Author: Yang Jieying
"The mountain is a Buddha, and the Buddha is a mountain."
"How tall is the Mengshan Giant Buddha, the earliest known first Buddha in the era?" "Why did the Mengshan Buddha disappear mysteriously for 600 years?"
With the gradual release of the Mengshan Buddha as a national key cultural relics protection unit and archaeological excavation data, the Mengshan Buddha was once again attracting people's attention.
Photograph by Yang Jieying
Unknown to outsiders after annihilation for 600 years
The Mengshan Giant Buddha in Jinyuan District, Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province, was built during the Tianbao period of the Northern Qi Dynasty and has a history of about 1500 years. It is the largest Buddha and Buddha Pavilion on the Cliff in the Northern Dynasty of China.
The Big Buddha was originally a cliff Buddha statue behind the Kaihua Temple in Mengshan. It was built using a steep cliff face. It belongs to the cliff-style open niche. A large wooden pavilion was built in front of the niche. Many emperors in history such as Tang Gaozu Li Yuan, Tang Gaozong Li Zhi and Empress Wu Zetian, Emperor Wu Emperor Li Keyong, and later Han Gaozu Liu Zhiyuan all came to worship the Buddha, incense and prosperity. It is a pity that in the last year of the Yuan Dynasty, the Great Buddha was destroyed. In 1980, in a census of place names, the remains of the Buddha were discovered by an old man named Wang Jianni, and then gradually revived.
In the "Northern Qi Book": The later master Gao Wei "cut the western mountain of Jinyang as a big Buddha statue, which burned tens of thousands of lights overnight, and illuminated the palace." Wang Jianni searched many times before he found out that the cultural relics that fit the historical records were found. The "Jinyang Xishan Giant Buddha Statue" has been obliterated for more than 600 years. During his lifetime, Wang Jianni recorded in detail the process of discovering the remains of the Great Buddha.
Photo courtesy of Chang Yimin, Photo of Mengshan Buddha in 1997
"Actually, the Mengshan Buddha is the" big belly cliff "in the mouth of the villagers of our temple village." Wang Yali, director of the tour guide department of Mengshan Scenic Area, said that there are still a few rows of small square holes in the chest of the Buddha, which is the remains left when the Buddha was re-dressed in the late Tang Dynasty . Using both hands to apply the Zen seal, the knot sits on the overlying rosette. The rosette is made of stone, and the part covered with lotus is preserved slightly. There are 11 niches in the girdle.
Photo courtesy of Chang Yimin
As for the reason why the Big Buddha was mysteriously obliterated for 600 years, Yang Xiusheng, former director of the Cultural Relics and Tourism Bureau of Jinyuan District of Taiyuan City, who had participated in the protection of Mengshan Big Buddha, said that the rise and decline of a temple is closely related to the development and economic environment of the surrounding city. In fact, it was n’t that the Mengshan Buddha disappeared, but with the destruction of Jinyang City, the incense of the temples around Mengshan Kaihua Temple, Taishan Longquan Temple and so on gradually reduced, plus the natural destruction of wars and earthquakes. People are incapable of repairing, and the big Buddha is destroyed. It is slowly unknown to the world.
The remains of the burning wooden pillars in the western part of the Buddha Pavilion are shown by Chang Yimin, a researcher at the Taiyuan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, at the archaeological excavation site. Photo courtesy of Chang Yimin
For example, the building of Mengshan Buddha ’s Buddha Pavilion was burnt down during the Yuan Dynasty, and the Buddha ’s head was also missing. The belly, hands, legs, feet, base, and relics of the Great Buddha were all covered in gravel and weeds. In the middle, the dust of history drowned the famous Buddha for thousands of years and was unknown to outsiders for nearly 600 years.
Photograph by Yang Jieying
Since 2007, Taiyuan City has carried out a protective development of the Mengshan Giant Buddha, strengthened the body of the Buddha, and built a 12-meter-high Buddha head with reference to the North Qi Buddha head unearthed in Taiyuan.
Yang Xiusheng introduced that in terms of the size of the Buddha's head, it not only considered the characteristics of the statues of the Northern Qi Dynasty, the size of the neck of the remaining Buddha body, but also considered the 20cm thickness of the Buddha's clay sculpture. Simulate and repeat the demonstration in proportion to the Buddha body, and finally determine the height of the new Buddha head.
Important archaeological find
In view of the important academic value of the Buddhist pavilion ruins of Kaihua Temple in Mengshan, from 2015 to 2016, a joint archaeological team composed of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Taiyuan Cultural Relics and Archaeological Research Institute and the Jinyuan District Cultural Relics Tourism Bureau carried out After the excavation, through two years of excavation, I have a clearer understanding of the site of the Buddha Pavilion.
Chang Yimin, a researcher at the Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in Taiyuan City, said that the important gains of this excavation are that the big Buddha niche was excavated on the mountain, and the Buddha Pavilion was built according to the big niche. The grand scale is the largest Buddha and Buddha Pavilion on the Cliff in the Northern Dynasty of China.
The relics found were: "Gan Ning Bingchen (896) built the pavilion, Jin King (used by Li Ke) repaired this merit". The engraved tube tile with animal face tiles, which made it clear when Li Ke used to rebuild the Buddhist pavilion.
"Ganning Bingchen builds a pavilion, King Jin repairs this merit" Ming Changwa provided by Chang Yimin
The re-engraved "Tang Dynasty Rebuilt Big Statue Pavilion Price Monument" of the Five Dynasties recorded the reconstruction of the Buddhist Pavilion in the late Tang Dynasty into three floors, and also recorded the name and number of various materials used in the repair of the pavilion, and the number of various labors used (including artists, clever Workers, physical workers, etc.) and the total funds spent on repairing the pavilion. Such an open and transparent record has important academic value for studying the organization and construction of large-scale projects in the Tang Dynasty, as well as economic and social history.
"Tang Dynasty Rebuilt Big Statue Pavilion Price Tablet" by Chang Yimin
The Buddha has applied the meditation seal with both hands, sitting on the tufted back and lying on the rosette. Each lotus petal is 0.47 meters high and wide, such a large covered lotus is very rare.
How tall is the Buddha
"Many people even compare the Mengshan Buddha to the Leshan Buddha, and suspect that the height of the Buddha is inaccurate. This is a misunderstanding of concept and cognition." Yang Xiusheng said that the publicity data for the Leshan Buddha is 71 meters high and 15 meters high. They agree that the visual perception is highly consistent.
Yang Xiusheng said that Leshan Giant Buddha is a Maitreya Buddha, and his visual observation is that he is sitting at a height of 59 meters, which is a non-promotional height. The Leshan Giant Buddha was carved in the Tang Dynasty. The head is big and the body is small is a traditional statue that balances the visual difference when looking up according to the visual experience of "far small and large." The Mengshan Buddha is the Sakyamuni Buddha. The standard sitting position is to sit with the legs (commonly known as cross-legged sitting). The height of the sighting is 38 meters, because the Mengshan Buddha was 162 years earlier than the Leshan Buddha, and the proportion of the shape remains In the multi-style era, the proportions of various parts of the body conform to the different posture ratios of the modern human body standing 7 sitting 5 cross-legged 3, namely 1 (head height): 7 (through height): 5 (recumbent sitting): 3 (loose sitting).
Photograph by Yang Jieying
Yang Xiusheng believes that according to this ratio, the height of the Mengshan Buddha is still an important topic worth studying and discussing.
According to historical records in the Tang Dynasty, the Mengshan Buddha's "two hundred feet high" is calculated to be about 63 meters according to Tang's ordinary feet.
According to archaeological excavation surveys, Mengshan Buddha is 38 meters high. Among them, the height of the Buddha seat is 4.5 meters, and the height of the new Buddha is 12 meters.
Photograph by Yang Jieying
The research around the Big Buddha continues, and the scenic area has already opened its doors to welcome guests.
According to Liu Yanbin, general manager of Mengshan Giant Buddha Tourism Development Co., Ltd., Mengshan Scenic Area was developed from 2007 and officially opened to tourists in October 2008. In 2017, the scenic spot was reformed in mechanism and system, and ticket sales began in August of that year. "In recent years, we have been enriching the content of scenic spots, hoping to give visitors more experience."