Ancient Temple Emerged From Underground

Immense pillar foundation emerged when bamboos were cut down

Ruins of an ancient temple of over a thousand years’ age emerged in Mingtang Village, Wuxiang County, Yinzhou District, Ningbo City after Typhoon Krosa caused a local mountain massif to cave in.

Consequently, a mysterious veil has in the past few days spread over this ordinary little village, while many villagers employed their free time to wander in the hill, in hope of bumping into some treasure.

A 325 years’ disappearance

Mingtang Village is surrouned by hills from three sides. It rained for a whole day when Typhoon Krosa attacked it, and the stream which had been dry to the bottom was flooded over. The next day, Li Xinguo, a member of the Village Committee, found that the only path uphill had caved in at the western col. The 20-meters’ long path was now a 2 meters deep hollow.

“We can’t go uphill if thep path is left like this.” thought Li Xinguo. Therefore, he cut down the bamboos growing densely along the path with a hatchet in order to open up a new path.

“The moment the bamboos were cut down, a tremendous pillar foundation hit my eyes. It has grown a little black. There are many black tiles down in the hollow.”

At sight of this, Li Xinguo recalled that the elders in the village had mentioned that “there was a big temple in the village”. “This must be part of the ruin of the temple.” And he immediately reported this to the Cultural Relics Committee of Yinzhou District.

The temple

Having examined the stone foundation and the rubble layers, the archaeologists determined that it is an ancient temple ruin and the temple should have been built before the Ming Dynasty.

Later the same day, the archaeologists determined that this temple is probably Mingjue Temple. According to , Mingjue Yuan was originally named MingTang Yuan, and built in the second year of Baoli (title of the emperor’s reign) period of Tang Dynasty (826 A.D.). It covered 94 mous (1 hectares = 15 mous) of farms and 980 mous of hills. There are relevant records under the register of “ruined temples” in .

Xie Guoqi, the director of the Cultural Relics Committee, said: “It is inferred that Mingjue Tang was the precursor of Mingjue Temple (Mingjue Village was probably named after the former), built 1181 years ago in 826 A.D., and renamed as Mingjue Temple 943 years ago.

Many older villages can still remember their forefathers’ description of the temple as “a thousand of monks together in the hall” and “three halls within the temple” — the size of the temple can be easily imagined.

The tale

According to , Mingjue Temple was built in the second year of Baoli period of Tang Dynasty (826 A.D.), and renamed as Mingjue in the first year of Zhiping period of Song Dynasty (1064 A.D.) by the emperor. It was destroyed during Qinding period of Yuan Dynasty and was later rebuilt by the Monk of Ziqi, for which event was erected a monument and an essay by Song Lian was engraved upon it. It was abandoned later, and rebuilt in the cole of Baiyun hill in the 21st year of Kangxi eriod of Qing Dynasty.

According to the above record, the archaeologists inferred that the temple has been buried for around 325 years. Li Xinguo said that he had seen a monument near the hollow about 20 years ago, but it was gone by now.

There was a tale in relation to the destroy of the temple.

Mingjue Temple faced north with three sides surrounded by hills which had nine hilltops, thus the tale of nine dragons dwelling on the nine hilltops.

The tale goes that, one day, a young monk washed a urine basin with the water from the well beside the wingrooms. The Dragon King was infuriated with this irreverent behavior and ordered a flood which destroyed the temple, hence the so-called Drought Dragon Stream in the village.

The archaeologists are doing textual research about the real reason why the temple was buried.

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"Ancient Temple Emerged From Underground" was posted on Thursday, November 1st, 2007 at 5:16 am.