690 CHINESE ARCHITECTURE. 



really planned in the conventional lines of the t'ing and finished 

 after the ordinary canons of Chinese architecture. 



The picturesque stone structure illustrated in plate xvii, which is 

 commonly called " Wu T'a Ssu," or the " Five-ToAvered Temple," is 

 situated 2 miles west of Peking. It is said to be a copy of the ancient 

 Indian Buddhist Temple of Buddhagaya, as explained in the follow- 

 ing sketch of its history. In the early part of the reign of Yung Lo 

 (1403-1424) a Hindu sramana of high degree named Pandita came 

 to Peking and was given an audience by the Emperor, to whom he 

 presented golden images of the five Buddhas, and a model in stone 

 of the diamond throne, the vajrasana of the Hindus, the chin kang 

 pao tso of the Chinese, being the name of the memorial temple 

 erected on the spot where Sakyamuni attained his Buddhahood, which 

 has recently been restored under British auspices. The Emperor 

 appointed him state hierarch, conferred on him a gold seal, and 

 fitted up for him as a residence the " True Bodhi " temple in the 

 west of Peking, which had been founded during the preceding Mon- 

 gol dynasty, promising at the same time to erect there a reproduction 

 in stone of the model temple which he had brought with him, as a 

 shrine for the sacred images. 



The new" temple Avas not, however, finished and dedicated till the 

 eleventh month of the cyclical year kuei ssu (1473), of the reign of 

 Ch'eng Hua, according to the marble stele set up beside it, which was 

 inscribed by the emperor on the occasion. This states that in dimen- 

 sions as well as in every detail it w^as an exact rejoroduction of the 

 celebrated diamond throne of Central India. The temple is sur- 

 rounded by a carved stone railing of Indian design, which is hidden 

 by the wall in the picture, and which is surmounted by a stone fenc- 

 ing. The body of the temple, about 50 feet high, is square and of 

 solid construction, composed of 5 tiers of stones carved with Buddhas 

 seated in niches. Inside the arched doorway, right and left, are two 

 staircases piercing the solid stonework and leading to the flat plat- 

 form above, which displays in prominent relief a pair of Buddha's 

 footprints and an infinite variety of symbols and Sanscrit letters 

 strange to Chinese architecture. Within the five pagodas of Indian 

 form, the central one larger than the rest, which are posed on the 

 platform, the golden Buddhas brought from India are said to be 

 enshrined, while their figures are repeated in stone and sunk in niches 

 on the four sides of the walls outside each pagoda. For a description 

 of the original tem])le reference may be made to Gen. Sir A. Cun- 

 ningham's book, Maliabodhi, or the Great Buddhist Temple under 

 the Bodhi Tree at Buddha-Gaya, London, 1892. 



Taoist temples are built upon the same general plan as the temples 

 dedicated to the Bnddhist cult. Tlie adherents of Lao Tzu have bor- 

 rowed from the Buddhist bonzes the interior decoration of their sacred 



