Yunju Temple

Yunju Temple is located in Fangshan District, 70 kilometers southwest of Beijing.

History

The temple was first built in the early 7th century. In 616, the first Buddhist stone scripture tablet was made at the temple by a monk named Jingwan. Because there were debates going between Buddhists and Daoists, and Jingwan feared reprisals from Daoists, he decided to carve his scriptures on stone instead of writing them on paper. The work on the stone tablets continued on for more than a thousand years before ending in 1655. The tablets were based on an edition of the Canon of Buddhist Writings put together during the Tang Dynasty as well as a Liao work known as the Qidangcan. In total, 1122 Buddhist scriptures in 3572 volumes were produced at the temple. In the 1930s most of the temple was destroyed.

Layout

There were originally six halls in the temple, arranged from east to west. On both sides of the halls, there was accommodation for guests and dormitories for monks.

The temple contains a total of twelve pagodas from the Liao and Tang dynasties and three tomb pagodas from the Qing Dynasty.