The record of Daxiangge began with the book "Lingyun Temple" written by Xue Neng, the governor of Jiazhou in Tang Dynasty: "If the pavilion is like a mountain, who should put a stone ladder?" It has been several decades since the giant Buddha was built in 803 AD. In the poem "Seeing Lu Changming Know History" in the Northern Song Dynasty, Su Shi described "lying and watching the ancient Buddha Lingyun Pavilion". The giant Buddha is in Lingyun Mountain, so Lingyun Pavilion should be another name for Elephant Pavilion. In the Southern Song Dynasty, there was also a saying in Lu You's "The Statue of Lingyun", which also referred to the elephant pavilion.
199 1 year, Leshan cultural relics department found a complete column base in the body, feet, hips, shoulders and other parts of the Buddha statue. The diameter of the left and right arms and hips is1.25m. There are hanging beam holes corresponding to the two walls of the column base on the axis. The holes in the beams on both sides of the grottoes also correspond to the same horizontal height, and the eaves on the two walls are clearly discernible. Obviously, these pillars and beams are the remains of the Elephant Hall. Some terracotta ash and glazed tiles were also found at the scene. To be sure, these are the relics of the Giant Buddha Pavilion, which confirms the existence of the Giant Buddha Pavilion.
Experts speculate that the Xiangbi Pavilion was built by Wei Gao, the third builder, and was destroyed in the Song and Yuan Dynasties. In 2003, James M. Hargert (Chinese name He Zhan), a professor and sinologist at new york State University in the United States, took a picture of an ancient painting "The Pavilion of the Yangtze River" by China from the Free Art Museum in Washington State, USA, and gave it to Emei friend Xiong Feng. On the screen, the part of Leshan today is marked with the words Dadu River, Jiading House, Qianwei County, Emei County, Qingshen County, Jiuding Mountain, Tianning Pavilion, Una, Wanjinglou and Wawu Mountain. These are terms that Leshan people are familiar with. It is accompanied by inscriptions by famous Ming painters Shen Lu and Dong Qichang. Inscriptions in the Ming Dynasty show that the pavilion was a work before the Ming Dynasty, and Leshan was called "Jiading House" in the Southern Song Dynasty before the Ming Dynasty. In the second year of Qingyuan in Ningzong, Southern Song Dynasty (A.D. 1 196), Jiazhou was promoted to a mansion and renamed Jiading mansion. In the first year of Ningzong in the Southern Song Dynasty (A.D. 1205), he was promoted to our position in Jiading Prefecture and served as our military envoy in Jiading. The Yuan Dynasty called Jiading Fu Road; It was called Jiading House in Ming Dynasty. The word "Jiading House" in this picture is a cultural relic of the Southern Song Dynasty, painted between 1 196- 1205. Unfortunately, the author is anonymous. Jiuding Mountain is another name of Lingyun Mountain because of Jiu Feng. Fan Chengda has a poem "The Nine Tops of Lingyun", and one of them says "The Nine Tops of the River shake violently". Lu You, as the satrap of history, wrote the sentence "On October 1st, the pontoon bridge was completed, and the story Lingyun entertained guests". It can be seen that in the Southern Song Dynasty, people used to call Lingyun Mountain Jiuding Mountain, and the pavilion was only marked with "Jiuding Mountain", which also shows that it was in the Southern Song Dynasty. This picture shows Tianning Pavilion on the edge of Jiuding Mountain covered with a giant Buddha. It has nine floors from head to toe, with the bottom hanging on the river and supported by two pillars standing in the water. Very clear. This is consistent with Shi's History of Buddhism, with Fan Chengda's saying that Tianning Pavilion covers the Buddha's face and feet, but it is different from "building thirteen floors". We should thank the painters of that year for intuitively showing the appearance of the elephant pavilion in the Southern Song Dynasty in this painting and sketching out its general appearance for us, which is very rare. Wang Xiangzhi's Ji Yu Sheng Di was written in the 14th year of Jiading in the Southern Song Dynasty (A.D. 122 1), which was more than ten years later than the above ancient paintings. Wang Xiangzhi has never been to Jiading House. I don't know what materials he has compiled for Seven Storeys.
During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, Leshan was one of the main battlefields against the Yuan Dynasty in the Southern Song Dynasty. The two sides fought a tug-of-war here for nearly 40 years, during which the Elephant Pavilion was destroyed by war. At the end of the Song Dynasty and the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, there was a Zhang Zhuo who lamented that the bun of Leshan Giant Buddha was facing the sky in the poem Lingyun Elephant, indicating that there was nothing above the top of the Buddha. Ren Neng, the prefect of Jiading in the Ming Dynasty, wrote the statue of Lingyun in the 16th year of Zhengde (A.D. 152 1), lamenting that "the poor world is weathered, and gold clothes become grass clothes."
In the early years of Jiaqing in the Qing Dynasty, Zhu, the former county magistrate of Yongning (now Xuyong) in Sichuan, wrote two sentences in Jiu Feng Poems of Lingyun Mountain: "Maitreya Buddha's eyes are tired of looking up to the sky, and the pavilion is seven stories high and 300 feet high." In the fifth year of Jiaqing (AD 1800), the poem "Boating on the Giant Buddha Beach and Looking at the Yunshan Mountain" written by Yang Yi, Minister of Sichuan Province, also said that "the seven-story pavilion is at the top, and a hundred feet of waves walk under it". In the seventh year of Jiaqing (A.D. 1802), the Great Buddha Cliff written by Shao Yun, a juren, is also called "seven-story pavilion with a bun". The above poems show that the Elephant Pavilion was rebuilt in the early years of Jiaqing in the Qing Dynasty or before Jiaqing, with a total of seven floors. However, in the second year of Jiaqing in the Qing Dynasty (A.D. 1797), there was a picture of Lingyun Jiu Feng in "Lingyun Poetry Banknotes" edited by Shi Liting, with only two floors of elephant pavilion. Song, who served as the magistrate of Jiading during the five to ten years in Jiaqing, described in the poem "On October 4th, all my colleagues climbed Lingyun Mountain" that "the elephant is half eroded and the grass is lush in April. The seven-story pavilion that has been rumored for nearly a year is solemn and wonderful. " He saw that the bun of the giant Buddha was broken in half, and the "seven-story pavilion" was just a "rumor" of the "old times", which he had never seen himself. Shi Liting's "Lingyun Poetry Talk" contains that "Yuan Tao and Wu Dazi decided to make an insurrection at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and the temple was reduced to ashes, and the old Buddhist temple was also destroyed by soldiers." It is said that the Buddha Pavilion was destroyed in the late Ming Dynasty, which shows that Li Ting has never seen an elephant pavilion, so the two-story wooden pavilion painted in the book is only a schematic diagram. As the magistrate of Jiading, the wording of Song Dynasty's "Tales of a fleeting time" also shows that the elephant pavilion at that time no longer exists, otherwise it would not be "like a steamed bun" and "autumn grass grows green". Li Ting's and Song's statements, like those of Zhu and Yang Yi during Jiaqing period, are contradictory, and I don't know why.
From the above investigation, it seems that it can be said that after the completion of the Buddha statue in the Tang Dynasty, I don't know when a wooden pavilion was built to protect it, and its shape and number of floors can't be found now. Rebuilt in the Southern Song Dynasty, it was named Tianning Pavilion, with nine floors (thirteen floors and seven floors), from head to toe, and was destroyed by war in the Song and Yuan Dynasties. Whether the Yuan and Ming Dynasties were rebuilt or not is unknown (according to Li Ting, it may have been rebuilt in the Ming Dynasty and destroyed in the late Ming Dynasty). Rebuilt in Qing dynasty, there were seven wooden pavilions in Jiaqing period, but I don't know when they were destroyed. Although the Elephant Hall has collapsed, the exact time of its construction, reconstruction and destruction, and the shape of its floor are still a mystery. However, the Leshan Giant Buddha can be completely preserved so far, and the Elephant Pavilion once played a very important role in protecting it.