CHINA ARQUEOLOGIA golden-age-chinese-archayeolog

DISCOVERIES
FROM THE FAMEN
MONASTERY
AT FUFENG AND
THE QINGSHAN
MONASTERY AT
LINTONG,
SHAANXI
PROVINCE
The discovery of the reliquary deposit beneath the ruins of a brick pagoda at Fufeng, about
a hundred and ten kilometers west of Xi'an, is a rare instance of a perfect match between the
archaeological data and historical events. The Tang scholar Han Yu's diatribe of 819 protesting
the emperor's receiving the relics of the Buddha in his own palace and imploring His Majesty
to cast out such filthy remains so that the people might never again be misled by them, is one
of the great pieces of Chinese prose writing. 1 It was also an important milestone in the events
leading to the great Buddhist persecutions of 842-845 CE, in which thousands of Buddhist
monasteries were razed and hundreds of thousands of monks and nuns forced to return to lay
life. The relics of which Han Yu complained came from the Chongzhensi, renamed the Famensi,
or Monastery of the Gate of the Law, in 1003 under the Song dynasty (960-1279 CE). 2 Founded
in 555 under the Western Wei dynasty (535-557 CE), the Famen Monastery rose to extraordinary
prominence under the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE); it was closely associated with no fewer
than seven Tang emperors, including the notorious Empress Wu Zetian (r. 684-705).
In August 1981, after a period of heavy rainfall, the octagonal, brick pagoda of thirteen
stories, which had endured for 372 years since its construction in 1609, collapsed in ruins. After
the remains had been made safe in July 1985, the provincial government decided to build a
replacement, and an archaeological team from Shaanxi province, Fufeng county, and Baoji city
was constituted to proceed with an excavation prior to rebuilding. The excavation proper began
on 3 April 1987. Clearing of the foundations revealed not only the circular trench in which the
brick pagoda had stood but also the larger, square foundations of an earlier wooden pagoda
and steps leading down to a level corridor and three successive stone chambers, the innermost
of which lay beneath the core of the foundations of both pagodas.
As the focus of worship in early Buddhist monasteries, every pagoda had its "foundation
deposit," sealed within a stone casket or small chamber in the foundations, where it usually
lay undisturbed until it became necessary to rebuild the pagoda after its destruction by fire or
lightning, the ravages of war or religious persecution. Under such circumstances, the contents
could be recovered and incorporated in a new deposit beneath the restored or rebuilt pagoda.
In recent years, numerous foundation deposits have been recovered in the course of excavations
or repairs; they constitute among the most valuable evidence for many aspects of the
monasteries to which they belonged. In the present case, the relic, described by Han Yu as
the Buddha's "decayed and rotten bones," was supposed to be a fingerbone. As found in the
eightfold set of caskets (cat. 164), it is a hollow cylinder as thick as a finger and about an inch
and a half long, with the seven principal stars of the Great Bear, or Big Dipper, engraved inside
it. Three facsimiles were also discovered in the crypt, one of them contained in the jade coffin
within the crystal sarcophagus (cat. 162).
The reliquary deposit appears to have been specially constructed to allow repeated access
from outside. During the Tang dynasty, on no fewer than seven occasions at approximately
thirty-year intervals, in 631, 660, 704, 760, 790, 819, and 873, the relics were recovered and
462 EARLY IMPERIAL CHINA