Longxing Temple

　　Longxing Temple is a key cultural relic protection unit in China. Longxing Temple is one of the famous temples in China, known as the four treasures of North China. It was built in the sixth year of kaihuang in Sui Dynasty, and now has a history of more than 1400 years. In fact, the name of Longxing Temple at the beginning of the Song Dynasty was “longzang Temple”, that is, longzang with hidden dragon and crouching tiger. In the early Song Dynasty, the Tibetan character was changed to Xingxing, and it was changed to Longxing Temple in the 49th year of Kangxi. From the name, we can also think of how prosperous our Longxing Temple was in the past dynasties.

　　Longxing Temple, with Dabei Pavilion as the main body, is a large-scale architectural complex in Song Dynasty. The existing area of the temple is 82500 square meters. The main buildings are distributed on the North-South central axis and its two sides. The whole building complex is high and low, and the primary and secondary are distinct. It is an important example to study the architectural layout of Buddhist temples in the Song Dynasty. After so many introductions, you must have a strong interest in this religious complex with thousands of history. Now please follow me to see its mysterious face!

　　There are six cultural relics in Longxing Temple, which can be regarded as the best in China. They pass through the Tianwang hall and Dajue Liushi hall. Now in front of you, this magnificent hall is the only one in China that we are going to visit today: mani hall. Mani hall was built in the fourth year of emperor you of Northern Song Dynasty, covering an area of 1400 square meters. As you can see, its layout is very unique. The center of the main hall is the Xieshan peak with double eaves. In the center of the four sides of the square hall, there is a mountain flower in each side. The Xieshan Baoxia in front of it makes the whole building plane form a cross shape.

　　From the outside, we can see that the whole hall overlaps magnificently and is full of changes, which is the only existing example of Song Dynasty architecture in China. If you look at it again, the brackets under the eaves of the hall are large, the distribution is sparse, the columns are thick, and there are obvious rolling brake side corners and rising, which are consistent with the Song Dynasty’s “building French style”. Liang Sicheng, an expert on ancient architecture in China, praised the empress of Mani hall. He said that this kind of layout was only seen in Song Dynasty paintings except the turret of the Forbidden City in Beijing. Do you have the feeling of crossing time and space to be in Song Dynasty paintings now? Let’s get out of the association quickly. After appreciating the general architecture of this painting from the appearance, let’s go in and enjoy it more beautiful Let’s go!

　　Please note that next, I’d like to introduce the second one of Longxing Temple, the Chinese beauty of inverted Guanyin. Please look at the colorful clay sculpture hanging mountain on the north wall of the inner trough of Mani hall. There are more than 30 existing statues in the hanging mountain, but the striking one is the colorful Guanyin Bodhisattva in the middle, commonly known as “inverted Guanyin”. Because Guanyin Bodhisattva has the oath of “all living beings will never be able to reach the end of universal salvation, and all living beings will never reach the end of universal salvation”, it forms the image of inverted sitting Guanyin. The statue of Avalokitesvara is 3.4 meters high. Please look at the eyes with deep wisdom overlooking us. Do you feel shocked? In fact, what is beautiful about her is not only her elegant posture, beautiful face, but also her broad mind and her touching compassion.

　　Through the archway and the altar, we can see that there are two typical two-story Pavilion style buildings in the Northern Song Dynasty on both sides of the central axis. They are zhuanlunzang Pavilion and Cihua Pavilion.

　　The zhuanlunzang pavilion was built in the Northern Song Dynasty. The diameter of the zhuanlunzang Pavilion in front of us is 7 meters. It is divided into three parts: the Tibetan seat, the Tibetan body and the Tibetan roof. A 10.8-meter wooden shaft runs up and down in the middle. You will be interested to ask what is the use of such a special magic weapon? According to historical records, zhuanlunzang was created for the convenience of illiterate or non literate believers in the southern Liang Dynasty. The believers have the same merit in pushing the wheel for a week as in reading the Scriptures once. Although it has been thousands of years, it only needs two or three people to make it rotate slowly. Isn’t it amazing? As a special form of magic weapon, it has a history of more than 1400 years since it came into being. However, due to natural and man-made reasons, there are few existing objects in China. Among them, lunzang in Longxing Temple is one of the oldest and most precious The historical remains of the world.

　　As we all know, in the history of Chinese calligraphy, the Sui Dynasty was a transitional period from Hanli to Tangkai. The longzangsi stele that I want to introduce now is the representative work of this period. Its font is dull and broad, clumsy but elegant, solemn but not dull. It can be said that it is a standard regular script and precious material for studying the history of Chinese calligraphy. Kang Youwei, a famous scholar in modern times, also called this stele “Sui stele”, and later generations even called it “ancestor of regular script”. Please enjoy it!

　　What we are seeing now is the Dabei Pavilion, the main building of Longxing Temple. Entering it, we will see a 21.3-meter-high bronze cast iron Guanyin, which was cast in the fourth year of Kaibao in the Northern Song Dynasty. It has 42 arms. Besides its two eyes, it has 20 hands on the left and right sides of its body, holding different magic weapons. Each hand has one eye, which becomes 40 hands and 40 eyes. It is said that each hand eye has 25 kinds of mana, and 40 hands and 25 eyes become thousands of hands and thousands of eyes. Therefore, this Avalokitesvara is also known as “Avalokitesvara with thousands of hands and eyes”. It is worth mentioning that as early as more than 1000 years ago, Longxing Temple was naturally called the “Great Buddha Temple” because of its existence. It was only by hand that such a large bronze Buddha was made without mechanization, which created a miracle in the history of metallurgy and foundry in the world.

　　Later we came to the Pilu hall, where a bronze statue of Pilu Buddha was worshipped in the middle. “Pilu” is the Sanskrit abbreviation of “piluzana”, which means “light shines everywhere”. Pilu Buddha is Sakyamuni’s Dharma Buddha. This Pilu Buddha is 6.72 meters high. There is a small Buddha on the Chiba lotus petals of the three-layer lotus seat, forming a pattern of “Thousand Buddhas circling Pilu”. There are also three layers of four Buddhas, a total of 12. Each Pilu Buddha wears a five Buddha crown. There are 1072 large and small Buddha statues on the whole Buddha statue, which has a high historical, scientific and artistic value. It is an isolated case at home and abroad.