Tianshi Cave / Changdao Temple天师洞（常道观）
- Type
- Temples and Abbeys (Gongguan)
- Location
- China · Sichuan · Dujiangyan, Chengdu · Below Hunyuan Summit on Mount Qingcheng, between Baiyun Creek and Haitang Creek
- Coordinates
- 30.905, 103.564 Map ↗
- School
- Way of the Celestial Masters (Tianshi Dao), Longmen (Dragon Gate) Lineage of Quanzhen
- First built
- the Daye era of the Sui (605–618) · Originally named Yanqing Temple, renamed Changdao Temple in the Tang, destroyed at the end of the Ming, and rebuilt during the Kangxi reign of the Qing; the principal temple of Mount Qingcheng
- Heritage status
- Ancient Building Complex of Mount Qingcheng — Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level (2006)Component of a UNESCO World Heritage Site (2000)National Key Daoist Temple (1983)
Overview
Tianshi Cave, the ancient Changdao Temple, is the principal and largest Daoist temple on Mount Qingcheng; tradition holds that Zhang Daoling once preached the Dao within the cave, and a stone statue of the Celestial Master Zhang is enshrined there (some say carved in the Sui). The temple was first built during the Daye era of the Sui, was named Yanqing Temple in the early Tang, and was renamed Changdao Temple during the Kaiyuan era of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang; the surviving halls are mostly reconstructions dating from the Kangxi reign of the Qing through the Republican era, laid out along the mountainside with a mountain gate, the Hall of the Three Pure Ones, the Hall of the Three Sovereigns, a shrine to Huangdi (the Yellow Emperor), and the Tianshi grotto itself. The Hall of the Three Pure Ones is a large timber structure with a double-eaved hip-and-gable roof; in front of the hall stand a stele bearing an edict in the hand of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang (twelfth year of the Kaiyuan era, ruling on the boundary between Buddhist and Daoist land and requiring Buddhist monks to withdraw from the temple grounds) and an ancient ginkgo tree, said to have been planted by the hand of the Celestial Master Zhang. The temple also preserves Tang-dynasty stone-carved images of the Three Sovereigns and a stele inscribed by Yue Fei with the Memorial on Setting Out the Army. The Qingcheng Mountain Taoist Association is based here, and the temple is one of the ancestral courts of the Bidong Branch of the Longmen Lineage of Quanzhen.
Highlights
- The Hall of the Three Pure Ones
- The edict stele of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang
- The statue of the Celestial Master Zhang in Tianshi Cave
- The Tang-dynasty stone images of the Three Sovereigns
- The ancient ginkgo tree