THE CHINA COLLOQUIUM SERIES PRESENTS
Tracy Miller
Associate Professor of East Asian Art and Architecture
Vanderbilt University
As the earliest full-size towering pagoda extant in China, the pagoda at Songyuesi (嵩岳寺) in Dengfeng, Henan (ca. 523 CE) is one of the most important objects we have for understanding the creation of Buddhist sacred space in Asia. Yet the plan of this structure, incorporating both dodecagon and octagon, is mysterious in its complexity—doubly so because it may be the only surviving example of its kind. By focusing on the geometry used in its creation, in this paper describe one possibility for determining the interior and exterior dimensions of the Songyuesi Pagoda plan, effectively encoding the structure with the potential for replication and regeneration important in the Buddhist sūtras as well as Indic temple designs of the period. Professor Miller will show how the same technique could have been used to create cosmological diagrams prior to the influence of Buddhist theology on Chinese society. Thus, similarities in the use of geometry to describe the structure of, and potentially control, the cosmos in South and East Asia the may have facilitated the rapid spread of Buddhism across this vast region.