Three Pagodas

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Three Pagodas of Chong Sheng Temple

The Three Pagodas are an ensemble of three independent pagodas arranged on the corners of a symmetric triangle, near the town of Dali, Yunnan province, China, dating from the time of the Nanzhao kingdom and Kingdom of Dali.

1 Location
2 Description
3 History
4 Gallery
5 See also
6 Notes

[edit] Location

The Three Pagodas are located about 1.5 km (0.9) miles north of scenic Dali, Yunnan province. They are at the east foot of the tenth peak of the massive Cangshan Mountains and face the west shore of the Erhai Lake of the ancient Dali town.

[edit] Description

The Three Pagodas, taken from the entrance

The Three Pagodas, from another perspective.

The Three Pagodas are made of brick and covered with white mud. As its name implies, the Three Pagodas comprise three independent pagodas forming a symmetric triangle. The elegant, balanced and stately style is unique in China’s ancient Buddhist architectures, which makes it a must-see in the tour of Dali. The Three Pagodas, visible from miles away, has been a landmark of Dali City and selected as a national treasure meriting preservation in China.

The main pagoda, known as Qianxun Pagoda (pinyin Qian Xun Ta), reportedly built during 824-840 AD by king Quan Fengyou (劝丰佑) of the Nanzhao state, is 69.6 meters (227 feet) high and is one of the tallest pagodas in China’s history.^[1] The central pagoda is square shaped and composed of sixteen stories; each story has multiple tiers of upturned eaves. There is a carved shrine containing a white marble sitting Buddha statue at the center of each façade of every story. The body of the pagoda is hollow from the first to the eighth story, surrounded with 3.3 meters (10 feet) thick walls. In 1978, more than 700 Buddhist antiques, including sculptures made of gold, silver, wood or crystal and documents, were found in the body during a major repairing work. The designers of the pagoda are supposed to have come from Xi’an, the capital of Tang Dynasty at that time and the location of another pagoda, Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, which shares the similar style but is two hundred years older.

The other two sibling pagodas, built about one hundred years later, stand to the northwest and southwest of Qianxun Pagoda. They are 42.19 meters (140 feet) high. Different from Qianxun Pagoda, they are solid and octagonal with ten stories. The center of each side of every story is decorated with a shrine containing a Buddha statue.

The reflection pond reflecting the image of the Three Pagodas.

There is a lake behind them. Named （聚影池) Juying Chi (Reflection pond), the pond is known to be able to reflect images of the Three Pagodas.

[edit] History

The Three Pagodas was initially built for the auspicious reasons. According to the local legends, Dali was used be a swamp breeding dragons before the human moved in. As the dragons, which were believed deliberately creating natural disasters to dispel human intruders, revered pagodas, the Three Pagodas were built to deter the dragons.

The Three Pagodas are well known for their resilience; they have endured several man-made and natural catastrophes over more than a thousand years. Their mother building was known as Chongsheng Monastery (pinyin Chong Sheng Si, also known as SanTa Si, Tianlong Si) and used to be the royal temple of the Kingdom of Dali and one of the largest Buddhist centers in south-east Asia. It was originally built at the same time as the first pagoda but was destroyed in a fire in the Qing Dynasty reign period. The temple was later rebuilt in 2005. It was recorded that Qianxun Pagoda had been split in an earthquake on May 6th, 1515 AD (Ming Dynasty). However, it miraculously recovered ten days later in an aftershock. The most recent record of severe earthquake in the Dali area occurred in 1925. Only one in a hundred of the buildings in Dali survived, but the Three Pagodas were undamaged.

The central Qianxun Pagoda was built sometime in the latter half of the 9th century (after the Kaicheng period, 836–840).^[2] During repairs in 1979, three copper plates were found at the bottom of the steeple which recorded the exact years of previous repairs, those being 1000, 1142, and 1145.^[2]