Settlement And Society In The Loess Highland During The Period Of Late Shang Dynasty

The faith of Buddhist relic in China was affected directly by the central Asia area at first.In terms of the relic's outmost container,the ancient Chinese choose the square stone box with Lu-roof instead of central Asia's round container,in Northern Wei and Northern Zhou Dynasties.Until the first emperor of Sui Dynasty,The pattern of Chinese relic palace used to bury the masonry letter under the pagoda.The first revolutionary change of the underground chamber shape occurred in the reign of Renshou(601-604.AD).Emperor Wen wanted to become the new Wheel King.He built the pagoda in 110 states all of the country during 4 years,and designed a new model of underground chamber for the Buddhist relics.A protective square room made of stone or brick was built outside the square stone box,and they were all buried in a vertical pit,and surrounded by rammed earth.I regard this new room as a kind of outer coffin.In later Sui and early Tang,the relic underground chamber kept the pattern of Renshou.During 659-662.AD,when Emperor Gaozong of Tang and Empress Wu worshiped the Buddhist bone which came from Famensi monastery,they firstly created a form of underground chamber which copied the horizontal tomb,in addition,they made use of the 9-layers relic containers including a gold coffin and a silver out coffin.In the second year of Yifeng,Wu Zetian distributed the relics to the whole nation so as to enhance this pattern,thus the new pattern was copied by the local governments and monasteries.In middle and late Tang,as the locality separatist power became strong,the unified form of the Buddhist underground chambers was gradually gone.The period had largest quantity of Buddhist underground chambers was Liao and Northern Song.The forms of underground chambers became more complex.During Northern Song,the horizontal form took up the southern area,and vertical ones mainly located in northern area.The ordinary believers became the key sponsor for the underground chamber,that's the reason why the chamber turned diversification and secularization.Relic underground chamber faded down until Southern Song and Jin.The vertical became the popular form again.The chambers which built a three steps altar within,and with a rounding corridor outside of the core room,were the new forms during Yuan and Ming Dynasties.Decline of the underground chamber was caused by many reasons,while the primary one is from the Buddhism itself.In general,during the middle ages in China,the evolution of the form of Buddhist underground chambers was mainly related to how the governors to understand and exert the Wheel King thought.It is important to note that although the sinicization and secularization of the form of the underground chambers are the major trend,the original intention of the designers who leading the revolutions were generally to obey the original Buddhist sutra and copy the authenticity from ancient India or the Middle Asia,the hometown of Buddha's.Finally we research a kind of variants of the relic underground chamber.More and more pits of damaged Buddhist statues were found in recent decades.The phenomenon burring damaged statues mainly happed during Song and Liao Dynasty.Although most damaged Buddhist statues are buried in pits,but some early cases were also find in or on the top of the underground chambers.I believe that the Mingdaosi monastery mode can help us to find out the reason.People buried the damaged Buddhist statues purposely in a pit,but the nature of this kind of pits is underground chamber burring Buddhist relics,other than cellar storage.