275
titles of the god”.
The third hall contained Guan Yin, as the 'patron of offspring', with statues of the Buddhist trio Dicang Wang etc., about her. A special little shrine to the left contained the 'thousand-handed' Guan Yin.
Doré added that a visit to a smoky grotto, reeking with the acrid odour of 'joss-sticks' rounds off the tour of the cult buildings. Here there were two ugly statuettes, Guan Yin and Yanguang Pusa, the Bodhisattva of Eyesight: strings of cash hung as ex-votos for the former. In the depths of the grotto, sticks of incense were burning night and day before the statue of one, Pei Toutuo, a Hunanese [so said the monks] who discovered gold in what was then called Fuyu Shan E. He was said to have built the temple with the proceeds of his mining and the temple name was then changed to Jin Shan, Gold Mountain.
A square artificial lake enclosed by a stone balustrade is referred to as the First Spring under Heaven after the waters were declared to be the sweetest for brewing tea. Not surprisingly a tea house offering tea brewed with water from the spring is served to today's visitors.
My wife, eldest daughter and I visited the Jin Shan Temple during a cold spell one March in the mid-1990s and found to our disappointment that the images were all modern, replacing those destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. However, along the leading edge of the main altar we recognized some twenty or so small images of the Sinicised Vedic deities similar to those I wrote about in Vol. 38 of JHKBRAS. The fact that the great Qing emperor Qian Long had a particular love for the monastery at Jin Shan, referred to earlier, may explain why these Vedic images are also present on the altar in the Jin Shan Si, possibly copied from the images in the temples in Beijing's Western Hills, again connected with the early Qing.
Another highly visible pagoda, known as the Sengjia Ta, stands on top of the Dingshi Shan, just under a mile south from Zhenjiang's former southern gate. It was built on this site during the Ming having been moved from its former location during temple reconstruction.
275
titles of the god”.
The third hall contained Guan Yin, as the 'patron of offspring', with statues of the Buddhist trio Dicang Wang etc., about her. A special little shrine to the left contained the 'thousand-handed' Guan Yin.
Doré added that a visit to a smoky grotto, reeking with the acrid odour of 'joss-sticks' rounds off the tour of the cult buildings. Here there were two ugly statuettes, Guan Yin and Yanguang Pusa, the Bodhisattva of Eyesight: strings of cash hung as ex-votos for the former. In the depths of the grotto, sticks of incense were burning night and day before the statue of one, Pei Toutuo, a Hunanese [so said the monks) who discovered gold in what was then called Fuyu Shan E. He was said to have built the temple with the proceeds of his mining and the temple name was then changed to Jin Shan, Gold Mountain.
A square artificial lake enclosed by a stone balustrade is referred to as the First Spring under Heaven after the waters were declared to be the sweetest for brewing tea. Not surprisingly a tea house offering tea brewed with water from the spring is served to today's visitors.
My wife, eldest daughter and I visited the Jin Shan Temple during a cold spell one March in the mid-1990s and found to our disappointment that the images were all modern, replacing those destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. However, along the leading edge of the main altar we recognized some twenty or so small images of the Sinicised Vedic deities similar to those I wrote about in Vol. 38 of JHKBRAS." The fact that the great Qing emperor Qian Long had a particular love for the monastery at Jin Shan, referred to earlier, may explain why these Vedic images are also present on the altar in the Jin Shan Si, possibly copied from the images in the temples in Beijing's Western Hills, again connected with the early Qing.
Another highly visible pagoda, known as the Sengjia Ta, stands on top of the Dingshi Shan, just under a mile south from Zhenjiang's former southern gate. It was built on this site during the Ming having been moved from its former location during temple reconstruction.
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