readx;? Xinhua Shijiazhuang, November 2 (Reporter Qi Leijie) Yecheng archaeological team experts recently excavated the ruins of the North Qi Buddhist Temple in Zhao Pengcheng in the Yecheng ruins, found the foundation site of the main hall of the Buddhist temple and the base of the tower, and found a brick letter buried in the relics under the base of the tower. After studying this special form of burial, archaeological experts www.biquge.info believe that during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, Chinese monasteries had not yet formed a system of burial of relics in the form of underground palaces, and the form of brick letters was the abuse of the underground palace system of burial relics.

Located in Linzhang County, Handan City, Hebei Province, the "Yecheng Ruins" is one of the 36 major sites in China and is a national key cultural relics protection unit. As the ancient capital of the Six Dynasties in Chinese history, Yecheng was prominent for a time, and became the center of northern Buddhist culture in the Eastern Wei and Northern Qi dynasties because the rulers respected Buddhism, leaving many Buddhist relics.

The Yecheng archaeological team excavated the foundation site and the base of a Buddhist temple in the ruins and found that there is a square tower base on the ground of the pagoda, with a side length of about 30 meters, with the brake pillar as the center, and the surrounding wooden pillars constitute a column network structure with at least 5 rooms wide and 5 rooms deep, and the column spacing is consistent. The base of the tower above ground sits on a rammed earth foundation with a side length of 45 meters. The center of the underground rammed earth foundation and the foundation stone of the brake pillar are built with the brick letter of the relics buried in it, and the foundation stone of the brake pillar, the brick letter of the relics, the foundation stone of the bearing stone, and the soil and stone layer are rammed alternately.

Archaeological experts have found that the tower base of the North Qi Buddhist Temple in Zhao Pengcheng and the tower base of the Yongning Temple in Luoyang City of the Northern Wei Dynasty are connected in the early and late times, and the structure of the two column networks is similar, reflecting the inheritance and evolution relationship between the two in terms of shape and construction technology. According to the pillar foundation stone pit, the foundation stone and other relics, the base part of this wooden tower can be roughly restored.

Although the brick letter system under the foundation stone of the brake pillar did not get rid of the trap of the relics stone letter in the Northern Wei Dynasty, the brick letter was built together with the pagoda, which also shows the unique form of burial of relics and relics in large stupas in the late Northern Dynasties, which may be regarded as the abuse of the system of burying relics relics. Zhu Yanyan, an expert from the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the leader of the Yecheng archaeological team, said.

The relics are a complete set of containers for burying Buddha bone relics, which began in the flourishing period of Buddhism in the Northern Wei Dynasty, developed in the Sui Dynasty, and flourished in the Tang Dynasty. Buddha bone relics, in the birthplace of Buddhism Tianzhu with poppy altar blooming, Buddhism eastward China, the Northern Wei Dynasty, Sui and Tang dynasties and so on to take the custom of building a tower to bury Buddha relics. After the pagoda was introduced to China, the way of burying relics also changed: before the Sui Dynasty, most of the relics were put into stone boxes and buried directly in the rammers under the base of the pagoda. The brick letter of the relics buried in the ruins of Yecheng confirmed that the underground palace shape had not yet been formed at this time.