Fengguo Temple, Buddhist temple in Yi County, China
Fengguo Temple is a Buddhist temple complex in Yixian, Liaoning. Its main surviving building, the Daxiongbao Hall, faces south on a three-metre-high platform and measures 55.8 by 25.9 metres, with a 37 by 15 metre stone terrace in front. The hall has nine bays across and five deep, and only twenty interior pillars.
Fengguo Temple was founded in 1020 by Jiao Xiyun, a retired scholar, with construction supervised by the monk Qinghui, on the site of an earlier Xianxi Temple. A monk named Yizhuo repaired and completed the religious images from 1107 to 1140, at a cost of 10 million cash. An earthquake damaged the temple severely in 1290, and a Mongol khan's son-in-law donated money for repairs. Between 1487 and 1888 the hall was repaired at least seventeen times; bombing damaged it in 1948, and repairs resumed in the 1980s.
The hall holds seven Liao-era Buddhas of past ages, one per inner bay, each flanked by two bodhisattvas; guardian kings face the south entry and a Guanyin stands behind them facing the back door. The temple is also called Seven Buddhas Temple, and in Wild Swans Jung Chang recounts that her grandparents met here in 1924.
The temple is laid out along a north–south axis: outer gate, inner gate, decorated archway, Wuliang Hall, then the Daxiongbao Hall. The main hall faces south on a three-metre platform, with a stone yuetai in front holding two Qing kiosks and a stone incense burner. The site is in Yixian's eastern street, north side.
The hall's interior uses only 20 pillars: one whole row in front of the Buddhas was removed so the seven statues stay unobstructed. It is also the earliest Chinese building with bracket sets between columns rather than simple struts, and over 30 kinds of timber pieces sit between the column tops and the roof.
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