Historical origin of butter sculpture in Ta 'er Temple

Butter sculpture, originally made in Tibet, is a small decal attached to food. According to the traditional Buddhist custom in India, there are six kinds of offerings to buddhas and bodhisattvas, namely flowers, incense, holy water, tile incense, fruits and Buddha lanterns. However, when there are no flowers in cold weather, we have to make flowers for the Buddha with ghee, thus forming an artistic tradition.

According to another legend, Princess Wencheng entered Tibet in 64 1 and brought a 12-year-old statue of Sakyamuni to the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa. Tubo people made flowers with ghee to show their reverence, and later they were regarded as treasures by Tibetan Buddhist temples, and offering ghee sculptures became an important part of the first month prayer meeting. In the process of development, the modeling method, color variety, content, theme and technological skills of butter sculpture are constantly changing.

1409, when Master Zong Kaba held the blessing ceremony for the first time at Jokhang Temple in Lhasa, he organized and produced a large-scale three-dimensional butter sculpture, which was dedicated to the Buddha statue. Since then, the butter sculpture has been introduced into the Ta 'er Temple, the birthplace of the master Zong Kaba, where they got to know each other. It is said that this master, who was born in Zong Kaba, once dreamed that thorns turned into lights and weeds into flowers. Among the lights and flowers, thousands of pearls in Qian Qian shone brilliantly. After he woke up, he organized monks to recreate his dreams with ghee sculptures and offered them to the Buddha on the evening of 15. Therefore, before 1950s, the butter sculpture must be completely burned before dawn on the night after the exhibition to show the short-lived end.

A few months before the Spring Festival every year, artists of ghee sculpture knead pure white ghee with various stone mineral dyes, and create various Buddha statues, figures, flowers, trees, birds and animals, and some also form religious stories, secular life and myths and anecdotes. On the 15th day of the first month of each year, the bright moon rises and lanterns are released, and the annual butter sculpture Lantern Festival is ushered in at Ta 'er Temple. People make flowers and appreciate them, praying for good luck and peace, which has never stopped for hundreds of years.