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| Potala Palace |
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In 641, after marrying Princess Wencheng, Songtsen Gampo decided to
build a grand palace to accommodate her and let his descendants remember
the event. However, the original palace was destroyed due to a lightening
strike and succeeding warfare during Landama's reign. In seventeenth
century under the reign of the Fifth Dalai Lama, Potala was rebuilt.
The Thirteenth Dalai Lama expanded it to today's scale. The monastery-like
palace, reclining against and capping Red Hill, was the religious
and political center of old Tibet and the winter palace of Dalai Lamas.
The palace is more than 117 meters (384 feet) in height and 360 (1180
feet) in width, occupying a building space of 90 thousand square meters.
Potala is composed of White Palace and Red palace. The former is for
secular use while the later is for religious.
The White Palace consists of offices, dormitories, a Buddhist official
seminary and a printing house. From the east entrance of the palace,
painted with images of Four Heavenly Kings, a broad corridor upwards
leads to Deyang Shar courtyard, which used to be where Dalai Lamas
watched operas. Around the large and open courtyard, there used
to be a seminary and dormitories. West of the courtyard is the White
Palace. There are three ladder stairs reaching inside of it, however,
the central one was reserved for only Dalai Lamas and central government
magistrates dispatched to Tibet. In the first hallway, there are
huge murals describing the construction of Potala Palace and Jokhang
Temple and the procession of Princess Wencheng reaching Tibet. On
the south wall, visitors will see an edict signed with the Great
Fifth's handprint. The White Palace mainly serves as the political
headquarter and Dalai Lamas' living quarters. The West Chamber of
Sunshine and the East Chamber of Sunshine lie as the roof of the
White Palace. They belonged to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama and the
Fourteenth Dalai Lama respectively. Beneath the East Chamber of
Sunshine is the largest hall in the White Palace, where Dalai Lamas
ascended throne and ruled Tibet.
The Red Palace was constructed after the death of the Fifth Dalai
Lama. The center of the complicated Red Palace is the Great West
Hall, which records the Great Fifth Dalai Lama's life by its fine
murals. The scene of his visit to Emperor Shunzhi in Beijing in
1652 is extraordinarily vivid. It also has finely carved columns
and brackets. The hall has four additional chapels. The West Chapel
houses three gold stupas of the Fifth, Tenth and Twelfth Dalai Lamas'.
Their mummified and perfumed bodies are well kept in those stupas.
Among the three, the Fifth Dalai Lama's stupa is the biggest, which
is made of sandalwood, wrapped in gold foil and decorated with thousands
of diamonds, pearls, agates and others gems. The stupa, with a height
of 14.86 meters (49 feet), spends more than 3,700 kilograms of gold.
The North Chapel contains statues of Sakyamuni, Dalai Lamas and
Medicine Buddha, and stupas of the Eighth, Ninth and Eleventh Dalai
Lamas. Against the wall is Tanjur (Beijing edition), a most important
Tibetan Buddhist sutra sent to the Seventh Dalai Lama by Emperor
Yongzheng. In the East Chapel a two meters (6.5 feet) high statue
of Tsong Khapa, the founder of Gelugpa which is Dalai Lama's lineage,
is enshrined and worshipped. In addition, about 70 famous adepts
in Tibetan Buddhism surround him. The South Chapel is where a silver
statue of Padmasambhava and 8 bronze statues of his reincarnations
are enshrined. On the floor above, there is a gallery which has
a collection of 698 murals, portraying Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Dalai
Lamas and great adepts and narrating jataka stories and significant
Tibetan historic events. West of the Great West Hall locates the
Thirteenth Dalai Lama's stupa hall. Since he was regarded as great
as the Great Fifth, people started to build his stupa after his
death in the fall of 1933. Taking three years, the stupa is comparable
with the Great Fifth's stupa. It is 14 meters (46 feet) in height,
coated with a ton (2200 pounds) of gold foils. In front of it is
a mandala made of more than 200,000 pearls and other gems. Murals
in the hall tell important events in his life, including his visit
with Emperor Guangxu. The highest hall of Potala was built in 1690.
It used to be the holy shrine of Chinese Emperors. Dalai Lamas would
come here with his officials and high lamas to show their respects
to the central government annually before. |
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