Dynastic History | Da Ci'en Temple, Chang'an — Merit for a Dead Empress, Then a Noticeboard

In 貞觀二十二年 (648) the crown prince Li Zhi — emperor as Gaozong the following year — ordered a temple rebuilt in the 晉昌坊 ward of Chang'an and named it 大慈恩寺, for the merit of his mother, the empress Zhangsun, twelve years dead. Grief converted into an endowment, which is what dynastic piety usually looks like once it reaches the ground.

The temple was given 玄奘 to run. He had come back from sixteen years of travel in India and Central Asia carrying manuscripts and an imperial commission to translate them, and 大慈恩寺 became one of the three official translation establishments of the Tang capital. In 永徽三年 (652) he asked for a tower to keep the texts dry. The first version went up five storeys in the manner he had seen in the Western Regions and did not hold; in the 長安 era (701–704) Wu Zetian and court donors paid for a brick replacement of seven storeys, which is broadly the tower standing now, thickened later by a Ming casing.

Then the examination system arrived at the door. Graduates of the 進士 degree, after the state banquet at 曲江, walked to the temple, climbed the pagoda and wrote their names on the wall — 雁塔題名, the origin of the later custom. A reliquary raised for a dead empress became the register of men entering the administration that taxed everyone who could not read.

The temple keeps about a seventh of the ground it held under the Tang. The pagoda now stands over a public square whose fountains run to music each evening; it is entered by ticket, and the climb to the top floor is still the point of going.

📸 Cover: the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda seen across the north square fountains, Xi'an, by 沈澄心, CC0 via Wikimedia Commons