Architecture of The Song Dynasty - Literature

Literature

During the Song Dynasty, previous works on architecture were brought to more sophisticated levels of description, as in Yili Shigong, written by Li Ruogui in 1193 AD. One of the most definitive works, however, was the earlier Mu Jing ("Timberwork Manual"), ascribed to Yu Hao and written sometime between 965 and 995. Yu Hao was responsible for the construction of a wooden pagoda tower in Kaifeng, which was destroyed by lightning and replaced by the brick Iron Pagoda soon after. In his time, books on architecture were still considered a lowly scholarly achievement due to the craft's status, so Mu Jing was not even recorded in the official court bibliography. Although the book itself was lost to history, the scientist and statesman Shen Kuo wrote of Yu's work extensively in his Dream Pool Essays of 1088, praising it as a work of architectural genius, saying that no one in his own time could reproduce such a work. Shen Kuo singled out, among other passages, a scene in which Yu Hao gives advice to another artisan-architect about slanting struts in order to brace a pagoda against the wind, and a passage in which Yu Hao describes the three sections of a building, the area above the crossbeams, the area above ground, and the foundation, and then proceeds to provide proportional ratios and construction techniques for each section.

Several years later Li Jie (李誡; 1065–1110) published Yingzao Fashi ("Treatise on Architectural Methods" or "State Building Standards"). Although similar books came before it, such as Yingshan Ling ("National Building Law") of the early Tang Dynasty (618–907), Li's book is the earliest technical manual on Chinese architecture to have survived in full.