Chinese Empire

Chinese Pagodas and the Timber Tower Tradition

The Chinese pagoda (塔, ta) is one of the most distinctive building types in East Asian architecture. It evolved from the Indian stupa — a hemispherical mound housing Buddhist relics — but was transformed by Chinese builders into a tall, multi-storey tower, first in timber and later in brick and stone. The pagoda became the visual signature of Chinese Buddhism, dominating the skyline of Buddhist monasteries throughout China and shaping the architectural traditions of Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. The engineering of the pagoda, especially the wooden pagoda, was among the most technically demanding in the pre-modern world.

This article surveys the Chinese pagoda tradition. It begins with the origin of the form in the Indian stupa and the early transmission to China, traces the development of the wooden pagoda, the brick pagoda, and the iron and stone pagodas, examines the role of pagodas in Buddhist practice, and finally turns to the engineering of the tallest wooden structures ever built. The world’s tallest surviving wooden pagoda, the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda of 1056, see our article on the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda. For the broader context of Chinese architecture, see the [comprehensive overview of Chinese architecture and engineering] section (../), and for the political architecture, see palaces, capital cities, and the Great Wall. The engineering of canals, bridges, and weapons is treated in engineering marvels of imperial China.

The Origin of the Pagoda: From Indian Stupa to Chinese Tower

The Chinese pagoda derives from the Indian stupa, the hemispherical earth mound that housed Buddhist relics (śarīra) at sites associated with the historical Buddha. The most famous early stupas, such as the Great Stupa at Sanchi in central India (c. 250 BCE), were solid hemispherical mounds, surrounded by a stone railing and entered through ceremonial gates (toranas). The stupa was not a building in the ordinary sense; it was a symbolic representation of the Buddha’s enlightened mind and a reliquary for his bodily remains.

The transmission of Buddhism to China, beginning in the first century CE, brought the stupa with it, but the Chinese translated its form into the local building tradition. The hemispherical mound became a tall, multi-storey tower, raised on a platform and capped with a finial that combined the Indian chattra (parasol) with Chinese decorative elements. The earliest Chinese pagodas, such as the one at the White Horse Temple at Luoyang (first century CE, rebuilt), were wooden, multi-storey structures whose function and form were Chinese adaptations of the Indian stupa.

The first explicit Chinese description of a pagoda is in the translation of the Sarvastivada Vinaya by An Shigao in 148 CE, and the first archaeological evidence is the foundation of a small pagoda at the Zhangjiazhuang site in Shandong, dated to the second century CE. The form was further developed in the Six Dynasties period (220–589 CE), when Buddhism became a mass Chinese religion and hundreds of pagodas were built throughout the empire.

The Wooden Pagoda Tradition

The earliest and most characteristic Chinese pagodas were built of timber. The wooden pagoda allowed the Chinese builders to make the structure tall, light, and aesthetically elegant, with a deep overhanging roof on each storey and a rich structural and decorative use of the dougong bracket set. The wooden pagoda tradition reached its peak in the Song and Liao dynasties, when the great surviving examples of the form were built.

The basic form of the wooden pagoda is a tall, square or polygonal tower, built of interlocking timber columns and beams without nails. The tower is divided into an odd number of storeys (typically seven, nine, or thirteen), each storey marked by a projecting roof of ceramic tiles. The storeys are connected by an internal wooden staircase, and the visitor climbs past painted Buddhist images, sculptures, and devotional texts. The exterior is articulated by the dougong brackets that support the eaves, and the entire structure is crowned by an iron finial (often a tall, decorated spike) that doubles as a lightning rod.

The most impressive surviving example of the wooden pagoda tradition is the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda (應縣木塔) in Shanxi, built in 1056 under the Liao dynasty and standing 67.5 metres tall. It is the tallest surviving wooden building in the world and see our article on the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda. It is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda complex.

Other notable wooden pagodas include the East and West Pagodas of the Kaiyuan Temple at Quanzhou in Fujian, both built in the Song dynasty (the east pagoda in 1238, the west in 1237), and the pagoda of the Dule Temple at Jixian in Tianjin, built in 984 under the Liao. The Foguang Temple pagoda on Mount Wutai in Shanxi, dating to the Tang, and the Small Wild Goose Pagoda (小雁塔) at the Jianfu Temple in Xi’an, originally built in 707 and rebuilt several times, are also notable examples.

The Brick and Stone Pagoda Tradition

The fragility of wooden pagodas, which were vulnerable to fire and to decay, encouraged the development of brick and stone pagodas from the Northern Dynasties period (fifth and sixth centuries CE) onward. The earliest Chinese brick pagodas, such as the Songyue Temple Pagoda (嵩嶽寺塔) at Dengfeng in Henan, built in 523 CE, were modest structures, but by the Tang dynasty brick pagodas had become large and elaborate.

The most distinctive Chinese brick and stone pagoda form is the densely tiered pagoda (密檐式塔, miyan shi ta), in which a tall, solid brick shaft is decorated with a series of closely spaced layers of brick imitating the eaves and dougong of a wooden pagoda. The form is sometimes called the “Asoka” pagoda in older English sources, though the term is misleading. The Small Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi’an, originally built in 707, is a characteristic example. The Iron Pagoda (鐵塔) at Bianjing (modern Kaifeng) in Henan, built in 1049 and rebuilt in 1302, is a brick pagoda faced with dark-glazed bricks that imitate timber construction in extraordinary detail.

The most spectacular Tang brick pagoda is the Great Wild Goose Pagoda (大雁塔) at the Ci’en Temple in Xi’an, originally built in 652 and rebuilt in brick in 704. Standing 64.5 metres tall, it housed the Buddhist scriptures and relics brought back from India by the monk Xuanzang (玄奘). It is a square, ten-storey brick tower with a flat top and a brick imitation of the dougong system. The Small Wild Goose Pagoda, in the same city, is a fifteen-storey version of the same form, originally 45 metres tall and now reduced to 43.4 metres by earthquake damage.

The Ming and Qing dynasties favoured a different pagoda form, the multi-eaved pavilion pagoda (樓閣式塔, louge shi ta), in which each storey is clearly articulated and the building is more obviously a tower. The Liuhe Pagoda (六和塔) at Hangzhou, rebuilt in its present form in 1156 and again in 1899, is a thirteen-storey octagonal tower. The Beisi Pagoda (北寺塔) at Suzhou, rebuilt in 1582, is a nine-storey tower. The Ming also built octagonal pagodas and hexagonal pagodas, often associated with specific religious or geomantic purposes.

The iron pagoda is a distinctive Chinese form in which a pagoda is built of cast-iron elements, usually assembled in a relatively small structure. The most famous surviving example is the Iron Pagoda at Kaifeng, built of glazed bricks that look like iron; true iron pagodas, like the one at the Dabaoen Temple in Nanjing (built 1412–1431, destroyed 1856), were also built in the Ming.

Pagodas in Buddhist Practice

In Chinese Buddhist practice, the pagoda had a different function from the Indian stupa. Where the stupa was a solid mound, the Chinese pagoda was a hollow tower whose interior was used for worship, image-display, and the storage of scriptures. Most pagodas housed relics — fragments of bone, hair, or cremation ashes of the Buddha or of a revered monk, or copies of the Buddhist scriptures — in a sealed chamber in the lowest storey. The most sacred Chinese pagodas, such as the Famen Temple Pagoda near Xi’an, are reliquary pagodas: the Famen Pagoda housed a finger-bone relic of the Buddha, which was rediscovered in a secret underground palace in 1987.

The pagoda was usually the visual and ritual centre of a Buddhist monastery. The classic Chinese monastery, as it developed in the Tang and Song, was laid out on a north-south axis with a sequence of gates, a main hall (the daxiong baodian, or “Great Hall of the Heroic Treasure”), and a pagoda standing on the central axis opposite the main hall. The relationship between hall and pagoda was a defining feature of Chinese Buddhist monasticism. The Foguang Temple on Mount Wutai, the Dule Temple at Jixian, and the Kaiyuan Temple at Quanzhou are characteristic examples.

The pagoda was also a sacred mountain. The thirteen-storey form, in particular, was understood to represent the thirteen heavens of the Buddhist cosmological system. The nine-storey form represented the nine grades of saints; the seven-storey form the seven Buddhas of the past. The taller the pagoda, the more sacred it was considered, and the building of a tall pagoda was an act of great religious merit, supported by the imperial court and by wealthy donors.

The pagoda was also a geomantic instrument. In Chinese folk religion, which interacted continuously with Buddhism throughout imperial history, the pagoda was understood to have a stabilising effect on the local feng shui, the geomantic balance of a site. A village or town that suffered from fire, flood, or other disaster would often build a pagoda to restore the local balance. The many small pagodas scattered throughout the Chinese countryside, often dating to the Ming and Qing, are the product of this folk-religious practice.

The Engineering of Tall Timber Structures

The Chinese wooden pagoda is, with the possible exception of the medieval European cathedral spire, the most technically demanding timber building ever raised before the modern era. The structural problem of a tall, slender wooden tower — how to keep it upright in the wind, how to prevent it from twisting or collapsing under its own weight, how to anchor it to the ground, how to protect it from fire and lightning — required the most sophisticated carpentry of the pre-modern world.

The Chinese solution combined several engineering strategies. The pagoda was built on a deep, heavy stone platform, often with a stone foundation. The columns of the lowest storey were locked into the platform by a system of mortise-and-tenon joints, the same technique used in timber-frame halls but on a much larger scale. The columns of the upper storeys were mounted on the crossbeams of the storey below, and were connected to the columns of the next storey by horizontal struts and diagonal braces. The whole structure was, in effect, a stack of square timber frames, each one sitting on the one below.

The most distinctive feature of the Chinese wooden pagoda is its inner ring of columns. In the largest wooden pagodas, such as the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda, the building is supported not by a single ring of columns on the exterior, but by four concentric rings: an outer ring, two intermediate rings, and an inner core. The intermediate rings are the load-bearing columns of each storey, while the inner core and the outer ring are partly decorative and partly stabilising. The result is a system in which the load is distributed across many columns and many storeys, and the structure is far more resistant to wind and earthquake than a single shaft would be.

The Chinese also developed a sophisticated system of wall-panels and diagonal braces that further stiffens the structure. In the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda, for example, the lowest storey is filled with a system of inner walls and diagonal struts that transmit the load of the upper storeys directly to the stone platform. The intermediate storeys are supported by inner columns and beams, and the upper storeys are progressively smaller, so that the building tapers in plan as well as in section. The result is a stable, slightly pyramidal form that has proven extraordinarily resistant to earthquakes.

The most impressive demonstration of the success of this engineering is the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda’s survival of dozens of major earthquakes in the nine and a half centuries since its construction, including some that levelled nearby masonry buildings. The structure and its survival are treated in our article on the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda.

The Chinese also developed a sophisticated system of fire protection for wooden pagodas. The exterior of a pagoda was typically sheathed in brick or stone, or faced with glazed tiles, to protect the timber frame from fire. The Yingxian Wooden Pagoda, however, is unusual in that its timber frame is largely exposed. Its survival for nearly a thousand years is due, in part, to the unusually dry climate of northern Shanxi, and to the careful maintenance the structure has received.

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