Shuanglin Temple was founded in the sixth year of Datong Liangzhong (543 years) in Yiwu City, Zhejiang Province, and was founded by the eminent monk Fu Dashi. The temple is famous at home and abroad for its grand scale and numerous high monks. It is known as “Aurora Middle School, the solemn first”, and it has the reputation of “No. 3 in the world, No. 1 in Jiangsu and Zhejiang”. Nan Huaijin once wrote an inscription for the temple “Milean Ancestral Court”.
For more than a thousand years, Shuanglin Temple was repeatedly destroyed and built. In 1958, due to water conservancy repairs, the temple was sunk to the bottom of the reservoir. The only surviving stone pavilion is isolated on the shore of the lake. Inside the pavilion is an iron tower cast in the second year of Guangshun Zhou (952) after the Five Dynasties. The four characters “Shuanglin Iron Tower” are written on the stone tablet beside the pavilion.
The Shuanglin Tower is the oldest existing iron tower in China and the only one in Zhejiang Province. The iron tower was originally an eight-sided five-story, pavilion-like wood-like structure. Two floors were stolen by Japanese invaders when Yiwu fell in 1942. There is only one tower base and two floors of the tower body.
The Shuanglin Iron Pagoda is sturdy in shape and rigorous in structure. The bottom of the tower is of the same type as the upper one. The tower has a pot door on all sides. There are twelve Buddha statues in three rows and four columns on each side. The sculptures are exquisite and lifelike. They are known as rare Buddhist art treasures. .
The most interesting thing about the iron tower is the octagonal Sumi seat of the tower base. The tower seat is cast with ridges of mountains, rough seas, unicorns, galloping horses, and flowing clouds. According to the textual research of cultural relics experts: such a beautifully decorated and old iron tower is no second in the country, and it can be called a national treasure.
What is breathtaking is that although the iron tower has been eroded by wind and rain for more than a thousand years, the tower body is still black and shiny, with only a little rust, which vividly demonstrates the highly developed level of smelting and casting during the Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties. It has become a research Precious historical materials of ancient casting craftsmanship.
In 1997, funded by the municipal government, another “Shuanglin Temple in Wuzhou” was built less than one kilometer away from the ancient Shuanglin Temple. The bronze statue of Fu Dashi, the founder of Shuanglin Ancient Temple and the ancestor of Chinese Vimalakistan Zen, is enshrined in the temple.