GanSu BingLing Temple

Chinese name: 炳灵寺
Location: 35 kilometers south of Yongjing County, Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu Province 甘肃省临夏回族自治州永靖县县南35公里处
Climatic Conditions: Subtropical Monsoon Climate
Opening hours: 9:00-18:00, no admission at 16:00.
Attraction level: AAAAA level /World Heritage
Ticket price: ¥50
Famous Attractions: Grottoes, Murals, etc.
Tel: 0930-5921616
Recommend Visiting Time: 1-3 H

GanSu BingLing Temple Grottoes

Bingling Temple Grottoes are located in the upper reaches of Liujiaxia Reservoir, on the north bank of the Yellow River in Sigou Gorge, Southwest Yongjing County. On the steep and dangerous red sandstone cliff with a length of 2 kilometers from north to south, there are row upon row of grottoes and shrines, and the plank road is in the sky. It is majestic and magnificent. It is one of the three largest grottoes in Gansu and one of the five largest grottoes in my country.

Bingling Temple was called “Tangshu Grotto” earlier, which means “ghost cave” in the Qiang language. It was called “Longxing Temple” in the Tang Dynasty, “Lingyan Temple” in the Northern Song Dynasty, and “Bingling Temple” after the Ming Dynasty. , also known as “Bingling Temple”. Bingling means “stupid man” in Tibetan, which means “one hundred thousand Buddhas”.

The Bingling Temple Grottoes were first built in the first year of Jianhong in the Western Qin Dynasty (AD 420). Since the Sixteen Kingdoms era, they have gone through the Northern Wei, Northern Zhou, Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties, with a history of more than 1,600 years. During the Linxia period when the capital of the Western Qin Dynasty was established, the king’s royal family visited the grotto in person and wrote an inscription, and the original work still exists on the rock wall. From the digging of caves in 420 AD to the Song Dynasty, the grottoes had a great influence on Chinese Buddhism, Pure Land Sect, Huayan Sect and Zen Buddhism. At the end of Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of Ming Dynasty, the Yellow Sect (Gelug Sect) of Tibetan Buddhism was introduced to Bingling Temple.

On the basis of inheriting the folk art of the previous generation, the Bingling Temple Grottoes absorbed foreign Buddhist art and created vivid sculpture and painting art with a new posture and simple techniques. Its relief pagodas and Tantric murals can be compared with Mogao Grottoes It is as famous as the Maijishan Grottoes.

The grottoes are divided into three places: upper temple, Donggou and lower temple, and the lower temple is more spectacular. They are distributed on cliffs that are 200 meters long and 60 meters high. There are 196 niches in Bingling Temple Grottoes, 694 stone statues, 82 clay sculptures, and more than 900 square meters of murals. The larger seated Maitreya Buddha of the Tang Dynasty is 27 meters high, and the smaller statue is 10 centimeters high. Among them, there are 2 caves and 1 niche in the Western Qin Dynasty, 8 caves and 25 niches in the Northern Wei Dynasty, 2 caves in the Northern Zhou Dynasty, 2 caves in the Sui Dynasty, and 20 caves and 113 niches in the Tang Dynasty.

The artistic achievements of works in the Tang Dynasty were quite high, and there were more than 3,000 monks at that time. The ink inscription written by the famous monk Faxian in the first year of Jianhong in the Western Qin Dynasty (AD 420) in this cave is an earlier chronological inscription preserved in domestic grottoes. It provides a mark for the dating of other ancient grottoes in the country, and has very important historical value. .

The cave statues and murals are mainly composed of the sitting Buddha in Natural Cave No. 169 and many small and medium-sized caves in the cliff face. Cave No. 169 was called Tangshu Cave in ancient times, and is now called “Tianqiao Cave”. It is 15 meters high, 8 meters deep, and 20 meters wide. It is known to be the earliest and well-preserved cave in my country. There are three types of shapes in the caves: Buddhist niches, stone carvings, and stone-carved clay sculptures. Niche 171 is located on the cliff of the grotto. There is a large seated statue of Maitreya Buddha in the Tang Dynasty, carved on the mountain, with a height of 27 meters, majestic and majestic. In the cave, “Manjusri Bodhisattva Asking Diseases Picture” of the Western Qin Dynasty is an earlier Vuijie Sutra map that has been seen in our country. The original No. 16 cave is now located in the Sleeping Buddha Hall opposite the grottoes. The 8.6-meter-long clay sculpture of Bingling Temple Reclining Buddha is a reclining Buddha in the Northern Wei Dynasty, which has very important research value. The 25-centimeter-high statue of a maid in the Tang Dynasty is a relatively precious one among the existing grotto statues in my country, which fully embodies the style of the prosperous Tang Dynasty.

Next to the cliff at the entrance of Bingling Temple stands the steep sister peaks, surrounded by scenic spots such as Yuanyang Cave and Yaoshui Spring, with beautiful mountains and rivers, dangerous peaks and strange rocks.