Pagoda of Chengtian Temple

About

The Pagoda of Chengtian Temple, whose name in Chinese means the Bearing Heaven Pagoda, rises in Yinchuan in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region of northwestern China. It is the surviving monument of a Buddhist temple complex first founded under the Tangut Western Xia dynasty, and at 64.5 metres it remains the tallest pagoda in Ningxia. The people of Yinchuan know it as the Western Pagoda, a counterpart to the Haibao or Northern Pagoda.

The first pagoda on this spot was raised in the early years of Emperor Yizong of Western Xia, when the Empress Dowager commissioned the work to protect the reign of her infant son and to house pieces of bone from the head of the Buddha. A commemorative stele preserved its consecration date in the first year of the Tianyou Chuisheng era, corresponding to 1050. Five years later, Emperor Renzong of Song sent a complete set of the Tripitaka to be deposited at the temple.

By the early Ming era the surrounding temple had fallen to ruin and only the pagoda still stood. The early Ming poet Wang Xun lamented the silence of its bell and the loneliness of its tiers, awaiting a patron to restore the place. That patron came in Zhu Zhan, the sixteenth son of the Hongwu Emperor, whose grandson Zhu Suikan completed the renovation in 1469.

A great earthquake struck Yinchuan on 3 January 1739 and destroyed the pagoda. The present eleven-storeyed octagonal brick pagoda was raised on the original site in 1820, thought to follow the form of the lost Western Xia tower. It is hollow within, with an eastern entrance and wooden stairs climbing to the top storey. In 2006 it was listed as a Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level.

History

The original pagoda was completed in 1050 during the reign of Emperor Yizong of Western Xia, with relics of the Buddha enshrined within. The temple complex fell into ruin by the early Ming dynasty, was renovated under Zhu Zhan and his grandson Zhu Suikan in the fifteenth century, and was destroyed by the Yinchuan earthquake of 1739. The current brick pagoda, dated to 1820, is held to reproduce the form of the Western Xia original.