The
Famen monastery is situated at Famen Town, Fufeng County, 120 kilometers
west of Xi'an. It is renowned for storing the Finger Bone of the Sakyamuni
Buddha. Famen Temple was established in the Eastern Han Dynasty (25--220),
for carrying forward Buddhism. The most representative structures in the
temple are the Famen Temple Pagoda and Famen Temple Museum.The monastery
rose to fame as an imperial religious establishment. At the time, as many
as 5 thousand monks lived in the monastery's twenty-four compounds. The
sariars (the finger bones) were taken out for public display once in every
30 years. During the Tang Dynasty, the underground palace beneath the
stupa was open and closed on seven occasions, and Sakyamuni's sariars
were escorted to and from the imperial court seven times in unprecedented
throng and pomp. In 1985, the Ming-dynasty brick pagoda in the Famen Monastery
collapsed. From the debris archaeologists uncovered the Tang-dynasty underground
palace which lay one metre below the ground, and they made archaeology
history by bringing to light the four sariars which had been repeatedly
escorted to the Tang imperial court along with large amounts of treasures
offered as sacrificial objects, including gold and silver vessels, porcelains,
glassware, pearls and precious stones and silks. The sariars enriched
in the Famen monastery's underground palace are contained in a box made
of multiple layers of gold, silver, crystal, jade, pearls and sandal-wood.
After they were un-earthed, they had been placed back into the newly refurbished
underground palace. When these sariars were first spotted, they were lying
in the midst of a thick pile of cultural relics--one hundred twenty-one
gold and silver vessels, eight bronz vessels, twenty pieces of glassware,
nineteen porcelains, eleven stone carvings, four hundred-odd pearls and
pieces of jade, and hundreds of silk fabrics. The gold and silver vessels
include daily utencils, sacrificial vessels, and musical instruments used
in religious ceremonies; the designs and shapes of some of them were seen
for the first time among Tang dynasty artifects. All these gold and silver
vessels had been used in the imperial court or were made specially for
enshrining Sakyamuni's sariars; marked by exquisite craftsmanship, each
and everyone of them is a priceless treasure. The porcelains were also
used for imperial use, glazed with what is called "smoky colors,"
and experts regard them as standards for the study of "smoky-colored"
porcelians. The glassware bears a distinctive cultural style of central
and west Asia. Unfortunately, many of the seven hundred pieces of silk
fabrics had decayed and become mere ashes. After the excavation of the
Famen monastery was finished, the provincial authorities rebuilt the Ming-dynasty
brick stupa and underground palace below it, and established the Famensi
Museum. All the national treasures uncovered from the underground palace
are now kept in the Museum's chamber of treasures in an effort to restore
the monastery to its Tang-dynasty glory and turn it into a major Buddhist
establishment and tourist attraction. (The photo of Famen Monastery above
was taken this summer by Professor Ishwar Harris of the Religious Studies
Department at the College of Wooster.)
“A
special transmission outside the scriptures, not founded upon words and
letters. But pointing directly to one’s mind-to see one’s
true nature and thus become a Buddha…” --Bodhidharma, 1st
Zen Patriarch in China