Posted ByChina7dayFourth, in the Pagoda Forest of Shaolin Temple, most of the pagodas were built in the year when the monks died or not for a long time afterwards. However, there are also pagodas built by disciples or generations of descendants only after the monks died for several years or decades due to war or economic or other Buddhist reasons. The latter is called the chasing tower. For example, in the late Ming Dynasty, the famous Zen master and the imperial abbot of Shaolin Temple, Hui Xi, died in 1639, but because of the war, 13 years later (1652), the 28 generations of Shaolin Temple’s abbot, Hai Kuan, built the pagoda and buried the spiritual bones. Another example is that the “huigonghe Shangta” in the Eastern District of Tallinn was built for the monk Yuanhui mage in the late Ming Dynasty. It is recorded in the pagoda that “the pagoda of the grand old ancestor, Lingshan guild monk, was built by sun Qingrui, the eighth generation of Guihai in Jiaqing of Qing Dynasty”. It can be seen that this pagoda was built by his eighth generation of grandson. In the Pagoda Forest of Shaolin Temple, there are a few pagodas whose forehead or inscriptions are related to the time of building pagodas or the age of longevity and the number of years of monk’s wax, which should be the pre built pagoda before the monk’s death; in the Pagoda Forest, there are a few pagodas, although there is a time of building pagodas, but the circumstantial evidence proves that the owner of the pagoda is still alive and has not passed away. Such pagodas should also be called pre built pagodas. There are some similarities between the above mentioned pagodas and the burial system of laymen’s Mausoleums in the Han area of China, which is of great reference value for the study of the burial system of Buddhist Zen.
Fifthly, there are a lot of records about the history of Buddhism in the pagodas, inscriptions and steles of the pagodas of Shaolin Temple, especially about the changes and major events of Shaolin Temple, other documents in the life of famous Zen masters or the lack or lack of detailed contents, which are of great value to the history of Buddhism, especially to the study of the history of Shaolin Temple. For example, the earliest existing Pagoda in the Shaolin Temple area, known as the Buddhist pagoda, was built in the first year of Yongchang of Tang Dynasty (689), on a platform about 1 km east of the temple. The existing stele of the Buddhist scriptures in the middle of the Tang Dynasty in the pagoda contains It’s not long since the Buddha came to the mud. Ananda passed it on to the last field. The last field passed it on to Nanas Bodhidharma Shaolong, a master of Sanzang in South Tianzhu, is a country bordering on the East. It is said that when he entered Wei Dynasty, he could pass on charm, charm, tolerance, and tolerance. Therefore, it is clearly recorded that the inheritance of Zen in Tianzhu (India) is Tathagata, Ananda, Mudan, xanapos The inheritance in China is Bodhi, Dharma, Huike, sencan, Daoism, Hongren and Falu. It can be seen that Falu, Huineng and Shenxiu are all the leaders of Zen, and they are all respected as the six ancestors. Therefore, this monument can be regarded as a very valuable first-hand material for the study of Zen history.
Sixthly, in the pagoda of Shaolin Temple, the name of the person who built the pagoda or carved the stone is recorded in the pagoda, the inscription or the stele, which has the same meaning as the tombstone carved by the layman. The difference is that laymen built tombs and stupas; laymen built tombstones in front of tombs, stupas in front of tombs, hidden in the inner chamber of pagodas and embedded in the wall of pagodas; laymen’s epitaphs describing the life of tomb owners were buried in the tombs, while the pagodas of Buddhists built on the front of pagodas (those without pagodas built in the center of the front of pagodas), The inscriptions describing the life of the monk in Yuanji temple are mostly embedded on the tower wall on the back of the tower body; the people who engraved the tombstone and epitaph in the family series of kinship, and the Buddhists engraved the people who built the pagoda in the forehead or in the inscriptions and the tombstones in the relationship of generations of teachers and apprentices. In the Tallinn, there are also those who are mainly Buddhist disciples and grandchildren, and the folk relatives assist in the construction of the tombs. For example, the pagoda of Qinggong and Deputy temple, which is located in the Western District of Tallinn and was built in 1354 (the 14th year of the Yuan Dynasty to the Zhengzheng Dynasty), is inlaid with stone pagodas on the front, and the regular script “April □ of the 14th year to the Zhengzheng Dynasty, the pagoda of Qinggong and Deputy temple, filial son Zhou Da Jian “means that before the Qing Gong became a monk, he was married and had children. After his death, his vulgar son and grandson built the tomb tower for him. Although this is an isolated example of more than 200 tombs, it is also of reference value for the study of Shaolin Temple Pagoda.