Giant Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi'an: Xuanzang's Tower (652)

The Giant Wild Goose Pagoda (Dayan Ta) is a seven-storey brick tower in Xi’an, China, first built in 652 at the Da Ci’en Temple in the Tang capital Chang’an. It was raised at the request of the monk Xuanzang to protect the hundreds of Buddhist texts he had carried back from India. Rebuilt several times, it is one of the best-known surviving buildings of the Tang dynasty and a symbol of the exchange of ideas along the Silk Roads.

Background: Xuanzang and the Da Ci’en Temple

In 629 the monk Xuanzang left Chang’an, against an imperial ban on travel, to study Buddhism at its source in India. He returned in 645 after a sixteen-year journey with a huge collection of scriptures, recorded as 657 texts, along with relics and Buddha images. Emperor Taizong pardoned him, welcomed him and asked him to write an account of the lands he had seen, which became the Great Tang Records on the Western Regions (646).

In 648 the crown prince Li Zhi, the future Emperor Gaozong, founded a large monastery in the south-east of the capital in memory of his mother, Empress Zhangsun. It was named Da Ci’en Si, the “Temple of Great Maternal Grace”. Xuanzang was invited to lead its translation office, and he spent much of the rest of his life there turning Sanskrit texts into Chinese.

Chang’an was then one of the largest cities in the world, with a strict grid of walled wards. The temple occupied about half of the Jinchang ward, and its scale reflected imperial favour towards Buddhism under the early Tang dynasty.

Building the pagoda in 652

The scriptures were stored in wooden halls, and Xuanzang worried about fire. In 652 he petitioned Gaozong for a stone tower to protect them. According to his biography, he hoped for a stone structure of great height; the emperor, wishing to spare the monk the cost and labour, ordered a smaller tower of brick instead.

The first pagoda had five storeys. It was built with a core of rammed earth faced with brick, and its design is said to have followed Indian stupa models that Xuanzang had seen. The texts, relics and images were placed in chambers in the upper levels. Tradition holds that Xuanzang himself helped carry bricks during the work.

Two famous inscribed stelae were set into niches at the base: the Preface to the Sacred Teachings, composed by Emperor Taizong in praise of Xuanzang’s work, and a companion text by Gaozong. Both were written out by the great calligrapher Chu Suiliang and carved in 653. They remain on the south side of the pagoda and are treasured examples of early Tang calligraphy.

Rebuilding under Wu Zetian and later changes

The rammed-earth core did not last well. Within about half a century the first pagoda was decaying, and in the Chang’an era (701-704) it was rebuilt in brick, taller than before, under Wu Zetian, who then ruled China in her own name. Sources disagree on whether the new tower had seven or ten storeys, but the seven-storey square form seen today goes back to this rebuilding.

Later centuries brought war and earthquakes. Much of Chang’an was abandoned after the Tang fell in 907, and the great temple shrank to a small monastery. The tower was damaged in the great Shaanxi earthquake of 1556 and in other quakes. During the Ming dynasty, around 1604, the whole structure was encased in a new brick shell up to about a metre thick, which gives it its present, slightly more massive appearance.

In the 20th century engineers found that the pagoda leaned to the north-west, partly because of falling groundwater under Xi’an. Measures to limit pumping and monitor the tower have since stabilised it.

Design and features

The pagoda is square in plan and narrows storey by storey. Each face of the brick walls imitates wooden architecture, with flat pilasters, brackets and beams marked out in brick, a characteristic Tang style. Arched openings on every level let visitors look out over the city.

Today it stands about 64 metres high, with a base roughly 25 metres square. An internal wooden staircase climbs to the top floor. Engraved stone lintels over the ground-floor doorways show Buddhist scenes, including a famous carving of a Tang-period hall that is one of the best records of how Tang timber buildings looked.

The name comes from a story in Xuanzang’s records. At a monastery in India, he wrote, monks who still ate meat saw a wild goose fall dead from the sky; taking it as a lesson in compassion, they buried it and built a stupa called the Goose Stupa. The Chinese tower took up the name. “Giant” distinguishes it from the Small Wild Goose Pagoda, built in 707-709 at another Chang’an temple.

Key people

Xuanzang (c. 602-664) was the pilgrim, scholar and translator whose request led to the pagoda. With his team at the Da Ci’en Temple and later at Yuhua Palace, he translated around 75 works in 1,335 scrolls. His school of Yogacara thought, continued by his disciple Kuiji, is known in China as Faxiang or Ci’en, after the temple.

Emperor Gaozong (r. 649-683) founded the temple as crown prince and paid for the first pagoda. Emperor Taizong (r. 626-649) sponsored Xuanzang’s translations and wrote the preface carved at the base. Wu Zetian, Gaozong’s empress and later ruler, ordered the rebuilding of 701-704. Chu Suiliang (596-658), a senior minister, wrote the calligraphy of the two stelae.

Legacy

During the Tang, the pagoda was part of the social life of Chang’an. Candidates who passed the highest grade of the imperial examinations, the jinshi degree, held celebrations at the Da Ci’en Temple and wrote their names on the pagoda walls. “Writing one’s name at the Goose Pagoda” became a proverb for success. The poet Bai Juyi, who passed in 800, was among those who did so.

Poets such as Du Fu, Cen Shen and Gao Shi climbed the tower together in 752 and wrote verses on the view. The pagoda appears in countless later poems, paintings and, in modern times, in the novel and film traditions around Journey to the West, which is loosely based on Xuanzang’s pilgrimage.

In 1961 the pagoda was listed among China’s first nationally protected monuments. In 2014 UNESCO inscribed it on the World Heritage List as part of the Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang’an-Tianshan Corridor. The square in front of it, with a large statue of Xuanzang and fountains, is now one of Xi’an’s busiest public spaces.

Timeline

• 629: Xuanzang leaves Chang’an for India.
• 645: Xuanzang returns with hundreds of scriptures and relics.
• 648: Crown prince Li Zhi founds the Da Ci’en Temple in memory of his mother.
• 652: The first five-storey pagoda is built at Xuanzang’s request.
• 653: Stelae with texts by Taizong and Gaozong, written by Chu Suiliang, are installed.
• 664: Xuanzang dies; his remains are later moved to Xingjiao Temple.
• 701-704: The decaying pagoda is rebuilt in brick under Wu Zetian.
• 1556: The Shaanxi earthquake damages the tower.
• c. 1604: Ming restorers encase the pagoda in a new brick shell.
• 2014: UNESCO inscribes the pagoda as part of the Silk Roads World Heritage site.

Why it matters

The Giant Wild Goose Pagoda is a rare surviving monument of Tang Chang’an, one of the great cities of the medieval world. It marks the moment when Indian Buddhist learning, brought home by one determined monk, was absorbed into Chinese culture with imperial support. Its form shaped later Chinese brick pagodas, and its history of rebuilding shows how a seventh-century tower has been kept alive for more than thirteen centuries.