Chinese Pagodas

It’s been a long time since the Buddhism spread from Indian to worldwide, especially in China. The 1^st memory building was named “STUPA” in Indian to memory the Buddha, stored the replics and chanting, mostly it is a tomb of Buddha.

When foreigners landed in South China, them were taught the 8 corner tower pronounced “Pagoda”. The word was collected in the dictionary till today, a minus change is to be “Chinese Pagoda” to mean the towers in Asian-Pacific area. Today Chinese people call Pagoda as “Ta” since the word was invented by Ge, Hong in Jin Dynasty. (around AD 300)

I selected 6 typical types of Pagoda to be LEGO model, the superstructure of Pagoda can be separated by 3 parts as the picture below:

Base, Body, Cha;

1.    Basic Stupa

The model reflects the main characters of Stupa which is the resource of all pagoda, stupa and etc.

• Flat base;
• Hemispherical body;
• Upside Lotus petal;
• The “CHA” of tower;

2.    Lamaist Stupa

The Lamaist stupa was heralded in hemispherical tomb in Fo-kuang Ssu in the latter part of the tenth century. The earliest Lamaist stupa was built in Xizang, China.

The model reflects the main characters of Lamaist Stupa

Flat and thin base;

Higher base (Shu – mi - tso);

Aquarius body “Belly” (The variant of hemispherical body);

Truncated cone Bottle “Neck”

Top “umbrella”;

3.    One storied Pagoda

The One storied Pagoda may be the 1^st culture combined pagoda in Chinese. It mixed the different architecture elements from both Chinese and Indian. It more likes a Chinese pavilion with solid walls and stone or brick roof.

The top of body adopts a building technique called “Corbelled brick courses”, they have 2 ways to be shown, positive and negitive. Using the LEGO parts to build this is a real challenge. The picture will show you how.

You can also see the “Cha” part is real like the Stupa.

4.    Multi-Storied Pagoda

I build the 2 storied pagoda only for example. The real Multi-storied Pagoda usually looks similar with the Multi-Eaved Pagoda. The key of distinguish is to see the highest eaves, if they are real close, the pagoda shall be Muti-Eaved, others are Multi-Storied.

5.    Bustling Pagoda

The bustling pagoda normally use very complex decoration outside, the body sits on a very high Shu – mi – tso. Some pagoda allows people walk inside to the top.

6.    Multi-Eaved Pagoda

As the name shows, it has several levels of eaves, I built this model in order to show the extreme case, the eaves are very close. I also use a wheel as the “umbrella” part.

Through the building progress of these 6 models, you will have a Buddhism trip in Chinese.

You can con tact me via jerryyao77@msn.com for the full instructions with a little bucks.

Enjoy it!

Jerry