What are the characteristics of Buddhist architecture in China?

When the Buddha lived in Rokuyaon at the beginning of the transition to * * * *, he established several bases for peaceful conversation, practiced with the Sangha and "settled in the rain". Some are built in cities, such as the lonely garden in Swasti and the bamboo forest in King Snake City, which are the earliest temples. Some were built on mountains, such as the platform of Lingjiu Mountain and stone houses in the northeast of King Snake. This is the earliest cave temple. Shi Zun's statement is not written, it's all word of mouth, and it's forbidden to make statues for himself. Therefore, these fine houses and grottoes are very similar to lecture halls and dormitories. There are neither scriptures nor Buddha statues in them.

The Buddha was cremated in Nirvana, and the cremated remains are called biological relics (relics are transliteration of relics, meaning corpses or bones, especially the cremated remains of monks). Dharma relic is divided into eight parts, one for each of the eight countries with deep roots in Buddhism. Another late representative of the two countries, one picked up broken bones and the other swept the ashes. * * * Ten copies, each supported by a tower, totaling ten towers. Tower is the transliteration abbreviation of stpa, which translates as "blocking waves", meaning "high place" or "high grave". It was originally a general name for a local memorial tomb. Concise and consistent shape: covered with a bowl shape, a long cylindrical sign "brake" stands on it. Since then, pagodas have been closely linked with Buddhism.

According to legend, in the year of the death of the Buddha, Ye Jia, the great disciple, first called 500 monks in Yeqidong, the king of Shecheng, to recite scriptures and record the contents of Buddhism, which was the first anthology. At that time, Ananda recited the theoretical part that Master Zun said, which was called Jing Cang. The part of discipline that the master said was recited by Li Youpo, and it was called "Fa Chu". Buddhist scriptures were born.

One or two hundred years after the death of Shi Zun, Buddhist disciples obeyed the rule of not making statues, but gradually deified Shi Zun from a Buddha in the sense of "awakened" to a Buddha in the sacred sense. They began to worship the symbol of Buddha. These include:

Separate the stupa from the stupa;

The bodhi tree that the Buddha lived under when he became a monk;

The Buddha sat on the auspicious straw mat under the bodhi tree-later beautified as the "seat of King Kong";

Buddha's relics such as bowls, Buddha's clothes, etc.

Footprints left by the Buddha-later, they became bigger and bigger, becoming a "big footprint" type;

The symbol of Buddhism "* * *"-1950, when the World Buddhist Association was founded, it was decided to use * * * as the emblem of Buddhism.

Among these objects of worship, the pagoda was the home of Shi Zun and became the main object of worship of Buddhist disciples at that time.

Later, with the introduction of Greek culture and art and its myths and legends, especially its sculpture art into the South Asian subcontinent, Buddhists built Buddha statues. From then on, from worshipping the tower to worshiping the Buddha statue, from worshipping the symbol to worshiping the specific Buddha (image). The tower itself is a kind of building, but the Buddha needs to find a place to put it. Therefore, memorial halls and churches of Buddhist temples have flourished.

The early activities of Buddhists in the South Asian subcontinent were mostly grotto-like, with symbols in the middle, mainly symbolic pagodas, surrounded by people living in small niche rooms. In China, it has just developed into a grotto art with the characteristics of all nationalities in the past dynasties. This is an example of the Chinese nation using and transforming foreign cultures. The construction of Buddhist temples in China takes another road.

According to legend, when the Emperor of the Eastern Han Dynasty was in power, two magicians, Mo Teng and Zhu Falan, came to Luoyang from the Western Regions, and at first lived in Split Temple. Later, Ming Di ordered them to build an "exquisite house" outside Yong Men (Western Gate) in the west of Luoyang, which was called the White Horse Temple. Temple, originally the general name of the central government in Han Dynasty, such as crack hon temple and Guanglu temple. It is estimated that the White Horse Temple is such an institution, such as a guest house for foreign guests. But in this way, later generations took "temple" as the general name of Buddhist temple architecture.

China's feudal architecture thought seems to be uniformly grading. Therefore, regardless of the palace, yamen and residential buildings, the plane layout is quadrangular, with little change, but it shows a strict hierarchy in size and width. From the beginning, I probably didn't want to do special design for Buddhist temples. For example, the specialized building like the Western Christian Cathedral is hard to be used for other purposes, especially it will never become a residential building. China people built temples by changing quadrangles into temples. But it seems that some characteristics of Buddhism were also considered in the early days. For example, Shu Wei Shi Kao Zhi says, "Since Luo Zhong, the White Horse Temple has been built, decorated with Buddhist paintings and beautifully painted. Each palace tower system is still rebuilt according to the old Tianzhu system, from level 1 to level 3, level 5, level 7 and level 9. The world believes in the same origin, which is called a floating map or a cloud Buddha map. " This is the earliest record of building a temple tower. According to Wu Shu, Volume 4, Biography of Lu You, at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Yu Rong "floated the temple", "painted with copper, clothed with gold and clothed with brocade", and talked about sculpture. "The bronze statue is only nine times heavy, and the pavilion road is heavy, which can accommodate more than 3,000 people and learn to recite Buddhist scriptures." This is about building towers and buildings around them and their uses. All these show that the earliest Buddhist temples in China are centered on towers and surrounded by halls, pavilions and corridors, and become square courtyards for Buddha statues or relics, which are places for worshipping Buddha and chanting scriptures.

During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, some newly-built temples, such as Yongning Temple in Luoyang in the Northern Wei Dynasty, still adopted the layout of square courtyards surrounded by halls and pavilions. During this period, the merit activity of "building a house as a temple" prevailed. Many aristocratic houses have been converted into Buddhist temples. When rebuilding, the original cloth is generally not changed, but the original front hall is a Buddhist temple, the back hall is a lecture hall, there is an original gallery around it, and some of the original gardens are still preserved. This style layout is more universal and will become the mainstream of Buddhist temple architecture in China in the future. There were no temples in the Southern and Northern Dynasties. There are cave temples preserved as objects, represented by Yungang Grottoes and early Dunhuang Grottoes. The earliest cave temple in China was built in Xinjiang, which began in the Eastern Han Dynasty and was influenced by the style of the South Asian subcontinent. During the Sixteen Countries and the Southern and Northern Dynasties, it was introduced into the Central Plains through the Hexi Corridor in Gansu and developed southward. The architecture of early grottoes in the Central Plains followed the practice of erecting towers in grottoes in the South Asian subcontinent, which was obviously influenced by Chinese architecture and courtyard layout. For example, the sixth cave in Yungang, built at the end of the fourth century, has a square cave room with a tower in the center, a relief gallery on the four walls and a temple-shaped niche carved in the middle of the north.

The life of a tower is generally longer than that of a temple. There are more than 2000 towers in China. The earliest is the Song Yue Temple Tower in Dengfeng, Henan. This tower has a special shape and dense eaves made of bricks. The plane is a regular dodecagon, which can only be seen in the pagoda. The artistic treatment was very successful, but it was not the representative tower type in the Southern and Northern Dynasties. According to the press, the tower of the South Asian subcontinent is a solid building composed of stylobate, bowl-covered and baolun. When it entered the Central Plains with Buddhism, the local Han nationality's wooden structure building system had been formed, and accumulated rich experience in engineering technology and artistic design, and built a heavy building for the ruling class to welcome immortals and prepare for overlooking. Early Buddhism was regarded as immortal magic. Therefore, the tower builders built the pavilion-type wooden tower on the basis of the common heavy buildings in the nation during the design. Because wooden pagodas are easy to burn and difficult to preserve, brick pagodas with imitation wood structure have been developed, and on the basis of pavilions, dense eaves and small single-storey pavilions have been developed. Since then, many new tower types have been introduced one after another, such as "Seal of Treasure Basket", "Cover Bowl" and "King Kong Throne". They combined with the inherent architectural techniques and forms in China and evolved into various types, such as flower pagodas in the middle period. Each part of the tower is gradually standardized, generally consisting of underground palace, tower foundation, tower body, tower top and tower gate. Especially in Tasha, it absorbed the former South Asian subcontinent in a changing way? Later, the shape of the wave barrier had a more diversified development. Most of the early towers in China were hollow and could be built with wooden boards. This is very different from the prototype of the South Asian subcontinent, which was created by China people.

The location of the tower, in addition to the above-mentioned tower centered on the central axis, the tower and the temple are equally important, and the layout of the tower in front of the temple, the practice of juxtaposing the two towers in front of the temple as a foil appeared in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, which shows that the importance of the tower in the temple has decreased.

Small gardens, such as some affiliated gardens, became ready-made Buddhist gardens in the early days. There is a vivid description in "Luoyang Galand Ji". With the need of monks' meditation, every newly-built Buddhist temple is located in a famous mountain forest area. According to "Biography of Monks", during the first year of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, when Hui Yuan built the Tuolin Temple on Lushan Mountain, he consciously set up an artificial small Zen forest landscape in the natural landscape. This is an early record of the creation of Buddhist temple gardens. The main feature of temple garden is that it is not for private use, but for believers and tourists, and it has the nature of public sightseeing. Of course, we should pay more attention to the quietly born pure land Zen forest atmosphere: "My road twists and turns, through a sheltered valley, branches and flowers, leading to a Buddhist retreat."

During the Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties, Buddhist temple architecture had a new development. However, after two "exterminations" by Tang Wuzong and Zhou Shizong and the destruction by later generations, there are no complete group temples except for five individual temples such as nanzenji Temple and Beige Temple. It can be seen from Tang Daoxuan's Illustration of the Creation of Guanzhong Buddhist Temple, the idealized Buddhist temple images depicted in the Tang Dynasty murals in Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, and the descriptions of related documents that the Buddhist temple architecture in this period developed on the basis of the general type, namely, China Palace Style. Its characteristics are as follows: 1. The main building is centered on the obvious longitudinal axis. Starting from Sanmen (symbolizing the three liberation gates, also known as the mountain gate), several halls and pavilions are lined up. There is a cloister connecting several courtyards in the middle. Second, on both sides of the main building, imitating the layout of the first residence of the imperial court, a number of small courtyards are arranged, each with its own purpose, such as Pure Land Courtyard, Confucian Classics College and Library Courtyard. For example, the famous Zhangjing Temple in Chang 'an has 48 courtyards, and the Dahuayan Temple in Wutai Mountain has 15 courtyards. There are also cloisters connecting the courtyards. Corridors in main buildings and affiliated buildings are often painted with murals and become galleries. Third, the location of the tower is gradually independent from the center of the whole temple. In front of the main hall, there are usually two small, usually solid towers standing side by side, or there is a tower courtyard outside the front, back and central axis of the main hall. Monks' tombs often stand outside temples. All these are related to the gradual study of teachings and righteousness by the Buddhist community at that time, as well as the neglect of worshipping and walking around the tower. There were dozens of towers in the Tang Dynasty, all made of bricks. Most of them are pavilions, which can be boarded. Typical planes are all square. Fourth, emperors and nobles followed suit in the Northern and Southern Dynasties. After the introduction of tantric Buddhism, there were many statues of bodhisattvas, so the large-scale statues and multi-storey pavilions that ran through the whole building flourished, which indirectly promoted the development of the pagoda outside the temple. Fifth, the eaves of cave temples have appeared in large numbers, from stone imitation wood to real wood structure. A large number of arched roofs, overlapping roofs and rear screens appear, all of which show the process of China Grottoes becoming more nationalized. Sixth, in the Tang Dynasty, the folk sayings and sayings in temples had the nature of folk culture and entertainment, and there were theatres in Buddhist temples, which made them more public. Seven, the temple economy has developed greatly, and the living area has expanded. Not only monasteries, fasting halls, warehouses, kitchens, etc. For monks to live in, and some big Buddhist temples also have mills and vegetable gardens. Many Buddhist temples rent houses to lay people to live in, which has the nature of a guest house.

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