Overview
Chinese Name: 大雁塔
English Name: Giant Wild Goose Pagoda; Big Wild Goose Pagoda; Ci’en Temple Pagoda
Location: Xi’an, Shaanxi
Type: Ancient culture and art
Rating Level: AAAAA (5A)
Website: http://www.xiandayanta.org.cn
Brief Introduction
The Giant Wild Goose Pagoda 大雁塔 is located in the Great Ci’en Temple 慈恩寺 in Jinchangfang 晋昌坊 (present-day Xi’an City, Shaanxi Province). In the third year of Tang Yonghui 永徽 (652), Xuanzang 玄奘 built the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda to preserve the scroll and Buddha statue brought back to Chang’an by Tianzhu 天竺 via the Silk Road 丝绸之路. Giant Wild Goose Pagoda was originally five floors, then added to the ninth floor. The number and height of the layers were changed several times and it eventually became the tower that is now seven stories high, with a height of 64.517 meters and a bottom length of 25.5 meters.
The Giant Wild Goose Pagoda is one of the first batch of national key cultural relics protection units. On 22 June 2014, at the 38th session of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee in Doha, Qatar, the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda was inscribed on the World Heritage List as part of the “Silk Road: Road Network of the Chang’an-Tianshan Corridor” 长安-天山廊道 jointly applied for by China, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.
As the earliest and largest extant four-square brick pagoda of the Tang Dynasty, the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda is a piece of typical evidence that the architectural form of the ancient Indian Buddhist temple was introduced to China with Buddhism and integrated into Chinese culture, and is a landmark building that embodies the wisdom of the working people in ancient China.
The “Gold list title” of the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda began in the Tang Dynasty. After the examination for the imperial examination at that time, in addition to wearing flowers and riding horses throughout Chang’an, the new branch jinshi 进士 also wanted to ascend to the top of the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda and leave a poem, symbolizing that he rose step by step and took a step forward.
After the great poet Bai Juyi 白居易 of the Tang Dynasty took the entrance examination, he climbed the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda and wrote a poem to express the joy of his youth. There are a large number of poems on the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, and there are more than 200 poems on the Giant Goose Pagoda left by the juren 举人 in the Ming and Qing Dynasties alone.
What is worth visiting and seeing？
Architectures
In order to enshrine and treasure the Buddhist scriptures, gold and silver Buddha statues, relics, and other treasures brought back, with the approval of the imperial court, Xuanzang personally presided over the construction of the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda. But no one knows where the treasures that Xuanzang brought back are.
Wang Yarong 王亚荣 believes that there are underground palaces under the ancient pagoda in general, and there are underground palaces under the pagoda of Famen Temple, and there must also be underground palaces hidden under the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, but the Underground Palace of the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda has not yet been excavated. From this, it is speculated that the underground palace under the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda is very likely to contain the Buddhist treasures that Xuanzang originally brought back.
Musical Foutain
Xi’an Giant Wild Goose Pagoda Fountain is located in the North Square of Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, with an east-west width of 218 meters and a north-south length of 346 meters. It is the largest sculpture square in Asia, with 2 100-meter-long group sculptures, 8 groups of large figure sculptures, and 40 reliefs of the land.
It has the world’s most luxurious green contactless toilet, maintaining the cleanest, the world’s most stools, the world’s longest light belt, the world’s first direct water diversion, the largest sound combination, and many other records.
Art collections
The historical remains of the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda include the Bayeux Sutra, relics, pagoda seats, pagoda bodies, etc.
The ground floor of the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda has stone gates on all four sides, and there are exquisite line-carved Buddha statues on the lintels, which are from the handwriting of Yan Liben 阎立本, a great painter of the Tang Dynasty.
On both sides of the south gate of the bottom floor of the pagoda are stele stones, on the left, is the “Tang Sanzang Sacred Religious Order” 大唐三藏圣教序 stele written by Tang Taizong Li Shimin 李世民 himself and handwritten by the great calligrapher Chu Suiliang 褚遂良, and on the right is the “Tang Sanzang Sacred Religious Order” 大唐三藏圣教序记 stele written by Tang Gaozong Li Zhi 李治 and Chu Suiliang’s handwriting.
These two stele stones were erected by Xuanzang himself in October of the fourth year (653) of Emperor Gaozong of Tang’s reign. On the stone lintel and door frame of the four doors openings under the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, there are still exquisite Tang Dynasty line carvings.
The Giant Wild Goose Pagoda is one of the landmarks of Xi’an and a must-visit for tourists.