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Sakyamuni Pagoda
The Sakyamuni Pagoda, mostly built with timber, is the
few existing wooden pagoda and also the tallest in the world. It is a Buddhist
Palace Monastery in Yingxian County, Shanxi Province, or called the Wooden
Pagoda in Yingxian County, built in the second year (1056) of the reign of Liao
Dynasty Emperor Daozong.
The pagoda was built on a stone platform four meters
high. Around the upper edge and at the corners of the platform there are
sculptures of crawling lions whose simple and unsophisticated style belongs to
the Liao Dynasty. The exterior of the pagoda is divided into five levels, but
there are actually nine levels in the interior, including four built-in storeys.
The ground floor has a ring of side corridors and eaves, so it has a total
six-layer eaves, the lower two formed into multiple eaves. Under each of the
succeeding four layers there is a further dark layer, so the structure actually
has nine layers. The exterior of the dark layer is called "level seating" which
is a ring of corridors with balustrades around the pagoda itself. Each floor
consists of inner and outer rings of pillars. The pillars on each floor slant
slightly inward, the plane size diminishing floor by floor, although the figure
remains stable. The windowless outer walls on the ground floor, the added
enclosing corridors and eaves all strengthen the sense of stability.
The steeple of the pagoda is ten meters high; the whole pagoda, 67.31 meters
high. The diameter of the octagonal first storey is 30.27 meters, the longest
among ancient pagodas. When people enter the southern door of the pagoda, they
see a statue of Sakyamuni about ten meters high. The caisson ceiling is refined
and beautifully structured. On the inner walls are six pictures of Tathagata in
different poses. On the walls of the doorway are mural paintings of warrior
attendants, heavenly kings, and Buddhist disciples. A painting of three female
devotees on the wall above the door is especially exquisite. All the statues and
murals have characteristics of the Liao Dynasty.
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