Gansu Huanxian Tower

The Huanxian Tower was built in the fifth year of Zhongtong of Yuan Shizu, that is, the fifth year of Jingding of Song Lizong (1264). It is an octagonal five-level imitation wooden tower, gradually converging upwards, with a tower spire, 22 meters high. The tower body is made of blue bricks. The bottom layer is higher, exceeding a quarter of the tower height, with no base inside and outside. Each side is 3.13 meters wide, with a door to the south, and an octagonal tower room inside, each side is 1.20 meters wide. Each layer of the tower eaves has double eaves and arches, each side has two brackets, which support the wood, and then there are several layers of overlap. There is a door or carved door and straight window between each layer, changing direction by layer. The door has a single brick arch top, and the sides are decorated with lotus flowers. The upper part of each level of the tower eaves is equipped with a flat seat, the lower part is equipped with brackets, the upper part is equipped with railings, and people can pass. The top of the tower is a gilded copper tower spire. On both sides of the four real door holes on the second floor, there is a pair of god images carved, including a pair of Bodhisattva images, three pairs of warrior images, due to wind and rain erosion, the images are seriously lost and damaged. The carved door (i.e. fake door) has two door leaves decorated with nipple patterns, four rows on each leaf, seven in each row, a total of 56; there are straight windows on both sides of the door, with leaf patterns, petal patterns, and diamond patterns. There are no carved patterns on both sides of the real door holes above the third floor. The window positions are decorated with vertical stripes made of vertical bricks, and the window sills are carved with apple-shaped patterns. All the carved doors are nipple patterns, and a larger square brick and a rectangular brick with a brick frame are inlaid on both sides of the door, with no patterns on the bricks. On the floor of the fifth floor, three wooden Buddha statues were also found, all male, wearing cassocks, with kind faces, dignified expressions, different hand gestures, all sitting cross-legged on the lotus seat, 100 cm in total height, placed at the doors of the east, north, and west, facing the door hole, sitting facing each other. According to Xie Wenke's analysis, they may be three of the Five Wisdom Tathagatas. According to the placement position, the east door should be A Tathagata, the west door should be Amoghasiddhi Tathagata, and the north door should be Amitabha Tathagata. The tower spire is cast from raw copper, all hollow. The 7-layer tower spire includes a base sleeve on a wooden beam (spire tube) with a diameter of about 10 cm, and then 8 iron chains are put on the top of the tower spire, fixed on 8 cast iron warriors on the top of the tower. The text on the tower spire, a total of 120 words, except for a few variant characters or casting reasons, most of them are clear and recognizable. Among them, there are 21 big characters, the content is: "Long live the emperor, just stick to the wood, long live the king, the country is peaceful and the people are safe, the Dharma wheel is always turning." There are 99 small characters, starting from "Huanzhou Jingfu Temple rebuilds Xianglun", after listing more than 10 names and their official positions related to the construction of the tower spire, it ends with "Zhongtong five years mid-autumn early ten days and five days". The Huanxian brick tower is well preserved and has high value for studying the architectural forms, craftsmanship, and style of the Song Dynasty. National key cultural relics protection unit.