Twin towers of Tianning Temple

Twin towers of Tianning Temple

The twin towers of Tianning Temple are on the earth wall of chengnanguan, Pingding County, Shanxi Province. According to the records of pingdingzhou, there is a great sadness Pavilion in the temple, with two towers facing each other from east to west In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there were repairs. The buildings in the temple are dilapidated, and the twin towers remain the same. The site of the temple is towering, with two towers standing side by side, which is particularly eye-catching. Tower for the pavilion type, octagonal plane, about 30 meters high, each floor closing brake is very urgent, the shape of the roller Gallery strange. The ground floor is surrounded by holes, with a Buddha statue inside. The flat seat above the second floor is very high. It looks like a seven storey tower. 2、 On the third floor, there are carved false doors and straight windows. Under the eaves and on the seats, brick carved brackets are made of wood and made of precious pearls. They were replaced in 1559. There is a stone Buddha of Northern Wei Dynasty under the tower, with clear eyes and intact body.

legend

There is also a beautiful legend about this pair of ancient pagodas. One day, Luban and his younger sister made a bet that they would build a pair of pagodas overnight. But his younger sister didn't believe it. So at midnight, he went to inspect them quietly and found that the two pagodas were almost completed, and only the xitatacha had not been installed. In order not to let his elder brother win the bet, Luban learned to rooster crow. When Luban heard the rooster crow, he thought it was going to light, so he packed up his tools and went away in a hurry. After daybreak, the people were shocked to see the twin towers that rose overnight, and gave them a name called male and female towers

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Eternal mystery

On the high earth wall in the southeast of Pingding County, Shanxi Province, stands a pair of thousand year old pagodas, which are called Double pagodas of Tianning Temple because of the original Tianning Temple. The tower is 21 meters high, and the distance between the two towers is more than 30 meters. The two towers face east and West. The East Tower is a solid tower, and the West Tower is a hollow tower. The tower has four floors, each floor with a flat seat, and the tower is carved with doors and windows, brackets and cornices, which is a typical Song Dynasty style. According to historical records, Tianning Temple was built in the reign of Xining of Song Dynasty (1068-1077 AD), and Cai Jing, the grand master, inscribed "longevity Zen forest of Tianning" for the temple. Through the song, yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, there are large-scale maintenance records. But on the eve of the Anti Japanese War, only a pair of solitary Twin Towers remained. In 1983, most of the west tower collapsed again. In the spring of 2005, the East Tower was seriously tilted, which caused potential safety hazard to the surrounding residents. There is also a beautiful legend about this pair of ancient pagodas. One day, Luban and his younger sister made a bet that they would build a pair of pagodas overnight. But his younger sister didn't believe it. So at midnight, he went to inspect them quietly and found that the two pagodas were almost completed, and only the xitatacha had not been installed. In order not to let his elder brother win the bet, Luban learned to rooster crow. When Luban heard the rooster crow, he thought it was going to light, so he packed up his tools and went away in a hurry. After daybreak, the people were shocked to see the twin towers that rose overnight, and gave them a name called male and female towers. When were these two towers built? What is the story behind it? Are the two towers built at the same time? Why do people call it the male and female pagoda?

1、 Tens of thousands of Buddhist relics in the underground palace of the West Tower

In July 2005, the restoration of the two towers was carried out under the auspices of Pingding County Government and Pingding County Cultural Relics and Tourism Bureau. With the discovery of the underground palace of the West Tower and the excavation of various cultural relics, the mystery of the twin towers of Tianning Temple is gradually being solved.

In the 1.3-square-meter underground palace, archaeologists found 18 offering containers, including glazed ceramic bottles, fumigation ovens, porcelain tea cups, porcelain bowls and plates, and a sarcophagus with a complete Buddha bone, a silk curtain, dozens of Tang and song copper coins, and a square box with a silver carved flower helmet top. On the walls of the underground palace, there are still murals of the Vajra statues of the Song Dynasty, in which the figures are vivid, powerful and dignified. The painting line is succinct, the color is bright, the technique is skilled. On the second floor of the tower, a pair of small stone boxes containing a silver pot was found. The most shocking thing is: in the silver pot and the helmet top box, the sariki, which is the size of a grain of rice, crystal clear and white as jade, was found! The total is one thousand. It's amazing how many. However, when we saw a stone tablet in the underground palace, we knew that there were more than 50000 relics in the underground palace! They are stored in the flower helmet box and concentrated in the area of 1 square meter around the entrance of the underground palace. They are as big as soybeans and as small as millet. They are colorful in red, yellow, black and white. According to Buddhism, the red one is the meat relic, the black one is the Mao relic, and the white one is the bone relic. Where did these huge relics come from? How was he buried in the underground palace? It turns out that in the early Song Dynasty, the central government of the Northern Song Dynasty highly praised Buddhism, while Buddhism, which entered China in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, after nearly a thousand years of development, integrated with the local Taoism and the dominant Confucianism. There are a lot of theories about filial piety and the unity of heaven and man in Buddhism. It not only suits the taste of feudal literati, but also meets the needs of ordinary people without culture. In 994 A.D., Tan Yande, the military officer of zhipingding appointed by the central government, suddenly received an imperial edict from Emperor Taizong of the Song Dynasty, asking him to look for Buddhist relics around Pingding County. General Tan didn't dare to neglect him. He went to Jiaoshan, xidanhui village, Pingding County, and ordered the soldiers to "wash the sand and wash the soil, and clear the water in front of the waves". He filtered out all the relics of this long-standing monk cemetery, collected a large number of relics and sent them to the government. In the second year, from the Song Dynasty to the first month of the Daoyuan year, he welcomed the relics to Shouning temple, the predecessor of Tianning Temple, for support, waiting for the emperor's order Meaning. During this period, many officials and people in the surrounding counties and even Hedong land learned the news and offered the relics they collected to Shouning temple. For a time, the city was filled with people, which was unprecedented. After being instructed, general Tan decided to build a relic pagoda at the southwest corner of the gate of Shouning temple and bury tens of thousands of relic under the pagoda. On the day of the commencement ceremony, the sky was full of rosy clouds, presenting a sense of auspiciousness for three consecutive days. Unexpectedly, when the relic tower was built to the second floor, general Tan died. His family and successor restored the tower as scheduled. This is the West Tower we see today. It's 1011 years old now!

This major cultural relic discovery has made the West Tower of Tianning Temple the most relic pagoda ever found in China. Both the historical background and the number of relic bones found at that time are enough to shock the Buddhist and archaeological circles. We know from this that Pingding County has become one of the most prosperous areas of Buddhism in northern China in the early Song Dynasty and several hundred years before the Song Dynasty. The emperor's imperial edict and so many cemeteries near Danhui village are evidence of this.

Buddhist culture contains profound wisdom. It has profound and unique insights into the universe and life, the reflection of human rationality, and the analysis of concepts. The establishment of the relic pagoda of Shouning temple is a symbol of Pingding as the center of Buddhism. It shows that a thousand years ago, Pingding, as a military center, a Buddhist holy land and an economically developed northern important town, occupied a place in Chinese history.

However, the unearthed stele records do not mention the East Tower, and there are no other records related to the East Tower, so when was the East Tower built? Why build the East Tower?

2、 The construction of the East Tower and the comparison of the architectural styles of the two towers

All pagodas should be buried with the remains and relics of eminent monks. However, we did not find any valuable cultural relics in the process of excavation. Obviously, the East Tower was only built for a formal pursuit and need. According to the records of the Dharma Sutra, When Sakyamuni was explaining the Dharma Sutra in lingjiu mountain in Tianzhu, a magnificent pagoda suddenly appeared in the sky. He saw the Buddha sitting in the pagoda, admiring Sakyamuni, and giving up half a seat in the pagoda to invite him to sit and preach. In order to make the two Buddhists carry forward the Buddhism together, the construction pattern of double towers appeared in the Buddhist temple. In the middle of the Northern Song Dynasty, the wind of building double towers prevailed all over the country, and the East Tower of Tianning Temple came into being under this background. According to the Qianlong edition of pingdingzhou annals, "Tianning Temple was built in the South Camp of Xiacheng and between Xining of Song Dynasty. It was named Wanshou Zen forest of Tianning. It was imperial master Cai Jingshu. There are two pagodas. The East and the West face each other. It is more than ten feet high...". According to our analysis, the East Tower is likely to be one of the projects to rebuild Tianning Temple on the site of Shouning temple, which should be more than 70 years later than the West Tower. Through observation, the two towers are similar in appearance, but there are 13 large parts and hundreds of different appearance structures, which is very intriguing. Author: Luo Wei

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