Huayan Temple

Huayan Temple was built in the seventh year of the reign of emperor Chongxi of the Liao Dynasty. It is divided into upper and lower courtyards, commonly known as upper Huayan and lower Huayan. The main buildings in the temple are Daxiong Hall (upper Temple) and bojiajiao Hall (lower Temple). Its buildings, statues, murals, wall collections, caisson and so on are all examples of Liao Dynasty art in China. The main hall of the upper Huayan Temple is worth seeing. It is the largest existing Buddha Hall in the Liao and Jin Dynasties in China. The hall retains the original remains of ancient times without repair. When it first entered, from the mottled and dilapidated gate of the hall and the deep and drunken murals in the hall, it can be seen that there are many statues of the Liao Dynasty in the lower Huayan Temple. The most famous one is the Buddha of the Han Dynasty Most of the Bodhisattvas are traditional, but this Bodhisattva shows his teeth, feet, back and subverts tradition, which is praised by Guo Moruo as "Oriental Venus".

Huayan Temple

Huayan Temple, located in the southwest corner of the ancient city of Datong, was built in the seventh year of the reign of emperor Chongxi of Liao Dynasty (1038 A.D.), named after the Buddhist Classic Huayan Sutra. It has the nature of Royal ancestral temple of Liao state and has a prominent position. It was destroyed in the war and rebuilt in 1140. Huayan Temple is located from west to East. More than 30 single buildings, such as Shanmen, puguangming hall, Daxiong hall, bojiajiao hall and Huayan pagoda, are arranged on the two main axes of North and south, with strict layout.

Huayan Temple, covering an area of 66000 square meters, is an earlier and well preserved temple complex of Liao and Jin Dynasties in China. It was announced as the first batch of national key cultural relics protection units by the State Council in 1961. In 2014, it was approved as a national AAAA tourist attraction.

In February 2020, to pay homage to the medical workers fighting in the front line of anti epidemic, the Huayan Temple scenic spot will be free of admission to medical workers from the date of resumption of operation to December 31, 2020.

Historical evolution

Huayan Temple was built in 1038, the seventh year of the reign of emperor Chongxi of the Liao Dynasty. It was named after the Mahayana doctrine that "the flower of compassion must bear the fruit of solemnity" in the Buddhist Classic Huayan Sutra. In 1062, Huayan Temple was built to worship the stone and bronze statues of emperors an. At the end of Liao Dynasty, because of the war, some temple buildings were destroyed and rebuilt in 1140. In Liao and Jin Dynasties, Pingcheng (today's Datong) was the other capital at that time, and the temple was valued by the royal family.

In 1122, some of the buildings in the temple were destroyed and rebuilt. In 1140, master Tongwu rebuilt the main hall, Guanyin Pavilion, Mountain Gate and bell tower. After the provincial school, master Cihui planted flowers and trees, collected scriptures, and restored Huayan Temple, but the scale was inferior to that of Liao Dynasty. In 1166, Jin Shizong visited here.

During the reign of emperor Wuzong to Da of the Yuan Dynasty (1308-1311), master Huiming presided over the renovation. The main hall, abbot, kitchen and hall were renovated, and hundreds of bathrooms, pharmacies and houses were built. At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, the Huayan Temple was seriously damaged.

In the early Ming Dynasty, temples were confiscated as official property. During Xuande (1426-1435) and Jingtai (1450-1456) of Ming Dynasty, it was rebuilt as a Buddhist temple. After the middle of Ming Dynasty, Huayan Temple was divided into upper and lower temples.

In 1648, the Huayan Temple suffered another war. Only Daxiong hall and bojiajiao hall survived. In the Qing Dynasty, other halls were rebuilt one after another, but the scale and structure were not as good as the previous dynasty. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Huayan Temple was full of holes and desolation.

After the founding of the people's Republic of China, the people's government attached great importance to the protection of Buddhist cultural heritage, and repeatedly allocated funds for the maintenance of Huayan Temple. In 1961, with the approval of the State Council, the upper and lower Huayan temples were listed as national key cultural relics protection units.

Main attractions

Shanghuayan Temple

With the main hall as the center, Shangsi is divided into two courtyards, including Mountain Gate, Guodian, Guanyin Pavilion, dizang Pavilion and two chamber veranda.

Main hall: in the north corner of Huayan Temple, it is one of the largest Buddhist halls in Liao and Jin Dynasties. Built in Liao Dynasty, Baoda Rebellion (1122) was destroyed by war, and the site was rebuilt in 1140. Hall body east, hall nine wide, five deep, single building area of 1559 square meters

It stands on a platform more than 4 meters high. In front of the platform, there are stone steps and hurdles around it. On the platform, there are three Qing style memorial archways. On the left and right are the six corner bell and drum pavilions built in the Ming Dynasty. The front eaves of the hall are equipped with three board doors, all of which are pot doors. The single eaves are on the top of the hall, and the lifting and folding are gentle. The eaves are 9.5 meters high and 3.6 meters out of the eaves. On the main ridge of the stone is a large-scale stone with a height of 4.5 meters, which is composed of eight pieces of glass. The northern stone is the original of the Jin Dynasty; the southern stone is made in the Ming Dynasty, and is also the largest stone kissing animal in ancient Chinese architecture. The top is covered with tube tiles, and the edges of yellow and green glazed tiles are cut. The external eaves of the main hall are made of double arched and double arched five pavilions. There are seven kinds of them, and their shapes are huge and powerful.

main hall

The main hall adopts the method of reducing columns, reducing 12 inner columns, expanding the space area of the front, which is convenient for activities such as worshiping Buddha. In the center of the hall, there are five Buddhas on the altar. The three Buddhas in the middle were carved in Beijing in the second year of Xuande of Ming Dynasty and placed here after they were returned. The Buddha's face is flat, with jewels inlaid in its bun. On both sides of it, there are more than 20 days standing by, with different expressions, different postures, and slightly forward leaning bodies.

The four walls of the hall are covered with 21 giant murals painted during the reign of Emperor Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty. The pictures are 6.4 meters high and 136.8 meters long, with a total area of 876 square meters, depicting more than 5000 people of various kinds. Its contents include the Buddha's original story, the Buddha's saying in seven places and nine meetings, the fifty-three reference picture of the good fortune boy, the Dharma biography, the mother picture of zhunti Buddha, the Avalokitesvara picture with thousand hands and thousand eyes, the three saints of Huayan, the Avalokitesvara picture with water and moon, the arhat picture, etc Pasted with gold powder, the painting is colorful, exquisite and well preserved. The ceiling on the top of the hall is painted with dragons and phoenixes, flowers and plants, Sanskrit, etc., and the composition is complicated.

There are four stone tablets on the wall outside the hall, which are the tablets of the book of changes written by Zhu Xi, a famous Neo Confucianist in the Southern Song Dynasty.

Xiahuayan Temple

Xiahuayan temple is located in the southeast of Shangsi, not far from each other. Taking the bojiajiao temple as the center, there are Liao Dynasty statues, stone Scripture buildings, pavilion type Scripture cabinets and Tiangong pavilions.

The main hall of Xiasi is the collection hall of Bojia religion, which means the Sutra Collection Hall of Buddhism. It has a width of five rooms and a depth of four rooms. It has a single eaves and nine ridges. At the two ends of the ridge, there is a 3-meter-high glass gall kiss. The roof slope is gentle, the eaves are far-reaching, and the eaves columns rise significantly.

The inscription on the bottom of the rafter on the right side of the collection hall of bojiajiao is "it was built in the afternoon of Wushen on the 15th of September, the seventh year of weichongxi (1038)", which indicates that it is a Liao Dynasty building that survived the chaos of Baoda at the end of Liao Dynasty. Inside the hall, the bucket, the eight caisson, etc. are also old objects of Liao Dynasty. The patterns commonly used in Liao Dynasty, such as mesh pattern and triangle persimmon stalk, are still vaguely discernible in the color paintings of inner trough. There are 29 painted sculptures of Liao Dynasty on the altar, which are divided into three groups: the northern group takes the past Buddha, the lamp burning Buddha, as the original Buddha, and attends to the second disciple and the fourth Bodhisattva; the central group takes Sakyamuni as the original Buddha, and attends to the second disciple and the fourth Bodhisattva; the southern group takes Maitreya as the original Buddha, without disciples, and attends to the six Bodhisattvas. There are four Bodhisattvas sitting in front of the three Buddha statues. From north to south, they are the great mercy Avalokitesvara, the great wisdom Manjusri, the great sage and the great wish dizang. In addition, in front of the two statues of Buddha in the past and in the future, there are two statues of supporting children, and one statue of Dharma protecting heavenly king at each corner of the altar. Many statues in the hall are arranged in the shape of "pin", which breaks through the limitation of the area of the Buddhist altar in the combination layout, and makes use of the different postures of the statues to make the structure of the group compact, dense and non overlapping. The whole tone is mainly dark green, red and gold. Among all the Bodhisattvas on the Buddhist altar, one with a smile on his face is the most vivid one, which can be called "divine product". The statue is about two meters high, standing barefoot on the lotus platform. It has a plump body, thin upper body, close fitting clothing, hanging streamers on the elbows, high crown of hair, slightly lateral posture, slightly inclined neck, eyes half open, lips slightly open, hands together, raised to the chest and grinning. It has been given the nickname of "Oriental Venus".

Around the inside of the hall, there are two storeys of pavilions, 38 in total. At the rear window, there are five wooden Tiangong pavilions connected by arch bridges. On both sides, the arch bridges connect with the upper part of the left and right storehouses. The storehouses are divided into two layers, the upper and the lower. The lower layer is equipped with doors, and the inner part is a warp cupboard, which is placed on the stacked base. Its upper part is the waist eaves flat seat, on which there is a Buddhist niche. Inside the niche, the painted patterns of the flat chess on the top and the shade board on the waist eaves were drawn in the Liao Dynasty, and outside there were hoops. The niche is covered with a wooden roof, with rafters flying, tiles, ridge ornaments, tile ridges and ridges, which are almost the same as large buildings. There are 17 kinds of bucket arches. It is the most complicated one in Liao Dynasty. There are 37 kinds of hollowed out geometric patterns carved on the girdle board.

As the only wood architecture model of Liao Dynasty in China, the pavilion carving is extremely fine and varied. It has important scientific research value and is called "the lone product of the sea" by the late architect Liang Sicheng. In the Sutra Pavilion, there are more than 1700 Sutras of Ming and Qing Dynasties, and more than 18000 volumes. Among them, there are more than 1700 sutras printed in Yongle and Wanli years of Ming Dynasty. The sutras are mounted on silk, which is the top grade of sutras. There are also some in the hall

Chinese PinYin : Hua Yan Si