A Ming stone tablet was unearthed in a construction site of Nanshan Temple in Taizhou on June 22. Although there are some cracks on the stone tablet, the inscription is still discernible.This stone tablet proved to be the one carved with “On the Rebuilding of Nanshan Temple”, a precious heritage dating back to 463 years ago, or the 30th year of Emperor Jiajing’s Reign (1551).
As an important temple in the history of Chinese Buddhism, the Nanshan Temple of Taizhou is regarded as the one of a few ancient architectures having roof built under the top-grade royal specification along with Suzhou Confucian Temple, said Professor Chen Congzhou, a Chinese garden expert, in 1985. At present, only the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Imperial Palace, Jinding of Wudang Mountain and the Imperial Ancestral Temple in Beijing have the same level roofs among the existing ancient buildings in China.
This unearthed stone tablet records the hundreds of years’ history of Nanshan Temple from the construction in Tang Dynasty to Ming Dynasty, indicating the rich connotation and historical accumulation of Nanshan Temple as the “Huguo Temple” (temple of protecting the country) in the past.
