Wanbu Huayanjing Pagoda

About

The Wanbu Huayanjing Pagoda, more affectionately known by its Chinese name Baita or White Pagoda, rises within the Saihan District of Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia. Its formal name, the Pagoda of the Ten Thousand Volumes of the Avatamsaka Sutra, recalls the great corpus of Mahayana Buddhist scripture that the tower was built to enshrine.

The pagoda was raised during the Liao dynasty within the walled city of Fengzhou, although the exact year of completion is unknown. Most sources place its construction during the reign of Emperor Daozong of Liao, between 1055 and 1110, when Liao patronage fostered the building of Temples and pagodas across northern China.

The tower is octagonal in plan and rises to seven storeys, standing some 55 metres high with a diameter of 18 metres. It is built primarily of brick and white lime paste, with wooden brackets supporting the structure internally and a winding staircase connecting all seven floors. At the time of its completion the entire exterior was coated with chalk-based clay, giving the tower the dazzling white surface from which its popular name derives.

The pagoda was renovated in 1162 under the Jin dynasty and again through the Yuan and Qing periods. Although Fengzhou was destroyed in the late Yuan and the tower's upper portion was lost, it has been carefully restored to its original form. Listed in 1982 as a Major Historical and Cultural Site, the Baita gives its name to Hohhot's international airport.

History

The pagoda was raised within the walled Liao-dynasty city of Fengzhou in the eleventh century, though sources differ on exactly which emperor's reign saw its completion. Built of brick and timber and coated originally in white lime plaster, from which its popular name comes, it was renovated in 1162 under the Jin dynasty. Fengzhou was destroyed in the late Yuan dynasty and the pagoda's upper section badly damaged, but it has since been restored to its original seven-storey form.

Significance

The pagoda is one of the great surviving Buddhist towers of the Liao dynasty and a rare witness to medieval Buddhism on China's northern frontier. Inside, stone tablets from the Jin dynasty and more than two hundred inscriptions left by travellers, in scripts including Mongolian, Tibetan, Khitan, and Persian, record centuries of pilgrims who climbed its stairs. It has been protected as a Major Historical and Cultural Site since 1982 and now anchors a small museum of the vanished city of Fengzhou.

Architecture

Liao dynasty octagonal multi-eaved brick-and-timber pagoda (楼阁式, pavilion style)