Buddhist Temple Layout Of The Qiuci Area Archaeology Research

Qiuci located north to the Silk Road, adjacent to Shule in the west, Yanqi in the east, faced each other across the desert. It’s one of the way for businessmen and monks from Central Asia to the central plains of China. About in the first century AD, Buddhism had been introduced to Qiuci via Bactrian and Shule. Buddhism reached a peak time at the middle of the third century AD. With the development of Buddhism in Qiuci and spreaded eastward, lots of hierarchies from Qiuci to the inland to disseminate Buddhism and translate the Buddhist Scriptures.The studies will be completed on the arrangement of Buddhist temples in Qiuci. According to the differences of the center of the chapels, the Buddhist temples in Qiuci can be classified into three types. And at the same time, they can be separated into discrete and courtyard Buddhist temples in accordance with the relation of the chapel area and priestly temples.Comparing with the central of China and Xinjiang region, there were three stages of the arrangement of the Buddhist temples in Qiuci. The main building of the Buddhist temples changed pagoda into the palace hall of temples, the arrangement developed from discrete into courtyard. Comparing with other regions in Xinjiang, Shule, Yanqi and Qiuci were in one cultural community. However, in the arrangement of view, the Buddhist temples in Shule and Qiuci had many similarities, and what in Yanqi were special. In addition, there were some palaces halls of temples presented rectangular-ambulatory-plane in Shule,Yanqi and Khotan. While in Qiuci we found a few. The influences from the central plains of China mainly showed on the appearance of the arrangement of courtyard, which had business with the respect from Qiuci to the central plains of China and the establishment of Anxi Frontier Command Headquarter at Qiuci in Sui and Tang dynasties. And finally, study on the reasons for the formations of the Buddhist temples’arrangement.