The Yingxian Wooden Pagoda, also known as the Sakyamuni Pagoda, is located in Yingxian County, Shuozhou City, Shanxi Province. The pagoda has a history of hundreds of years and is the tallest and oldest wooden pagoda in existence in China. Architecture, together with the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Eiffel Tower in the world, is known as the three most amazing towers of the Maison. This issue of architectural Feng Shui will take you to understand Yingxian wooden pagoda.
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About the pagoda
The pagoda is a unique architectural form in the history of Chinese architecture. It originated in India , the original pagodas were all relic pagodas, which were the Buddha's burial pagodas, which meant tombs. Relics are the transliteration of Sanskrit, which mainly refers to the crystals refined by enlightened monks after the ceremony. They are as solid as diamonds, sparkling, with different shapes and colors, and are often called "five-color relics". For example, after Master Jingru of Mount Wutai passed away, more than 5,000 relics of various colors were discovered. According to expert research, the white relics are bone relics, the black relics are hair relics, and the red relics are physical relics.
With the continuous deepening and development of religious culture, the tower is also constantly developing. The significance of the tower has gone beyond the building itself, but has developed into a kind of tower culture.
Pagodas were introduced to China in the Han Dynasty. They were initially wooden pagodas, and later brick pagodas appeared. By the Song Dynasty, stone pagodas, metal pagodas, and glazed pagodas appeared. The shape has also changed. The earliest tower was a bowl-shaped tower, and later there were pavilion style, dense eaves style, and the most precious Vajra Throne Tower. There are only 5 such towers in the country. The function has also developed from the earliest stupa to Buddhist scripture towers and some secular towers, such as Feng Shui tower and Wenfeng tower.
Towers usually have an odd number of floors and an even number of faces. In traditional Chinese culture, odd numbers are yang, even numbers are yin, and yang is the sky and yin is the earth. Therefore, the tower can also be said to be holding the yin and holding the yang, standing on the sky and the earth. No matter what type of tower it is, it is generally divided into four parts, namely, the tower, the tower body, the tower base, and the underground palace.
The quality consciousness of the ancients was better than that of today's
The Yingxian Wooden Tower, the Eiffel Tower in France and the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy are known as the "Three Wonderful Towers in the World". The wooden pagoda in Yingxian County was built in the second year of Qingning in Liaoning (1056). The tower is octagonal in plan, with five floors on the outside and four levels of dark floors, making it actually nine floors. The total height is 67.13 meters, which is 16.4 meters higher than the famous White Tower in Beijing. The diameter of the bottom floor is 30 meters, the total weight is about 7,400 tons, and 3,500 cubic meters of wood are used. It is the oldest and tallest existing wooden structure tower building at home and abroad. Its design is extremely ingenious. There is no iron nail on the top and bottom of the whole tower. It is entirely made of wooden components that are interlocked with each other. The appearance is stable and dignified, with proper proportions and beautiful outline. There are 54 different types of brackets on the top and bottom of the tower, and hundreds of brackets are decorated throughout the tower. The variety is rare in China, and it is known as the "Dugong Museum".
According to historical data, the wooden pagoda has been vandalized many times.
During the melee between warlords in 1926, the wooden pagoda was hit by more than 200 bullets, and the bullet marks are still visible. Fortunately, the bullets were not very lethal at that time; in 1934, the second year after Liang Sicheng measured the wooden pagoda, the wooden pagoda was The government carried out a "major maintenance" on the wooden tower, dismantling the mud walls and slanted beams between each floor and replacing them with the current doors and windows.
The following year, Liang Sicheng came to Yingxian again. The "red and white" pagoda had lost its original luster. He stamped his feet and beat his chest, unable to stop sighing to the sky. The expert group of the China Cultural Heritage Research Institute believes that this wrong maintenance "greatly reduced the anti-lateral movement stiffness and load-bearing capacity of each layer, weakening the structural integrity of each layer." In fact, the damage did not stop there, the original The mud-lined wall is smooth white on the outside, and there are beautiful colorful paintings on the inside. All of this is hard to see again.
In the early days of the founding of New China, Ying County held a "meeting of ten thousand people" in the tower. Speakers were installed on each floor and the seats were full of people. It’s really hard for Guta! To bear such a heavy weight, fortunately, the base soil of the wooden tower is mainly composed of clay and sand, which has a large bearing capacity.