Temples
It was not uncommon for wealthy or powerful families to facilitate the construction of large temple complexes, usually by donating a portion of their family estate to a Buddhist sect. Often the land already contained buildings that could be re-purposed for religions use. The Fei (費) family of the town of Jinze, located just west of Shanghai, converted a mansion on their property into a Buddhist sutra-recitiation hall, and later built several other religious buildings around the hall. This spurred a boom in temple construction in the area, causing Jinze to become a major center of the White Lotus sect of Buddhism, which in turn spurred the construction of more temples and lead the town to become a significant location within the Song Dynasty. The nearby town of Nanxiang gained prominence shortly after the fall of the Song Dynasty in large part to the construction of temples and other religious buildings, which spanned the entire Song Dynasty.
Apart from stimulating the development of urban areas, temples and religious buildings featured a number of unique aesthetic and structural features. The Temple of the Saintly Mother (圣母殿) and the Hall of Sacrifice of the Jin Temple (晋祠), located in a southeastern suburb of Taiyuan City, Shanxi province, are extant examples of early Song Dynasty architecture. The Temple of the Saintly Mother is the main building of the Jin Temple, first built in the period between 1023 and 1032 and renovated in 1102. It has a double-eaved roof with nine ridges, and two dragon-heads with wide-open jaws biting the ends of the main ridge. The roof is supported by massive dougong brackets corresponding to drawings in Yingzao Fashi. The eaves of the Temple of the Saintly Mother curve upward slightly at each end, a characteristic of Song Dynasty architecture. The columns of the façade, decorated with dragons that coil around the shafts, become progressively taller with increasing distance to either side of the central pair. The building has a porch around it, the sole example of such a structure; another unique feature of the site is a cross-shaped bridge that leads to the Goddess Temple.
The Trinity Hall of Xuan Miao Temple (玄妙观), situated in the heart of Suzhou city, is another example of Song Dynasty architecture. In 1982, it was established as a National Heritage Site by the Chinese government.
The Jingling Palace (景灵宫, Jingling Gong), a temple to the legendary Yellow Emperor located near modern-day Qufu, was built in the 11th century. It was subsequently destroyed near the end of the Yuan Dynasty. However, several other structures in Shou Qiu, the complex that Jingling Palace was situated in, remain intact. Two giant tortoise-borne steles flank what was the entrance to the palace. One of the two steles, the Stele of the Sorrow of 10,000, is at 52 meters (171 ft) high, the tallest unmarked stele in the country. A large pyramid constructed of rounded stone blocks, the symbolic tomb of the Yellow Emperor's son Shaohao, is located outside the Shou Qiu complex. Another important large tortoise-borne stele of the same period has been preserved at the Dai Miao of Mount Tai.
Read more about this topic: Architecture Of The Song Dynasty
Famous quotes containing the word temples:
“Goddesses never die. They slip in and out of the world’s cities, in and out of our dreams, century after century, answering to different names, dressed differently, perhaps even disguised, perhaps idle and unemployed, their official altars abandoned, their temples feared or simply forgotten.”
—Phyllis Chesler (b. 1941)
““To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods,”
—Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)
“This city now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Open unto the fields and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)