The Restoration Research Of Some Buddhist Temple Halls From The Recording Documents Of Two Song Dynasties

During Tang and Song Dynasties which are important periods for the development of Buddhist architecture, Buddhist architecture was booming. However, for they were built in the remote past, the existing ancient structures——especially the wooden structures are in a limited number, so it is an essential part of the Tang and Song Dynasties Buddhist architecture study to study the documents and do restoration research on Buddhist architectures in this period. Among all the types of Buddhist buildings, the Buddhist temple halls are often of the highest level, so the study of the Buddhist temple halls of Tang and Song dynasties is of great significance.The main content of this paper is the restoration research on the four main Buddhist temple halls which are described in the documents of the Song Dynasty and the restored architectural drawings. The four buildings are the main hall of Puzhaowang Temple of Sizhou city which was built in Tang Dynasty, the main hall of Kaiyuan Temple in Wenzhou city which was reconstructed in Northern Song Dynasty, the main hall of Longyou Temple in Zhenjiang city which was reconstructed in Southern Song Dynasty and the hall of the most auspiciousness in the temple of Gratitude and Filial in Taizhou city which was reconstructed in Southern Song Dynasty. In the ancient documents, the overall sizes and other design information of these four temple halls were recorded, but their entities do not exist now. Through the restoration research, we can reproduce the image of them as truly as possible and represent the results by architectural drawings. The purpose of the research is to fill the vacancy in the study of the halls in the Buddhist temple of Tang and Song dynasties, as well as promote the awareness of the halls in the Buddhist temple in and around Jiangnan region of Tang and Song dynasties.The specific study process is as follow. First, analysis the existing research information and build an applicable restoration method: based on the hold of the related historical records, restoration should be done according to the rules of the ratios in building plan and facade between Tang and Song dynasties, referring to the similar cases that share the same era or geographical location of the structures. Second, collect the historical information of the restored buildings and temples and extract design information. Then, infer the whole building design information which includes the number and the size of bays, roof form, column grid layout, column height, bracket form and other information and make comparison of restoration schemes adopted for certain cases. Combining the documents and its features according to the era and the location, the structure’s details are inferred. Finally, express the restoration results by architectural drawings.