The website will exhibit 3 important historical sites that were born during the spread of Buddhism in ancient times.
Potala Palace
The Potala Palace (Tibetan: པོ་་ལ), situated on Mount Maburi, northwest of Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, is the world’s highest altitude, a magnificent combination of palace, citadel and monastery, and the largest and most complete complex of ancient palace and fortress buildings in Tibet.
The Potala Palace, built on a hill with overlapping buildings, is an outstanding representative of Tibetan-style ancient architecture (said to have originated from the Samtse Dzongbao), the essence of Chinese ancient architecture, and is the scenic design on the back of the fifth set of RMB 50 notes . The main building is divided into two parts, the White Palace and the Red Palace. The palace is over 200 metres high, with 13 storeys on the outside and 9 on the inside. In front of the Potala Palace is the Potala Palace Square, the highest city square in the world.
The Potala Palace is the symbol of Tibet, the famous attraction and landmark of Lhasa. It is world-famous as the palace with the highest altitude.
In the 7th century AD, Songtsen Gampo unified Tibet and established the powerful Tubo regime. 641, Songtsen Gampo married Princess Wencheng in a marriage with the Tang Dynasty. A palace was built on Mount Mabri. The palace was named after Potala, the place where the bodhisattva lived, and was known as Potala Palace because Ganesha was Songtsen Gampo’s original Buddha. The palace was later partially destroyed by a fire caused by lightning. Later, when the Tubo dynasty was destroyed, the palace was almost completely destroyed.
In 1642, the Fifth Dalai Lama, Lobsang Gyatso, established the Kadampacho regime and three years later began to rebuild the white part of the Potala Palace. After the death of the Fifth Dalai, the chief administrator, Samgyel Gyatso, continued to expand the Red Palace section. It took nearly 50 years and cost 2.13 million taels of silver.
The Potala Palace is now an important attraction and a must-see for visitors to Tibet, with a large collection of cultural relics and treasures, including nearly 10,000 thangkas, the spiritual pagodas of successive Dalai Lamas, Dharma vessels and offerings, and much more. Among them are the finger bone relics of Shakyamuni, the golden booklet and golden seal given by the Qing emperor, and the Ganjur and Danjur written in gold juice, all of which are valuable treasures. Among them, the 14.85-metre-tall fifth Dalai’s stupa, which cost a total of 1.04 million taels of silver, 110,000 taels of gold and more than 15,000 pearls, onyx and precious stones, is particularly famous. 19,000 taels of gold were used to build the thirteenth Dalai’s stupa.
The following shows the location of Potala Palace:
This is a virtual tour video of Potala Palace:
More information about the 3D model…
Giant Wild Goose Pagoda
When it comes to the Great Wild Goose Monastery, mention must be made of its builder, Xuanzang. Xuan Zang (600-664) was born in the second year of the Sui Renshou period and was a native of Yanshui, Henan Province. He was admitted to the imperial court at the age of thirteen and became a monk at the Pure Land Monastery in Luoyang, where he soon ascended to the throne to recite the scriptures. In the first year of Zhenguan (627), he accompanied the court and applied for a trip to Tianzhu to obtain scriptures. The king of the Tang Dynasty refused to allow him to do so, as the country was still unstable at the beginning of its foundation. He was not moved by others, but he was determined and used the three years before his departure to prepare himself for the study of the scriptures, the Sanskrit language and the material and spiritual aspects.
The location information:
Virtual tour videos:
Toshodaiji Temple
In 713 A.D., the Sixth Patriarch Huineng passed away. Chinese Buddhism had already branched out in China. After centuries of selfless irrigation by the sounds of Sanskrit from the west, the Tang dynasty, with its origins in the west and its fusion of Hu and Han, finally had the capacity to export its culture. At this time, when the Islamic empire was on the rise and the Silk Road was being blocked, the cultural route had no choice but to move further east. In 733 A.D., the twenty-first year of the Kaiyuan era, a Japanese envoy came to Yangzhou and begged the monks to come to Japan to teach “true Buddhism”. The monks knew that it would be difficult to return from this journey. Only the great monk Jianzhen decided to go to the east to teach Buddhism. Before leaving, he left four words with his disciples: “The mountains and rivers are different, the wind and the moon are the same as the sky, send all Buddhist sons to make a common bond.”
The location information:
Virtual tour videos:
Please click the following link to access the official webpage of Toshodaiji Temple