Buddhist Architecture
Buddhism continued to develop in China for almost 2,000 years. Today, that is popular among the Han Chinese people is known as Han Buddhism, where as Buddhism that spread into Tibet from India and Nepal is known as Tibetan Buddhism. Buddhist architecture became a feature of China's major architectures. The most commonly seen would be the Buddhist temples, pagodas, and grottos.
Buddhist Temple
Buddhist temple is a major type in China's religious buildings. It is for the consecration of the Buddha's image, the holding of Buddhist rites, and where the monks reside. One of the main characteristics of Buddhism is to attach the least significance to the material world and focus on the spiritual. The traditional courtyard house, which fits in with this concept, soon became a definitive architectural model of a Buddhist temple.
In the initial stage, Buddhist temples in China were modeled against the ones in India, that is, the pagoda as the center of the building, or with the pagoda in the front the hall in the back. As Buddhist temples took on an indigenous, Chinese design, the pagoda was being placed in the back of the temple while the hall became the center of the entire temple.
Once the architecture style of Buddhist temples in China had taken on a definitive shape, one could see that in essence, they had inherited all the original elements in Chinese architecture. A typical Buddhist temple is symmetrically laid out and all the buildings in the temple such as the bell and drum towers, the main hall, and the sutra library are all situated along the axis, while the living quarters for the monks are located at the sides.
Tibetan Buddhism (the Lama Sect) advocates the practice of combining politics and religion, and emphasizes the importance of religious rites. All the different Buddhist festivals are grand events to the Tibetans and the scale of the celebrations if frequently large. The Tibetan Buddhist monasteries are built close to the mountains, and totally blend in with the natural highland landscapes. In terms of architecture, the buildings combine the use of wooden framework of the Chinese people with the local?s stone fortress. The Tibetans also absorbed the decorative styles of the temples in Nepal to create a stable, grand, and colorful architectural style. The most representative of this would be the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet.
Pagodas
Pagodas are ancient Buddhist buildings that are used to house the bone relics of Buddha and other high monks. In Sanskrit, it is called the "stupa". It was used to house sacred objects. It is symbol of the Buddha where the worshippers held in reverence.
Pagoda was brought into China along with Buddhism itself. The stupa of India quickly blended in with the Chinese pagodas to become a unique Chinese-style stupa. There is a pavilion at the base of the stupa to give prominence to the venerated status of the stupa, which was house in the topmost part of the pagoda. The pagoda also has an underground chamber to house treasures such as relics, sutras and images of the Buddha. From such Pavilion-style pagodas, other designs of pagodas were created. Even the Lama pagodas and Yunnan's Burmese-style pagodas had been influenced by Chinese elements.
The earliest pagodas were mainly constructed on wooden structures, but they were not durable. During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, people started to build brick pagodas, and by the Tang and Song dynasties, there were even glazed-tile pagodas and porcelain pagodas. The several thousand still existing ancient pagodas in China are mainly brick pagodas, the oldest ancient wooden pagoda would be Fogong Temple in Ying County of Shanxi Province.
In the later period of the 7th century AD, a new form of Buddhist building came into being. They were the monumental Buddhist columns. It is octagonal in shape and on the stone column are inscriptions of sutras. They were used for the commemoration of Buddhist teachings. At the Temple that consecrates the image of Buddha, only one such column would be built. As for a temple that consecrates the Bodhisattvas, two or four such monumental columns would be built.
Grottos
China's grottos had their originations in India's grotto temples, and this model was spread into China sometime during the period of the Northern and Southern Dynasties. It blended in rapidly with Chinese traditional elements and left behind a huge number of grottos, The development of grottos reached its peak during the periods of Wei, Jin and Tang Dynasties. The earliest grottos were predominantly spread along the route that connects China and India - the Silk Road.
Not only that these grottos recorded the history of Buddhism in China, but the frescoes in the grottos are also a reflection of ancient China's development in art and culture. China's most popular grottos art Mogao Grotto in Dunhuang of Gansu province, Yungang Grotto in Datong of Shanxi province and Longmen Grotto in Luoyang of Henan province. Other well-known grottos include Sichuan's Dazu Grotto, Maijishan Grotto in Tianshui of Gansu province, Bingling Temple Grotto. Out of all these grottos, Mogao Grotto is the largest in size. The process of development is also the longest and is broadest in content, and the most well preserved.
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