Songyue Pagoda

About

The Songyue Pagoda rises within the precincts of the Songyue Monastery upon the slopes of Mount Song in Henan province, central China. Raised in 523 CE during the Northern Wei dynasty, it is the earliest brick pagoda known to survive in China and one of the very few sixth-century pagodas of any kind to have withstood the passage of nearly fifteen centuries.

In 2010 the pagoda was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as part of the Historic Monuments of Dengfeng in the Centre of Heaven and Earth, a site gathering the sanctuaries built across Mount Song to mark what Chinese cosmology long regarded as the central axis of the world.

The form of the tower bears witness to the meeting of two traditions. From the rounded stupa of India the Songyue Pagoda inherits its tapering vertical profile and its function as a reliquary; from the architectural sensibilities of China it takes its sharp courses of brick and the suggestion of timber bracketing. The result is the twelve-sided shaft that distinguishes Songyue from later square or octagonal Chinese pagodas.

Rising about forty metres in height, the pagoda is built of yellow brick bonded with clay mortar, its perimeter narrowing as it ascends in a manner reminiscent of the stupas of Central Asia. The tower stands amid the wooded mountain landscape that has drawn Buddhist and Daoist hermits to Mount Song since the early medieval centuries, near the famed Shaolin Monastery.

History

Built in 523 CE during the Northern Wei dynasty, a period that also produced the rock-cut sanctuaries of Yungang and Longmen, the Songyue Pagoda is the earliest brick pagoda known to survive in China. Its twelve-sided profile, unique among Chinese pagodas, translates the rounded stupa form carried from India into a tower of sharp brick courses and fifteen closely set eaves. Its underground chambers once sheltered Buddhist relics, transcripts of scripture and images of the Buddha. In 2010 it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as part of the Historic Monuments of Dengfeng, the Centre of Heaven and Earth.

Significance

Honoured as the prototype from which a long lineage of Chinese pagodas descended, the Songyue Pagoda preserves the earliest visible synthesis of Indian and Chinese sacred form still standing. It rises today within the wooded slopes of Mount Song, near the Shaolin Monastery, in a landscape that has drawn Buddhist and Daoist hermits for fifteen centuries.

Architecture

Northern Wei dynasty brick pagoda architecture, a twelve-sided tapering tower of fifteen close-set eaves blending the Indian stupa form with Chinese masonry technique