A Comparative Study On Temple Landscape In Yangzhou And Nara

Temple Garden is an important component of the landscape. It was born by Buddhism, thus, temple garden is more mysterious and religious; compared to the royal garden and the private garden, temple garden is free to the pilgrims and all other citizens. What is more, it was often the case that space in front of the temple often combined with market to form a public space. Therefore, it is reasonable to say that temple garden plays a quite important role in people's daily lives. Buddhist Temple Garden is a comprehensive reflection of faith, history and culture, politics, society, economy and so on.Jianzhen is the critial connection between Yangzhou city and Nara city. In the year 753, Jianzhen succeeded crossing the ocean and arrived in Japan after his five-time's failures. Jianzhen not only took new wind to Japanese Buddhism, but also deeply influenced the architectural style of Buddhist temples in Nara. Yangzhou and Nara since then were connected by the spread of Buddhism.The transmission of Buddhism experienced the process from being excluded to being accepted and finally became part of local culture both in Yangzhou and Nara. And it is also true that both in Yangzhou and Nara, politics played a key role in the Buddhism's booming. Traditional culture was another factor influenced the transmission of Buhhism, which was firstly blocked the transmission and then helped the of Buddhism. The powerful impact of Chinese culture obtained by Buddhism was the external force that helped Buddhism to be accepted by Japan.As the physical space of Buddhism, its destiny went up and down with the status of Buddhism. The activities of making temples reached an unprecedented degree of prosperity in Sui and Tang Dynasties, and it is the same with Nara. Temple is a religious center, providing a communicating place for scholars and Buddhists in Yangzhou; In Nara, temple used to replace the educational functions of schools because of its advanced culture and technology. The booming of Buddhist Temple brought the emergence of temple gardens. They formed different characteristics in Yangzhou and Nara, although Nara Buddhism and Buddhist temples had been greatly influenced by the Yangzhou. Temple gardens in China came out after the royal gardens and private gardens, therefore, its style was greatly secularized. While in Nara, temple gardens grew up under the influence of the shrine, they not only were not secularized, but shew up a stronger religious atmosphere. Because of differences of local culture, the location, layout, garden elements, decorative pieces, atmosphere and other aspects of the subject have shown different preferences and bias in Yangzhou and Nara Temple Gardens.Buddhist temples now have become important historical and cultural heritage of cities. It is really a challenge to make temple into modern people's lives through the development of their new functions. Comparing the differences of protecting measures between Yangzhou and Nara and studying specific cases will contribute to the effective conservation of temples.