Basic introduction of Zhengding longxing temple
Longxing temple is located in Dongdaemun, Zhengding County, a national historical and cultural city, covering an area of 50,000 square meters. With regular layout and various forms, this temple is a large-scale and well-preserved Buddhist temple complex in early China. Mr. Liang Sicheng, a famous architect in China, commented that longxing temple, Zhengding Prefecture, was the first famous temple outside Beijing. Longxing temple is one of the top ten famous temples in China. Its main buildings, the Great Compassion Pavilion and the bronze bodhisattva in the pavilion, are the heart and symbol of longxing temple. From 1997 to 1999, after three years of maintenance, the Great Compassion Pavilion was restored to the Song Dynasty. The restored Great Compassion Pavilion is 35.5 meters high with three eaves and four steps. There are floors for tourists to go up and down, and you can watch the Buddha statue carefully from any floor. The Imperial Bookstore and Qing Ji Pavilion on both sides of the Great Compassion Pavilion are also carefully constructed. Today, the three pavilions stand side by side and are magnificent.
Longxing temple was founded in the sixth year of Emperor Kai of Sui Dynasty (586), formerly known as Longzang Temple. Longxing temple was renamed in the early Song Dynasty. In the fourth year of Kaibao in Zhao Kuangyin, Song Taizu (97 1), the bronze Buddha statue was cast in the temple and the Great Compassion Pavilion was expanded. A number of buildings in the Song Dynasty with the Great Compassion Pavilion as the main body were completed one after another, which laid the present layout and scale. During the reign of Kangxi and Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty, there were two large-scale repairs and additions, and the temple reached its peak. In the forty-eighth year of Emperor Kangxi of Qing Dynasty (1709), Longzang Temple was changed to longxing temple, because there was a tall bronze statue of Bodhisattva in the temple, commonly known as the Great Buddha Temple. Emperors of past dynasties have been here many times to stay in the countryside, burn incense and worship Buddha, write poems and erect monuments, and carve monuments and stones. It can be seen that the morning bells and drums, bells and bells, cigarettes and silence in the south were all here in those days.
The temple covers an area of 82,500 square meters, faces south and has a rectangular plane. The main buildings are distributed in a north-south central axis and its two sides. There is a tall glass wall in front of the temple; Go north through the three-way three-hole stone bridge and face the Tianwang Hall. In the north, there are six ruins of Tai Chi Temple in Daigakuji, and in the north, Mani Palace. After passing the altar, you can see the Great Compassion Pavilion, the Runwheel Tibetan Pavilion, the cishi Pavilion and two stone pavilions in Qing Dynasty. They take the Great Compassion Pavilion as the center, forming a set of high and low levels, clear priorities, seamless and spectacular buildings. The construction method of curved beam and large inclined column in Lunyin Pavilion is a representative work of early wooden structure in China, while the construction method of Yongding column in cishi Pavilion is an isolated example of existing ancient buildings in Song Dynasty in China. Behind the Great Compassion Pavilion is the Amitabha Hall with single eaves on the top of the mountain. The northernmost Pilu Temple was moved from Chongyin Temple in Zhengding in 1959. The bronze statue of Buddha in the temple is strangely conceived and beautifully cast. Three layers of lotus, each lotus petal is engraved with a small Buddha; On each floor of the lotus, there are four bronze buddhas across each floor, wearing five Buddha crowns, back to back, facing all directions. A total of 1072 bronze buddhas were cast in the whole sculpture. They are various and have their own characteristics. This image is called a thousand buddhas around Pilu.
There is no mountain gate in longxing temple, only a tall glass screen in front. Bypassing zhaobi, from No.3 single-hole stone bridge to the north, the first building in the temple, Tianwang Hall, is a single-eave, seven-sandalwood-shaped column building with a circular arch door, and the upper part of the door is horizontally embedded with the longxing temple gold plaque inscribed by Emperor Kangxi, which has the function of a mountain gate.
The unique building in the temple is Mani Palace. Located in front of the central axis, Moni Palace was built in Song Renzong for four years (1052), with a history of more than 900 years, with a total area of 1400 square meters. The structure of the main hall is very strange, belonging to the plane cross-shaped beam-lifting wood structure. The beam structure in the temple is consistent with the "architectural style" in the Song Dynasty, with eight rafters and four columns. There are five rooms in the center of the hall and five rooms in the depth. The central part rests on the top of the mountain with double eaves, and the flowers in the middle of both sides embrace the mansion forward, which embodies the characteristics and style of the architecture in the Song Dynasty. The roof of the temple is decorated with green glazed tiles, and the eaves are decorated with large green arches, with rounded and slightly upturned wings. This hall is magnificent, yet full of vitality and beauty. The curve of the temple ridge and cornice is like waves, which is natural and smooth; The corners of the mouth are slightly tilted, like a bird flapping its wings and flying. Such an ancient building with three-dimensional ceremony, rich silt and diverse shapes is rare in the early ancient buildings in China.
In the center of the temple are statues of Sakyamuni, Manjusri, Pu Xian, Ananda and Ye Jia, among which one Buddha (Sakyamuni) and two disciples (Ananda and Ye Jia) are original sculptures of the Song Dynasty. The eaves and fan-shaped walls around the Buddhist altar are painted with murals painted during Chenghua period of Ming Dynasty, with Buddhist stories as the theme. Murals are rich in colors and smooth in lines. On the back of the fan-shaped wall, there is the exquisite and unique Xumi Mountain, on which there are arhats, lions and elephants. There is a sitting statue of Guanyin in Ming Dynasty in the middle, with a crown of jewels and ribbons on its shoulders. His chest and arms are bare and round, with one foot on the lotus, one foot standing up and his hands touching his knees. The bridge of the nose is slightly higher, the willow leaves are thin, the face is quiet and serene, and the posture is elegant and dignified; It is actually a masterpiece of ancient colored plastic sculptures in China. On the south wall behind the temple, Guanyin sits upside down in a colorful hanging mountain, wearing a crown on her head and streamers on her shoulders. Her arms are bare on her chest, round and plump, with one foot on the lotus and one foot standing up, her hands touching her knees, her eyes looking down, her expression serene and her posture dignified and elegant. She is a rare artistic treasure and is praised as the oriental beauty god by Mr. Lu Xun. With the approval of National Cultural Heritage Administration, the Mani Palace was rebuilt from the second half of 1977 to the end of 1980.
Dabeige is the main building of longxing temple, located at the back of the central axis. In front of the pavilion, cypress trees are towering, and behind the pavilion, old locust trees spit green, surrounded by pine flowers, and the scenery is quiet and pleasant. The pavilion is 33 meters high, 7 rooms wide and 5 rooms deep. It is a three-story pavilion with five double eaves. Formerly known as Foxiang Pavilion and Tianning Guanyin Pavilion. According to records, the pavilion was built in the early Song Dynasty (968-976). In the Great Compassion Pavilion stands a tall bronze statue of the Great Compassion Bodhisattva, also known as Guanyin with a thousand hands and eyes. It is 19.2 meters high and stands on the 2.2-meter-high Sumeru mountain platform, with a total height of nearly 22 meters. It is the highest bronze statue of Guanyin in China. In May of the second year of Kaibao in the Northern Song Dynasty (AD 969), Song Taizu Zhao Kuangyin was stationed in Zhengding, Shaanxi. Because the bronze buddhas in Dabei Temple and Chengxi Temple were first destroyed by the invasion of Qidan, and then they were destroyed by molten copper casting money in the following week, it was in July of the fourth year of Kaibao (AD 97 1 year) that the temples were expanded and the bronze buddhas were recast. The Big Bronze Buddha has 42 arms, with different postures and different law enforcement devices. Or bend or hang, or hold or stretch, or hold a day care month, or hold a lotus and a pearl, or make a lot of money with a sword. From a distance, it looks like strange wings. Unfortunately, 40 bronze arms on both sides were destroyed and changed into wood, only two arms on the front chest were cast. Guanyin statue is self-possessed, quiet and dignified, tall, well-proportioned, with smooth and delicate lines, which is quite artistic in the Song Dynasty. According to the records of a Song tablet in the temple, the casting of the big bronze Buddha is to cast the Buddha first, then the Gai Lou, then support the pot in the ground, raise the soil, cast it in sections, and then carve it. Cast the foundation first, and then cast seven great bodhisattvas. The first section casts the lotus pedestal, the second section casts the knee, the third section casts the navel, the fourth section casts the chest, the fifth section casts the armpit, the sixth section casts the shoulder and the seventh section casts the head. Finally, 42 arms were cast. Bodhisattva's hands are all carved with wood, covered with cloth, heavy paint and heavy cloth, and then pasted with gold foil. The height of this indoor bronze Buddha has been respected for nearly a thousand years. It was not until the bronze Buddha of Tashilhunpo Temple in Tibet came out in the early 20th century that it gave up its status as the highest bronze Buddha in China.
1944 When the Great Compassion Pavilion was rebuilt, the Imperial Bookstore and Qing Ji Pavilion on both sides were demolished, and the construction area was reduced by one third. The Song Dynasty wall carvings on the east, west and north walls have also disappeared. There are stairs leading to the top floor in the pavilion, and you can lean against the railing to overlook the scenery of Zhengding ancient city. Literati and poets of all ages came to visit this pavilion and wrote poems, leaving many beautiful poems. Sadougai, a poet in the Yuan Dynasty, said: A castle in the eye should be rare, the eaves of a burning iron building are about to fly, flowers in the sky are floating off the road, and laurel trees fall off their robes every month. Hold high the cactus and go to the Milky Way to weave a maiden. The remains of Zhao are all there, and the mountains and rivers are good. In front of the Great Compassion Pavilion, there is a Runner Tibetan Pavilion (Tibetan Scripture Building) on the east side and a Cishi Pavilion on the west side. The wheel pavilion faces east, with three wide rooms and four deep rooms. It rests on the top of the mountain with double eaves, and its plane is approximately square. In the center of the pavilion, there is a wooden octagonal wheel with a diameter of seven meters (that is, the rotating sutra depository): two gold columns in the middle are left and right, the beam frame structure is a curved beam with a bucket arch bent upward and connected with the bearing beam, and the upper beam has a large inclined column (fork hand), which is a masterpiece in early wood structure construction. Cishi Pavilion is similar to the wheel pavilion, and its architectural feature is that it adopts the method of Yongding column structure and lowering column. In particular, the columns around the eaves wall adopt Yongding column, which is an isolated case in the existing architecture of Song Dynasty in China. On the 2-meter-high Sumitomo terrace in the pavilion stands a 7-meter-high wooden statue, which is the image of Maitreya or Ci-tzu Bodhisattva and a relic of the Song Dynasty.
In longxing temple, there are still more than 30 stone carvings of Sui, Tang, Song, Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, among which the tablet of Longzang Temple was built in the sixth year of Emperor Kai of Sui Dynasty (586), which is one of the famous historical sites in China. The monument is 2. 1 m high and 0.9 m wide. The inscription reads "hengzhou secretariat" and "Duke of Hubei urged to build a tablet of Longzang Temple" 15. The inscription was written by Zhang Shili, a soldier with a long history of Kaifu, without his name. The calligraphy style is neat, the structure is simple, the brushwork is vigorous and powerful, and it has the profound aesthetic feeling of Gu Zhuo. It not only records the creation of longxing temple, but also has historical value and high artistic value of calligraphy. It inherited the legacy of the Northern and Southern Dynasties and created the calligraphy school in the early Tang Dynasty. It was praised by Wang Guowei as a monument to the integration of the Six Dynasties, and there was more than one in the Sui Dynasty. It is one of the famous monuments in China.
Except for two stone pavilions, the whole temple in longxing temple is almost all Song Dynasty architecture, which is one of the only remaining examples of Song Dynasty architecture in China. Although it has been eroded by thousands of years of wind and rain, it still shows the scale and grandeur of the hall overlooking the starry sky at that time.
Highlights of attractions:
With regular layout and various forms, this temple is a large-scale and well-preserved Buddhist temple complex in early China. The temple covers an area of 82,500 square meters, faces south and has a rectangular plane. The main buildings are distributed in a north-south central axis and its two sides.
There is a tall glass wall in front of the temple; Go north through the three-way three-hole stone bridge and face the Tianwang Hall. In the north, there are six ruins of Tai Chi Temple in Daigakuji, and in the north, Mani Palace. After passing the altar, you can see the Great Compassion Pavilion, the Runwheel Tibetan Pavilion, the cishi Pavilion and two stone pavilions in Qing Dynasty. They take the Great Compassion Pavilion as the center, forming a set of high and low levels, clear priorities, seamless and spectacular buildings. The construction method of curved beam and large inclined column in Lunyin Pavilion is a representative work of early wooden structure in China, while the construction method of Yongding column in cishi Pavilion is an isolated example of existing ancient buildings in Song Dynasty in China.
Behind the Great Compassion Pavilion is the Amitabha Hall with single eaves on the top of the mountain. The northernmost Pilu Temple was moved from Chongyin Temple in Zhengding in 1959. The bronze statue of Buddha in the temple is strangely conceived and beautifully cast. Three layers of lotus, each lotus petal is engraved with a small Buddha; On each floor of the lotus, there are four bronze buddhas across each floor, wearing five Buddha crowns, back to back, facing all directions. A total of 1072 bronze buddhas were cast in the whole sculpture.