The Shaolin Temple was originally built in 495 A.D. The temple complex encompasses seven main halls with multiple adjacent dorm buildings for the monks who live there. The Shaolin Temple is often credited with being the birthplace of Kung Fu and of Chan Buddhism. This is hardly true, as the closely related martial art and religion took centuries to develop around China, but the temple is still a prominent landmark and played a significant role in the development and continuation of both practices.
One of the Shaolin Temple's most notable design elements is the consistent use of red. According to Chinese tradition and feng shui, red symbolizes good fortune and protection. The temple has been destroyed and rebuilt many times, but all reconstructed buildings closely follow their original designs. As is characteristic of most Chinese Buddhist architecture, the temple halls have curved roofs with decorative tiling, and the buildings are rectangular.
Outside of the main Shaolin Temple complex, there is a verdant expanse of land dotted with over two hundred fifty stone towers. This is the Pagoda Forest, a concentration of tomb pagodas for monks and abbots at the temple. Although these pagodas are much smaller than those dedicated to Buddha that contain a Buddhist relic, they maintain the conventionally Chinese aesthetic of vertical organization and angular, geometric shapes. That being said, the subtle differences between the various tomb pagodas–i.e., polygonal versus cylindrical bodies–serve as evidence of the many years over which the pagoda forest was expanded, for each dynasty had its own style.
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