A Study On The Longmen Monastery In Pingshun And Existing Early Monasteries In Zhuozhang River Valley

The area of Jindongnan(the Southeast area of Shanxi province),an relatively independent administrative district down the ages thanks to its location,could be seen as a minor cultural zone by itself.Being named Shangdang Prefecture,one of the 36 prefectures back in Qin Dynasty,“Shangdang Area” had been used as another name of this area ever since.The two cities that belong to this area today,Changzhi and Jincheng,which used to be Luzhou and Zezhou in ancient times,contains the richest and most concentrated Wudai(Five Dynasties),Song and Jin timber frame architectural relics.Research on this area has been one of the hottest spots in Chinese ancient architecture research,with abundant results being achieved.This article is furthermore focusing on the smaller traditional cultural area of Zhuozhang River Valley in Pingshun,Changzhi,which is a even more concentration zone of early timber structural relics.Longmen Monastery,the one with longest history and biggest collection of timber structural relics and stone inscriptions with longest span of history,had been chosen as an individual case study for deeper research and exploration.The first part of this article(Chapter One and Two)started with explanation of the geographic situation,administrative division and historical traffic conditions of Luzhou Area.Then,using materials such as Local Chronicles,further analysis and labelling work had been applied to the natural environments and history of monasteries in this area.Using the above information as a base,discussion on the distribution and locating features had been done,which led to the conclusion that explained the dense distribution of Buddhism monasteries in Zhuozhang River Valley area,then emphasis on the location,natural and cultural background of Longmen Monastery.Based on the full materials of over 60 stone inscription relics of Longmen Monastery,together with more from other monasteries of the same area that collected and transcribed by the author,along with study of the Buddhism history background,the second part of this article(Chapter Three to Five)reviewed the over thousand years of Longmen Monastery's history,its family tree and transformation process of the architectural layouts,following by separate investigation on the architectural and stone relics of Longmen Monastery that dated back to Wudai,Song,Jin,Yuan and Ming Dynasties.The final part,using the structure feature of two typical architectural relics-Mituo Hall of Dayun Monastery(Wudai)and Main Hall of Longmen Monastery(Song)as an introduction,took a broad view towards all the timber structural architecture that built before 12 th Century of the whole Jindongnan area and north,had given explanation and indication of the possible connections and evolution process among column-beam structure types,corner sturcture and Bujian Puzuo,from which the partition and intermingling process of architectural structures between Northern and Southern China was being revealed.