Cities And Pagodas-Study On The Pagodas Of Guangdong Local Cities In Ming And Qing Dynasties

The pagoda originated from the "Stupa" in ancient India,which is a memorial building for burying relics.Since the introduction with Buddhism into China in the Eastern Han Dynasty,it had developed into a variety of Chinese style pagodas,combining with Chinese traditional culture and architecture.The pagoda stood in the environment of mountains,lakes,temples or cities,and become one of the main elements of landscape environment or urban space.The pagodas in Ming and Qing Dynasties was a combination of Confucianism,Buddhism,Taoism,and it had multiple functions.A large number of pagodas were located in combination with urban space and landscape elements,and become one of the elements of the construction of ancient landscape cities.Ming and Qing Dynasties is the peak period construction of pagodas both in Guangdong Province and local cities.A large number of local cities had built nearly 100 pagodas.The pagodas have rich connotations in the use of geographical environment,cultural landscape,folk culture and other aspects.A systematic study of the spatial characteristics of pagodas and urban composition is a micro supplement to the construction history of ancient cities in Guangdong,and also a partial discussion of the regional characteristics of pagodas in Ming and Qing Dynasties.This paper takes the pagodas of local cities in Ming and Qing Dynasties in Guangdong Province as the research object,through literature review,field research,GIS technology,classification,induction and so on,systematically studies the pagodas of local cities in Guangdong Province from five aspects of historical development,distribution characteristics,spatial characteristics,function and regional characteristics.The main content of this paper has three parts:The first part is the background of the pagodas in Ming and Qing Dynasties.By studying historical documents,local chronicles,related research monographs and on-the-spot investigation,this paper summarized the current situation of Guangdong pagodas and the historical development with examples.The second part is the spatial relationship between pagodas and cities in Ming and Qing Dynasties.Firstly,this part discussed the regional distribution characteristics of pagodas in Guangdong from five aspects: the establishments age of the cities,economy,politics,topography and water transportation.Then,the spatial pattern of pagoda-city-landscape were classified,and the characteristics of pagodas and urban space and the location of ancient pagodas were analyzed.Finally,from the three aspects of historical records,spiritual space,and material space,this part make a statistical analysis of the functions of pagodas,and summarized the rich construction connotation of pagodas in Guangdong local cities.The third part is the study of the regional characteristics of the pagodas in Ming and Qing Dynasties in Guangdong.Based on the relevant research and field survey data,by classifying and inducting the pagodas,according to the components of pagodas,the paper analyzed the overall shape and appearance characteristics of the pagoda in Guangdong in Ming Dynasty.Then,it made a preliminary analysis of the local differences of the pagodas in Ming Dynasty in Guangdong and the differences of the apparent characteristics of the pagodas in Ming and Qing Dynasties.