Name of East Hall Building
North Gaoji Hall (also known as "North Gaoji East Hall")
02
Overview of the present situation of East Hall
Construction period:
At the end of the Tang Dynasty, the eleventh year of the Tang Dynasty (AD 857).
Building grade:
World cultural heritage (Wutai Mountain) and national key cultural relics protection units.
Building location:
Wutai county, Shanxi province, 32 kilometers northeast, is on the Dongping platform of the central axis of Beigaoji.
03
Brief introduction of the East Pavilion building
Single-eaved roof.
Seven rooms are 34 meters wide;
Four deep rooms, 17.66 meters.
Its column net consists of inner and outer columns,
Forming five rooms with broad surfaces,
Go deep into two inner grooves and one outer groove;
A huge Buddhist altar was built in the second half of the inner groove.
There are three main buddhas and endangered bodhisattvas in the middle of the studio.
There are more than 20 statues of Bodhisattva and Li Shen scattered on the altar.
It's a statue of the Tang Dynasty,
The arhats arranged on the gable and the back wall were added by later generations.
There are five plank doors in the center of the front of the temple.
There are windows at both ends and thick walls around the other three sides.
Only the back of the gable is equipped with a "fan wall".
04
Architectural evaluation
Architectural evaluation:
Beixing Temple is now
The largest existing in China
Wooden structure architecture in Tang dynasty
The second earliest wooden structure building
(second only to the main hall of nanzenji in Wutai County).
This broke the assertion of Japanese scholars:
There are no early wooden structures in Wutai Mountain and China.
It was praised as "the first treasure of China architecture" by architect Liang Sicheng.
China Wood Structure
China's wood structure system has always adopted the structural principle of frame system: four columns, beams and vertical purlins are added to form a "house", and general buildings are composed of odd rooms, such as three, five, seven and nine rooms. The more bays there are, the higher the water level is. There are eleven rooms in the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City, which is the highest existing ancient wooden structure.
The facade is divided into three parts:
Tai chi,
The main body of the house,
The roof.
Among them, the roof of the official building is huge,
What is profound is the architectural modeling.
The most important part.
The forms of the roof are divided into: single slope, flat roof, hard mountain, hanging mountain, temple, resting mountain, rolling shed, squeezing tip,
Double eaves, helmet top and other formats,
Double eaves temple is the highest level.
Bucket is a key component in China wood structure, and its function is to support the weight of eaves by projecting cantilever beams from columns.
Unique external contour:
Multi-layer platform base,
Brightly colored curved sloping roofs,
Courtyard architecture,
Show vastness.
Brick paintings of Han tombs more than two thousand years ago
Courtyard buildings have appeared,
To the Forbidden City, the most magnificent building complex in Ming and Qing Dynasties,
Complex shell forms are also used.
In terms of architectural thought, China's ancient architecture embodies clear etiquette thought and pays attention to hierarchy: there are strict regulations on modeling, color, scale, structure and components, which improves the architectural form to a certain extent, but also limits the development of architecture. At the same time, the idea of harmony between man and nature is also reflected in the development of ancient architecture in China, which promotes the coordination and integration between architecture and nature. Pay attention to the location of buildings and cities; When it was built according to local conditions, it was built on the mountain, and the garden was particularly obvious, emphasizing Feng Shui.
There is no suitable time and place for reading. When a person is in the mood to study, he can study anywhere. If he knows the fun of reading, he will read whether in or out of school, whether there is a school in the world or not.
How beautiful is Beige Temple? What is its history? Wooden building materials are eternal building materials, Beixingtang, which is both modern and ancient. In architectural style, wooden buildings can echo the characteristics of the city and show the social and humanistic characteristics.
Because it is a natural material, the building has a unique affinity to use, eliminating the cold feeling of the building itself caused by the outhouse. Moreover, the wooden structure building has high flexibility, which can give full play to its humanized and personalized characteristics.
China, as one of the earliest countries to use wood structures, has practiced various wood frames combining columns and beams. Promote the advantages of wood materials in bending and compression, avoid the disadvantages of wood materials in shear and tension, and have good seismic function.
In the early Tang Dynasty, China's wooden structure construction method has developed into a set of very strict construction methods. The Wutaishan Beige Temple, which we are going to explore today, is the largest existing wooden structure in the history of China. It takes us to understand the cultural background and wooden structure of the Tang Dynasty.
1. Beige Temple: a famous temple in Sui and Tang Dynasties.
On the edge of Wutai Mountain stands a mysterious building with a history of thousands of years, surrounded by 3,000 people. Although there are no Sanskrit sounds and incense, and no pilgrims from all walks of life come to worship, it can last for thousands of years. It is the legendary ancient temple that is immortal.
Wutaishan Beige Temple was built in the period of Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty. As early as the Sui and Tang Dynasties, it was already a famous temple in Wutai Mountain. Beixing's name is often mentioned in various historical materials.
In addition, Beixing Temple has been destroyed and repaired many times. At the end of the Tang Dynasty, the East Hall of our Beigao Temple was rebuilt. There are three main buddhas and threatened bodhisattvas in the middle of the huge Buddhist altar. On the huge altar, there are more than 20 scattered bodhisattvas, powerful gods and so on. These are the statues of the Tang Dynasty. The wooden structure of the East Hall and the murals in the hall are the landmark buildings of the Tang Dynasty.
In the late Tang Dynasty, after the renovation of Beixing, because the rulers at that time did not allow Buddhism to develop, with the decline of Buddhism, Beixing gradually sank. Except for some small buildings in Manjusri Hall in Song Dynasty, it was gradually forgotten by the outside world.
It was not until the persistent search of Chinese architects Liang Sicheng and Lin that it reappeared in front of the world. It overthrew the Japanese arrogance that the ancient architecture of China, the wooden architecture of the Tang Dynasty, no longer existed, and they wanted to go to Tokyo and Nara, Japan to see the wooden architecture of the Tang Dynasty.
On the south side of the East Hall, there is a brick tower exactly like the one painted in Dunhuang murals, which profoundly proves the conclusion that the architectural history of Bukoji was in the Tang Dynasty or earlier. When Liang Sicheng discovered it, he praised it as "the first national treasure of China".
The unique Tang Dynasty inscriptions in the East Hall of Beigao Temple, including unique historical facts and cultural murals, distinctive Tang Dynasty sculptures and distinctive Tang Dynasty architecture, are known as the "four wonders" and have extremely high artistic and historical value.
Second, Beixing's architectural framework: it is a classic work of hanging beam and wooden frame.
The image of the East Hall of the North Temple shows a high degree of unity of art and structure. It is a model of the Tang Dynasty wooden structure with the highest technical level and the largest volume in China. Although it is a simple plane structure, it is rich in indoor space.
Thousands of wood structure members with different shapes and sizes are closely meshed through our unique tenon-mortise structure. Although there are many members, none of them are useless and redundant. The appearance of the building is also beautiful, calm and full of vitality. The main hall is a "golden box bucket bottom groove" constructed by the roof, beam frame, bucket arch layer and "hui" column grid plane, which has the Tang Dynasty.
In the ancient buildings in the Tang and Song Dynasties, the eaves column and the gold column must be the same height in this kind of beam-lifting palace building, which is also called the height of the inner and outer columns. Beige Temple is a typical bucket arch building with cantilever beam in Tang Dynasty. Its inside and outside are composed of beam Fang and bucket arch, and then its level is set, thus finally supporting the whole roof.
This construction method is mainly used in the highest-level buildings such as palace buildings and temple buildings in the Tang Dynasty. The existing halls and pavilions of Beixing Hall after the Tang Dynasty are mostly simplified architectural styles. Their characteristics are that the eaves column is one or two feet shorter than the gold column, and the auxiliary work on the gold column head is simplified and reduced. In addition, chess and Ming dynasty were cancelled, and only grass was used. In the case of smallpox, the grass at the bottom will also be used as a checkerboard.
As the front fulcrum of Ang structure in the East Hall of Beigao Temple, the lower beam and the upper beam press the Ang tail. Together with Ang, which is inclined in the middle, the two girders form a solid lever structure above the hall.
Thirdly, the East Hall of Beige Temple also has a Xiaofangping with the same architectural structure left over from the Japanese Tian Ping era, which is also a typical hall-style building in the Tang Dynasty.
(A) the beauty of "beam frame"
The beam frame of the East Hall is also a fork with a brace, that is, a wooden block placed obliquely between the purlin and the beam head of the next floor. Its main function is to support purlins, which are not found in the buildings of the Qing Dynasty, such as Wuke Temple; Fork hand refers to the wooden block placed obliquely between the roof purlin and the beam head of the flat beam. Its main function is to support the diagonal bracing of roof purlin. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, this component was also demolished and replaced with a ridge melon column.
The top of the flat beam in the East Hall adopts a triangular herringbone skeleton. It can be said that the use of this beam skeleton structure ranks first among the existing ancient wooden structures in China.
It is an architectural feature of the Tang Dynasty to replace the short column with a big fork hand on the flat beam, and the intersection vertex of the two fork hands is staggered with the arch, while the struggle for wood and the spine are supported by the arch. These traditional architectural techniques on the upper part of the roof beam were all inherited from the Han Dynasty, and they were also seen in the stone carvings of the Nanchan Temple and Zhu Bi Temple in Shandong Province, but this structure disappeared after the Five Dynasties.
(B) the beauty of "rising"
The roof slope of the East Hall of Beigao Temple is relatively gentle, and the cornice and roof ridge are convex, so the rising curve is built. In the ancient buildings of Tang and Song Dynasties, the "ascending" construction method is more common, that is, from the center of the house, the eaves columns on both sides will be slightly higher than the second one in the middle.
The rise of the eaves is: the height of the pillar in the middle is unchanged, and the second, sharp and end are two inches higher than the head of the pillar in the middle, so that the eaves of the house gradually form a gentle rising curve.
Wing angle is a corner of the eaves of ancient buildings in China, because it tilts upward, just like a bird spreading its wings and preparing to soar in the sky. It is called wing angle. Since the Tang Dynasty, eaves with sloping wing angles have appeared. The height of the corner beam section is roughly three times that of the rafters. The lower ends of corner beams and rafters are built on the eaves. In the design of the hall, a triangular piece of wood was specially placed on the purlin on the front of the corner by paving the board. This kind of batten was called "log" in Song Dynasty and "sleeper" in Qing Dynasty.
In this way, the eaves can be raised slightly and tilted at the corner. Because of the "rising" construction method, the place from the eaves to the corner is slightly curved and naturally turns. Judging from the beauty of the palace, the turning point in the Tang Dynasty was too natural, and the transition in the Ming and Qing Dynasties was a bit abrupt. Moreover, the eaves of the East Hall protrude 3.96 meters, which is not found in the wood structure since the Song Dynasty.
(C) "Dougong" beauty
There is a big bucket arch in the east hall of Beigao Temple. According to the actual measurement, its section size reached 2 10 * 300cm, ten times that of the late Qing Dynasty. Liang Sicheng, a famous architect, once commented on the East Hall: the hall has a far-reaching eaves and a magnificent arch, which is a typical ancient building in the Tang Dynasty.
Moreover, seven kinds of bucket arch members have been used on the inner and outer columns of the East Hall: outer eaves bucket arch, outer eaves bucket arch, corner bucket arch, inner grooved column bucket arch, inner grooved mountain column bucket arch, inner grooved bucket arch and inner grooved corner bucket arch.
The making of the bucket arch is flexible and ingenious. Stigma shop and gap shop are both double-copied and double-lifted, and the corner of the inner groove is changed to steal the heart without a separate cross, that is, the arch is inserted in the inner groove column as the seventh shop for stealing the heart. This is also because of the practicality of Wu Keji. The reason why the circular mask of the Buddha statue can't put down the horizontal arch and make a little adjustment and change is to steal the heart. Qipu is a bucket arch, which is the most prominent example of the selection level of existing bucket arches in ancient Chinese architecture.
Conclusion:
The colorful Beixing has stood for thousands of years. Its wooden structure features in the Tang Dynasty made us shudder. Its four wonders of the Tang Dynasty brought us back to the architectural culture of the Tang Dynasty. Its colorful, ingenious and flexible structure and construction method are different from those of Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, which increases our understanding of the historical and cultural value of palace architecture in Tang Dynasty. However, it goes beyond the historical and cultural value of the building itself. It was discovered by Mr. Liang Sicheng before the Lugouqiao Incident.
This magnificent palace building in the Tang Dynasty has since become a symbol full of metaphor and ridicule in China's modern history. Therefore, the academic contest between Chinese and Japanese historical buildings has undergone a dramatic change. It itself is a mixture of more national sentiment and political conquest. In Liang Sicheng's architectural diary, countless China buildings with distinctive features are the same as Beidou Temple, but unlike other buildings, Buddha's light is not just Buddha's light. Architecture, not just architecture.
References:
Beige Temple Building in Wutai Mountain
Detailed explanation of Shanxi North Keji East Hall
Baidu baike
The pictures are all from the Internet. If there is any infringement, please contact the author to delete it.
East Hall of Beigao Temple (I): History and Environment About the date of construction of the existing East Hall of Beigao Temple, it is generally believed that it was built in the eleventh year of the Tang Dynasty (AD 857). This is also the date confirmed by Liang Si and Lin when they first discovered the main hall, which comes from the mutual evidence of the Mohist Book and the Eleven-year Classics.
In recent years, researchers have conducted carbon dating of various parts of the main hall in the 14th century, and found some older components (including wooden structures, buckets and straws in clay sculptures), which pushed the reconstruction date of Dongzheng Hall to the early 8th century, a hundred years earlier than the current dating. Of course, the final accurate dating depends on more evidence to confirm.
According to legend, Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty founded Beikeji, which has always had an official color. It was first recorded that "the emperor saw the Buddha's light because of his fame." The ancestral temple next to the East Hall is probably a relic of the Northern Wei Dynasty, and many wooden structures at that time were probably destroyed by Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou Dynasty. During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, there were many records of Zen masters stationed in Beikeji. Later, Beixing Temple was rebuilt on a large scale by Buddhist monks in the Tang Dynasty, and was later destroyed by the "Huichang Fa Nan". During the Xuanzong period of the Tang Dynasty, temples all over the country began to be rebuilt. As for the reconstruction of Beikeji, according to records, Xuanzong let the monks release their wishes and sincerely called on the monks to "set up camps in Beikeji". The East Hall we saw was rebuilt from this.
The funds for building the temple came from a right-wing lieutenant surnamed Wang, that is, the book Right-wing King written by Beiliang Di in the East Hall. Liang Sicheng thought that it was Wang Shoucheng who was in power in the ruling and opposition. According to later research, this right-wing lieutenant is more likely to be Wang Yuan. On the same beam, "The Buddhist monk gave it to the female disciple Ning Gong" is probably Wang Yuan's wife.
"Sacrifice" usually refers to the act of giving money and goods to temples to support the "three treasures" of Buddhist monks or to support the construction of temples and the sculpture of Buddha statues. Maybe after Wang Yuan's death, Ning Gong Yu used her late husband's money to finance the reconstruction of Wuke Temple. Ning also became the owner of the Buddhist temple in Beigao Temple and stayed in the temple. The so-called Buddhist temple owner is the manager in charge of the chores of a Buddhist temple in the temple. According to the lettering on the Confucian Classics Building in the 11th year of Dazhong, both Shi Yuancheng and Ning are the owners of the East Temple Buddhist Temple.
This is the beginning of the East Room.
East Hall, east-west, is located at the easternmost end of Beigao Temple, with rocks behind it and high platform in front. Standing in front of the temple, you can overlook the whole temple. The space where the East Hall is located is actually a part of the mountain. The hall will be rebuilt after the land is chiseled. The original rock is very close to the back eaves of the main hall, almost close to the abutment. Because a flash flood in 1960s and early 1950s destroyed the back wall of the main hall, people chiseled back the rock by several meters to the position they saw today.
This unique environment actually has a wonderful sense of time. Among the rocks behind the temple is Wutaishan greenstone, which has a history of nearly 3 billion years and is one of the earliest terrestrial rocks. Compared with the age of these rocks, the history of the East Hall on the side is nothing.
Another interesting thing is that the Buddhist altar in the East Hall is not made of bricks and stones on a flat foundation, but directly made of rocks. On the surface, the rocks are under the bricks. This practice may be to save materials, but considering the shape of the East Hall, some researchers think it is a variant of the cave temple. In the grottoes in the early Tang Dynasty, there was a practice of chiseling the central Buddhist altar in the rock array. There were many caves with wooden eaves at that time. We see that the environment of the East Hall is surrounded by rocks, and the distance between the back eaves and the rocks is very close at first. Coupled with the design of the front porch of the Tang Dynasty (which will be described in detail later), the whole space of the East Hall feels quite like a cave temple.
The East Hall is seven rooms wide and eight rooms (four rooms) deep, with a single eaves and a roof. The five front doors are all original objects of the Tang Dynasty, and two rooms are equipped with straight lattice windows. The eaves are far-reaching and magnificent, and they are the only wooden buildings in China that can present the original appearance of the Tang Dynasty (other Tang-style buildings are small temples with low grades). Liang Sicheng called it: "The temple is big, the roof slope is gentle, and the eaves are wide and the wings are out. They are all huge and heroic, much like temples in the pure land of Dunhuang murals. At first glance, it is also something from the late Tang and Five Dynasties. 」
On the door, there is a plaque of "Buddha Glory Zhen Temple", which was built in the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty. The glazed roof components and ridged beasts are also relics of the Ming and Qing Dynasties.
The plane space of the East Hall is the bottom groove of the golden box bucket, which is surrounded by two circles of columns inside and outside. The Buddhist altar is located in the inner groove space surrounded by inner columns, and a fan-shaped wall spanning five rooms is built between the inner columns at the back. The inner column is the same height as the outer column, which is called "hall building" in France. There are small squares on the ceiling, and the inner groove is higher than the outer groove (the space between the inner and outer columns), creating a larger central space. There are inclined rafters on both sides of the plane, forming a trapezoidal "small dome"
The beam below the level is called Ming _, and the Ming _ in the East Hall is cut into "moon beam", and the two ends are obviously bent (that is, "rolled and killed"), which is beautiful in appearance. The light beam above the water level is invisible to the viewer and is called grass. It is made of thick wood, and there is not much pursuit of appearance.
The inner groove is four rafters (the actual span is only more than two rafters), which connects the front and rear inner columns and is supported by the bucket on the inner column by four jumps. In the middle of the beam back of the four rafters, a half hump supporting cross bucket is installed, which is the same as the cross bucket at both ends and directly supports the flat plate. The second jump of the inner column barrel is to connect the milk of the inner and outer columns. There is a hidden square on the milk, which supports the square block of the outer tank upwards.
Grass above the level is also connected with four rafters, and the four rafters bear a flat beam. Above the flat beam, there is a big fork hand, and the top of the fork hand bears the ridge. Fork hand without vertical column (short column) is a typical architectural feature of Tang Dynasty. At first glance, Liang Sicheng is the only isolated case obtained by the Architectural Society for many years.
There has been a great change in the history of the East Hall, that is, the front door, windows and external walls moved outward. The original board door and window wall is located in the inner column, and there is a front porch between the inner and outer columns, which is similar to the Jintang of the Tang and Zhao Temple in Nara at the same time. Although this change has little influence on the beam structure, it makes people in it feel very different in space.
The space of the front porch is between the inside and outside, covered by eaves, but connected with the surrounding natural environment. As far as outdoor space is concerned, the front porch is the first thing that visitors see when they come up from the west steps. There is a sense of depth that attracts visitors to the temple and creates a sense of rhythm in depth. From the indoor space, after the front porch enters the door, compared with the situation without the front porch (the door wall moves outward), the distance between the Buddha statue and the viewer is much closer. First of all, you should look up, and at the same time, because of the limited vision, you need to stare at the Buddha statues one by one during the trip, which is somewhat similar to the way of worshipping Buddha in the grottoes. This is completely different from the design of many halls to create a huge space in front of the Buddhist altar. This is also related to the shape of the East Hall as a grotto variant.
Unfortunately, I can't appreciate the artistic conception of the front porch today. Fortunately, we can open the door of the Tang Dynasty and experience the shock of tang style.
The ratio of Beixing Hall to Beixing Hall is 3: 2. According to relevant public information, the height and width of Bukkoji are built in strict accordance with the ratio of 3: 2 stipulated in the wood classification system, and the stability of wood is used to the maximum extent to resist the damage caused by the earthquake.