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Daming
Temple
 The
name means "Great Brightness Temple".
Located northwest of Yangzhou, it is a famous
Buddhist temple orinally built in the 5th
century. It was destroyed and rebuilt quite
a few times and has a history of more than
1,000 years. This is where the Tang dynasty
(618-907AD) monk Jianzhen studied sculpture,
architecture, fine arts and medicine, as
well as Buddhism and became superior of
the temple and also a famed teacher of Buddhism
in the region.
Jianzhen played an integral
role in the development of Buddhism in Japan.
In 742 AD, two Japanese monks invited him
to Japan for missionary work. It then turned
out to be a mission impossible. Jianzhen
tried his best to get to Japan for five
times but all failed because of storms.
On the sixth trip at the age of 66, he finally
succeeded in crossing the seas and then
built the Toshodaiji Temple in Nara. He
stayed in Japan for 10 years and died there
in 763AD. He made great influence on Japanese
Buddhism. Later, the Japanese people made
lacquer statue of Jianzhen, which was sent
back to Yangzhou in 1980 and was on display
at the Jianzhen Memorial Hall. The Memorial
Hall was built in 1974 within the Daming
Temple that was a model of the chief hall
of the Toshodaiji Temple in Nara.
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