White Pagoda of Miaoying Temple
3 min readThe White Pagoda of Miaoying Temple located in Xicheng District, Beijing is the largest existing Lama Pagoda of Tibetan Buddhism from the Yuan Dynasty in China. It was designed by a Nepalese craftsman named Araniko and thus has strong architectural features of the Western Regions. The pagoda is divided into the pagoda base, the pagoda body and the pagoda spire. The base consists of two superimposing angled sumeru seats. The pagoda body has a wide and thick shape, which looks like an inverted bowl. The pagoda spire consists of a sumeru seat, alternate rings, a canopy and a sacred dome. The whole building has a pure color as well as a solemn and grand shape, which successfully create a stately and sacred circumstance. It is the most wonderful bottle-shaped pagoda of the Lamaism.
The shape is l i k e a g i a n t sacred bottle and c o m p l e t e l y different from the Buddhist pagoda built by the Han people.
A delicately-shaped small Lama Pagoda is placed upon the canopy. The golden ornaments on the pagoda top form a sharp contrast with the white pagoda body. The pagoda base is 9 meters high and forms a double-layer sumeru seat. The plane of the pagoda body is round and it looks like an inverted bowl. Its shape is grand and vigorous, successfully creating a solemn and sacred circumstance. 13 layers of rings that get smaller layer by layer form beautiful alternate rings. The overall height of the White Pagoda is 50.9 meters and it is a solid brick pagoda. The pagoda body is snowwhite. The pure color highlights the lofty and holy religious meaning. The shoulder is round and the lower part slightly contracts inward. On the pagoda body there is a shrunken angled sumeru seat in the shape of the Chinese character “Ya” (亞). The diameter of the wide copper canopy reaches 9.9 meters. It is covered with 40 pieces of copper tiles while tassel-like hollowedout copper plates and bells are hung around it.
The Tibetan Buddhism
It is commonly called the “Lamaism”, which refers to the Buddhism that was formed and spread in the Tibetan area with in f uences in other regions. It was created by combining the Buddhism and the original Bon Religion in Tibet after the 8th century . It was ma inly spread in the regions of Tibetan, Mongolian, Tu, Yugur, Moinba and other ethnic groups, as well as Bhutan, Sikkim, Nepal, Mongo lia, Buryat and so on. “Lama” is the transliteration of the Tibetan and means “senior master”. It is the respectful title for the se nior monks in the Tibetan Buddhism. People usually called the Mongolian and Tibetan Buddhist monks “Lama” commonly.
The Evolution of Lama Temples in Han People’s Regions through Different Times
From the Yuan Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty , the Lama Temples in Han people’s regions went through an evolutionary process from being majestic to being delicate and from being simple to being complicated. The most obvious change happened to the shape and size of the pagoda body and the alternate rings named “Thirty Days” on the pagoda spire, which turned from being wide and thick in the Yuan Dynasty to being delicate and slim in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The canopy above the alternate rings also changed f rom being wide to being narrow . A niche named “Flame Light Gate”, which previously did not exist, was added onto the pagoda body . In the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, some Lama Temples adopted the shape of wood imitation structure.
