot
Morning Dawn: Are all the monks there?
Qin Xiaoge: No, there is also like that is Yaozhou, this is a feng shui treasure land, see no, this is a chair back, this is called bosom hug, good position. He came here when he was dying, and when he died he was buried here.
Qiyan Temple originally had daxiong treasure hall, Kunlu hall, Zen room, dojo, Tanyan Cave, relics brick pagoda and other buildings. For more than 1400 years, in addition to the towering stupas of the Middle Temple, there are also the Shangsi Pagoda Group, 1 Tang Dynasty Great Zen Master Pagoda, 1 Tang Stone Pagoda after the Five Dynasties, 2 Hexagonal Two-Story Brick Pagodas of the Yuan Dynasty, 1 Song Dynasty Stupa, 21 Ming and Qing Zen Master Pagodas and 28 Pagoda Foundations. Except for the Song Pagoda, which is high on the west peak, the rest of the towers are located on the east lawn.
Qin Xiaoge: That was from the Tang Dynasty, Tang Tianbao for thirteen years, and this temple (Qiyan Temple) was the first to flourish, it was the Sui Dynasty, and after the Sui Dynasty prevailed, it was followed by the Tang Dynasty, and there was the Big Tooth Pagoda during the Tang Dynasty, and the abbot's pagoda may have been buried behind it, because when it was dug, the brick foundation was underneath.
Dawn: Even when you dug, you saw a lot of towers, didn't you?
Qin Xiaoge: See, this floating tu you see, this is one two, to the top is three, three levels of floating tu, the front of the eight relics called Shakyamuni, the big tower in front, that is the eight stupa, but there are only five floors, his merits are only five floors, that is the Sui Dynasty pagoda.
Yongji Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism Party Group Member Dong Rong
Qiyan Temple was first built in the Northern Zhou Dynasty, it is divided into upper temple, middle temple, lower temple, the upper temple is mainly the Taoist monks, the middle temple is the general temple, the lower temple is mainly Buddhist disciples, the Taoist monks can build this tower, the existing 21, the newly discovered 28 (a total) is 49, which shows how prosperous this temple is in the past dynasties.
During the Sui and Tang dynasties, Buddhism flourished, with Qiyan Temple as the center, and a bustling temple complex was formed here. Sui Dynasty monks Tan Yan, Dao Jie, Shen Su, Zhen Hui, Tang Dynasty Zhi tong Zen master, Yuan Dynasty Ruifeng Zen master, etc. all served as abbots of Qiyan Temple and promoted Buddhism.
Dong Rong: There was originally a Bamboo Shadow Temple under the Qiyan Temple, it is several monasteries, there are many small temples around, it feels like the main courtyard, there are many branches below, one is that it has a great influence, and the other is that the emperor attaches more importance to it.
Literature records: Master Tan Yan, who was once an abbot at Qiyan Temple, served as a Buddhist ruler of the Three Dynasties.
Dong Rong: Master Tan Yan, a native of Linyi County, is a very famous monk in the history of Buddhism, and is a Buddhist ruler of Northern Qi and Northern Zhou. What is called Buddhism, that is, the leader of Buddhism, he has written a lot of works, "Nirvana Sutra" and "Huayan Sutra" he have studied, that is, it has a particularly great influence on Buddhism in later generations.
"There is Wutai Mountain in the north and Qiyan Temple in the south." The fame of the master Tan Yan made the Qiyan Temple famous, and the Sui Kaiyuan Emperor Sui Wendi also began to support the Qiyan Temple.
The history books record that in the sixth year of the kai emperor (586), a serious drought occurred in the world. Emperor Wen of Sui summoned Tan Yan to lead three hundred monks to pray for rain in the main hall of the Sui Palace. Tan Yan was invited to the Daxing Hall and ascended to the emperor's throne to preach the Dharma to the crowd. Emperor Wen and the ministers of the Five Pins or more all sat on the ground and recited the Buddhist scriptures faithfully. The prayer for rain had just ended, and the originally clear sky was cloudy, so that heavy rain fell from the sky and poured down on the king's land.
Dong Rong: Because Yang Jian was not in good health when he was a child, he recognized the nuns, there was a nunnery in Qiyan Temple, and after he became emperor, he paid special attention to the inheritance and development of Buddhism, and built pagodas in 30 places across the country at the same time.
Because the number of monks and believers gradually increased, the contents of the temple could not be accepted. In the first year of Renshou, Emperor Wen of Sui ordered the construction of the Renshou Palace, the expansion of the dojo, the gift of the Torring Monument and the Caviar Monument, and the addition of stupas and Baiyun Cave.
Dong Rong: During the Sui and Tang Dynasties (Qiyan Temple), it was a royal temple, and it was relatively prosperous, and it was very large at that time, and when it was large, it could (accommodate) more than 3,000 people.
During the reign of Emperor Wen of Sui, the worship of Buddhism in China reached its peak, and Qiyan Temple became a Buddhist shrine at its peak.
Dong Rong: The economy is developed (only to build monasteries), if the economy is not good, the national treasury will not have this money, it is impossible to build this thing at the same time, according to our understanding, the beginning was the royal monastery (imperial court appropriations), when the restoration, there were some people, believers donated.
In the Sui Dynasty, the ancient city of Puzhou was adjacent to the capital Chang'an, and the local financial resources were abundant, coupled with the favor of Emperor Wen of Sui for Tan Yan, which enabled the Qiyan Temple at that time to be built in successive dynasties. Not only Emperor Wen of Sui, but later Emperor Xuanzong of Tang also came to the temple to escape the summer, and this place once became a royal summer resort.
Dawn: What about the total number of buildings?
Qin Xiaoge: There are many buildings, this is not clear now, listen to the elderly, this building is very powerful, the back hall is three floors, the east is full of caves, this side is all built houses, the house is a stone house, but not an ordinary brick house, it is built with stone, you see the stone on the bottom, the carved flower is beautiful.
According to the research of many scholars, Zong Bing, at the end of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, wrote "On famous Buddhas". The so-called "Yao qinhe East Pusaka Pagoda", one of the first 19 Ashoka Pagodas introduced to Han China, is the predecessor of Qiyan Temple, confirming that Pusaka is the earliest place in the mainland to flourish Buddhism.
Although Buddhism originated in India, but in the process of development, especially in the Northern Wei Period, including the Yungang Grottoes in Datong, including the Longmen Grottoes, which were gradually (Sinicized) in the Northern Wei Dynasty, the original Buddha statues were all in the shape of India, and in the later period, they became a bit of a Han image, and also after the fusion of foreign Buddhism and local culture, (and) traditional culture, the common people believed in a more true and good.
In recent years, when the temple pagoda group was repaired, more than 20 inscriptions of sui, Song, Jin, Yuan, Ming, Qing and other generations were found, which provided more detailed historical materials for the study of the historical evolution of Qiyan Temple.
Wu Junchang, deputy director of Yongji Museum
"Tang Qiyan Temple's Former Great Zen Master Ta Ming", in fact, is also the "Zhi tong Zen Master Ta Ming", because this Zen master is called Zhi Tong, you see that there are his disciples written to him above, and the Buddha who writes on it has the Sea of Consciousness, and the one who thinks about it... In front of it is to praise Buddhism, mainly to praise his master, my master Zhi Tong, what is his surname? His original surname was Zhang, a seventh-level person in Yuxiang, who was very talented at a very young age, and finally at the Qiyan Temple (to promote Buddhism), after Mr. Qi Gong got this rubbing, he evaluated the calligraphy of this inscription: Shang forced Shanyin, lower Qi Mi Lao, that is, from Wang Xizhi to the middle of Mi Fu, because of this calligraphy.
Morning Dawn: A level in between.
Wu Junchang: Yes, because during the Tang Dynasty, there were fewer books in itself.
Today, the only stupa in Qiyan Temple is still there, and the Tang bricks and Song tiles carved by time have taken away the flowing years, but they cannot take away the story of the Dharma that has been passed down from generation to generation. The Qiyan Temple in the sui and Tang dynasties, famous in The east of the River, uses scale and ruins to reveal to people the top-down beliefs of the ancient city of Puzhou 1400 years ago, and the power and prosperity of this belief.