The Research On Kaiyuan Monastery, Yixian, Hebei Province

Kaiyuan Monastery, which located in Yixian, Hebei Province, was founded in Tang Dynasty, and destroyed in 1940s. Before its destruction, the monastery consisted of three separate courtyards, from east to west, and there was a main hall in each of the courtyards, with their name Pilu Hall, Guanyin Hall and Yaoshi Hall. In 1934 and 1939, two groups of researchers on Chinese Architecture had been to the monastery for investigation. According to their judgments, the three halls were relics of Liao Dynasty. After the investigations, they published two brief reports, but no other information about this monastery had ever be published after that. In recent years, some of the material that made by the above investigators had been discovered and collated. On the basis of that, the author did restoration of the three halls, as well as textual research of the history of the monastery. The author also estimated the age of the three halls, and explored and analyzed on the designing ideas of them. This research practically filled a gap in this field of the research on Chinese architecture.