Shende Temple Pagoda

Shende Temple Pagoda

Shende Temple Pagoda, built in Song Dynasty, is located on the lower half slope of Beibu Shouyuan in Yaozhou City, Tongchuan City, Shaanxi Province. It is a brick Pagoda with a wooden pavilion like structure. It is 35 meters high, 25.04 meters at the bottom and 2.9 meters in inner diameter. It has eight sides and nine ridges. It has a bucket arch and a dense eaves. It is exquisitely carved. The architectural style is majestic and has high ornamental value.

On September 24, 2004, when repairing the pagoda, we found many hand copied Buddhist scriptures, the earliest of which can be traced back to the Tang Dynasty.

On May 25, 2006, it was announced as the Sixth Batch of national key cultural relics protection units.

Architecture Overview

[name]: Shende Temple Pagoda

Another name: Yaoxian tower and song tower

Category: Ancient Architecture

Time: Song Dynasty (Northern Song Dynasty?)

[origin]: relic Pagoda in Shende Temple

[current situation]: it is located at the foot of bushouyuan, 0.5 km north of Yaozhou District, Tongchuan City, Shaanxi Province

Shende Temple Pagoda is located on the lower half slope of bushouyuan in the north of Yaozhou city. It is a brick pagoda imitating wooden pavilion structure. It is 35 meters high, 25.04 meters in the bottom, 2.9 meters in the inner diameter. It has eight sides, eight edges and nine levels. It has a bucket arch and a dense eaves. It is exquisitely carved. The architectural style is majestic and has high ornamental value.

It was announced as the first batch of key cultural relics protection units in Shaanxi Province on August 6, 1956 and the Sixth Batch of national key cultural relics protection units on May 25, 2006.

To the east of the main entrance of the pagoda, it is two meters high and 1.26 meters wide. A Buddha and two Bodhisattvas are engraved on the lintel of the blue stone door. On the north and south sides of the door frame, the heavenly king holding a bow and arrow and a sword are engraved on the line respectively. Due to the wide lines, it is very difficult to identify. There is a false door at the bottom of the tower, which is 1.26 meters wide and 0.69 meters deep. There are three bays on each side of the tower, and the hidden columns are built with bricks. There are appendages between the columns. The hidden columns, appendages and false windows of the tower are painted earth red. The second floor of the tower has the most complex design and ingenious layout. It is the expected main place for people's activities. It has a square false door in the East and West, a roll door in the South and North, and a square five horizontal false window on both sides of the four doors. The fourth floor is due south and North, and the third and fifth floors are due east and West, respectively. There are nine Dougong on each side, and the eaves are stacked with bricks. There are 72 bells hanging from each corner of the eaves. There is wind blowing and tinkling. The tower is empty and has no stairs.

Shende Temple Pagoda (song pagoda) is the oldest building in Yaozhou city. It is near Wenwang and Wuwang mountain in the north, Yetai mountain in the West and Baojian mountain in the East. It is at the junction of Qihe River and Juhe river. From afar, Yaozhou city is like a huge ship, and song tower is the mast of the ship. This tower is the landmark of the Buddhist temple. At the same time, it also plays the role of "water control". Such a geomantic treasure land, let us have to admire the ancients when the tower was built thoughtfully.

Architectural history

According to Yao county annals, "in the third year of shenjue reign of Xuandi in the Western Han Dynasty (59bc), Fenghuang set up the Beiyuan (today's tapoyuan) of Yiu, where the Bushou palace was built. Later, it was also named Bu Shouyuan. Renshou four years (604) in the Bu Shouyuan Longhua temple to build a big elephant Pavilion, in Zhaojin Shandong peak to build shencong temple, also known as Shende temple. In April of the third year of Daye (607), master Dade's Samantha monk Hui ordered him to set up a relic and build a pagoda in Shende temple

According to the geography chapter of Yao Zhou Zhi written by Qiao shining in Ming Dynasty, "the big elephant Pavilion is under the Nanyan of Bu Shouyuan, and Longhua Temple in Northern Wei Dynasty. The pavilion was built in renshouzhong (601-604) of Sui Dynasty and covered with Maitreya statue. It is more than 20 years high, so it is named Yan. In Tang Dynasty, Shende temple was changed. In the Song Dynasty, the most popular tourist attractions were the stone carvings of Fu Zheng Gong's poems, the disuse of Binghuo Pavilion in Xuanhe (1119-1125), the reconstruction of Pavilion in Jin Cheng'an middle school (1196-1200), and the addition of the temple named Mingde. Today's pavilion and the statue were disused for a long time, and the temple was transformed into an academy, so the pagoda remained. "

According to volume 10 of Baoke congbian written by CHEN Si in the Southern Song Dynasty, "the tablet of Shende temple in the Tang Dynasty is composed of eight books, but no books are written. Shende temple is also called Huitong temple in the later Wei Dynasty. In the third year of chuigong (687) of the Tang Dynasty, there was a secretary who moved from Shimen mountain of Huayuan to Longhua Temple of the Northern Wei Dynasty in Yixu city. The monument was erected in the eighth year of Kaiyuan (720)

The song pagoda has no definite architectural age, which is identified as the architectural style of Song Dynasty according to the cultural relics department of Shaanxi Province. It is a dense eaves structure with nine octagonal stories and a height of 30 meters. The tower body gradually shrinks into an arc, and the tower body is hollow. The original wooden ladder can spiral up. Due to the long history, the wooden components have been destroyed, and only the outer eaves and eaves can be identified. There are wooden corner beams at each eaves corner of the tower, and each eaves corner has a corner bell. The gentle breeze and the long bell bring people into the dreamland. There are small arched windows in the East, South, West and North. There are two arched doors at the bottom of the tower. On the lintel there are one Buddha and two Bodhisattvas. The whole tower is made of brick, bucket arch and flying rafters. It is exquisitely carved, majestic in architectural style and ingenious in structure. It has an important reference for the study of the architectural art of the ancient tower.

The origin of the name of the pagoda

There are many records about this tower in Yaozhou's historical books, but there is no record about the construction time of this tower. Therefore, for a long time, people can only roughly infer its construction time by analogy. The typical saying is "Song Dynasty". Because its architectural style is similar to that of the song Dynasty, later generations gradually call it the song tower The place is called tapo. From the Ming Dynasty to the present, people have been following this saying, and no one has verified its exact architectural age.

In the 1950s, when Shaanxi Province evaluated the first batch of key cultural relics protection units, the name of "Song tower" was not accurate enough, and the tower was located in Yaoxian County, so it was named "Yaoxian tower".

Literature and history workers have verified that there was a temple named Longhua temple built in the Northern Wei Dynasty 1500 years ago on the base site of Shende Temple Pagoda by consulting materials. It was rebuilt into a big elephant Pavilion in the Sui Dynasty. In the eighth year of Kaiyuan reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang Dynasty, the temple was renamed "Shende Temple". In Song Dynasty, the pagoda was built in Shende temple. During Xuanhe period, Jin soldiers invaded the temple and the temple buildings were destroyed by war. In the second year of Jiajing period of Ming Dynasty, Zhao Shi, the magistrate of Yaozhou, changed the temple into Wenzheng academy to commemorate Fan Zhongyan's achievements in governing Yao. Accordingly, the district cultural relics department reported to the Provincial Bureau of cultural relics for approval and officially named the "Song tower" as "Shende temple tower".

Tacang scriptures

Hand copied Buddhist scriptures in the pagoda of Shende Temple

Discovery of scriptures

On September 24, 2004, when the pagoda was being repaired, Buddhist scriptures placed during the Jin and Yuan Dynasties were found in the arch window hole on the fourth floor in the south. There are more than 30 kinds of sutras, printed sutras, paper-based printing and silk based pastel Buddhist paintings. These warps are basically stored in the open air without protective measures, which causes most of the warps to rot, bond and damage seriously. After the discovery of the Scriptures, the Provincial Bureau of cultural relics and Xi'an Cultural Protection Center sent experts and technicians to the museum to check the Scriptures. From the several opened ones, they all belonged to scrolls. The best preserved is the handwritten paper version of Jin Guang Ming Jing, which is 26 cm in height and 283 cm in remnant length. It is written in small regular script with dignified font and rigorous structure, which is similar to that of the Tang and Song dynasties. But unfortunately, there is no signature, no written name. There are also some fragments of Sutra writing, which are poorly preserved. The printed warp cannot be opened and can only be identified from the fragments. Both the paper and silk versions of the Buddhist paintings have been seriously damaged, but the characteristics of the times can be seen preliminarily.

The number of these scriptures and Buddhist prints and their early age are precious. Its discovery is of great historical and artistic value for the study of the historical evolution and the development of Buddhist activities in Yaozhou Shende temple.

Contents of the Scriptures

More than 30 volumes of various Buddhist scriptures have been collected from the pagodas of Shende temple, some of which are copied by monks and some by folk artists. The longest volume is more than 8 meters. In the process of cleaning up the Scriptures, the museum experts also found two Northern Song Dynasty year numbers: "Kaibao ninth year" and "Yongxi second year". Combined with the font, the experts first set the upper limit of the time to the Northern Song Dynasty. Later, it was found that the word "Min" was missing in the most complete preserved "Jin Guang Ming Jing". Experts speculate that the purpose of deliberately writing wrong words should be to avoid Li Shimin's taboo. So the era of these classics was advanced to the Tang Dynasty.

Repair of warp roll

The paper scriptures stored in the tower of Shende temple in the Song Dynasty are covered with thick bird dung, forming a natural protective film, which can be preserved for thousands of years. In 2010, these scriptures were sent to Shaanxi Normal University for restoration. After four years of restoration by five repairmen, these scriptures were restored in 2014, and the parts polluted by bird droppings became clean and clear, which can be seen with the public soon

According to Chen Yanlong, a restorer at the engineering research center of the Ministry of education for the protection of historical and cultural heritage of Shaanxi Normal University, the sutras sent for restoration are of different sizes, most of them are fragments, and the smallest one is not as big as the nail cap. It took five repairmen two years to recover them, but there are still some debris that are hard to identify and need to be improved. The "operation" of restoring Scriptures was carried out in water. "When the scripture roll is delivered, it is stained with bird dung and soil, which are all stuck together. Use a knife to gently scrape off the dirt on the outer layer, and then use blisters to make the rolled up Scripture roll a little loose.". Next, we have to deacidify the warp roll to prevent gelation and aging. Remove the scroll from the original mounting paper, and then glue the scroll to the new mounting paper. Finally, paste it on the wall to dry in the shade, and the repair is finally completed. The restored Sutra scroll is no longer the black color of the past, and the part polluted by bird droppings becomes clean and clear in the hands of the restorer

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Address: Tongchuan City, Shaanxi Province

Chinese PinYin : Shen De Si Ta