Viewing page 124 of 234

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

[[start page]]

108

stories, but the upper two stories were shot away by the cannon of the Mings.  The whole outside and much of the inside (1) is completely cased in unglazed tile containing Buddhist figures in sunken relief.  By every stylistic and technical evidence the majority of these date from a period several centuries earlier than the late Ming and early Ch'ing porcelains of the "Iron pagoda" in the same city.  Several rows of glazed reproductions of these earlier relief tiles were set in the outside as restorations.
  The interior of the pagoda was even richer than the exterior in delicate detail, though owing to the fact that the entrance had been walled up, and the flooring of the upper stories ^[[was]] absent, or rotting away, it was some time before I could examine the walls carefully.
  The subjects represented in these reliefs are all Buddhist in character, and I was able to count more than twenty-five types.  Among them were, (in Japanese equivalents) four types of Buddha, eight of Bodhisattva; Fudo, Aizen, Nyoirin; several forms of Kwannon; an itinerant monk with prayer box and dog, many Rakken etc. etc.  The sculptural technique, although that of a stamp or mould, was extremely delicate.  All the figures were in half relief within circular depressions, and many were works of art in their delicate modelling and clear cut line.
   At the Confucian temple, where the local Bureau of Education has its headquarters, I examined forty-eight splendidly inscribed stones of which I arranged to have rubbings sent

(1) Not referred to by Chavannes.