Ramoche temple

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Tibetan name
Tibetan script :
ར་ མོ་ ཆེ་ དགོན་པ་
Wylie transliteration :
ra mo che
Official transcription of the PRCh :
Ramoqê
THDL transcription :
Ramoché
Other spellings:
Ramochey
Chinese name
Traditional :
小昭寺
Simplified :
小昭寺
Pinyin :
Xiǎozhāo Sì

The Ramoche Temple ( Tibetan ) is one of the most important temples in Tibetan Buddhism . It is located in the old town of Lhasa , the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China .

History of origin

Jowo Mikyö Dorje Ramoche Temple

Ramoche Temple was built in the eighth century for the Shakyamuni statue Jowo Mikyö Dorje (Tib .: jo bo mi bskyod rdo rje ), which King Songtsen Gampo's Chinese bride Wen Cheng brought to Tibet in the 7th century AD. This statue depicts Shakyamuni at the age of eight and became the main shrine of Jokhang Temple after the death of Songtsen Gampo ; The Akshobhya bronze statue of Jowo Yishin Norbu (Tib .: jo bo yid bzhin nor bu ), which Songtsen Gambo's Nepalese bride Bhrikuti is said to have brought to Tibet and which was originally located in the Jokhang Temple, was erected in the Ramoche Temple. According to a report by the 5th Dalai Lama , the Ramoche Temple is said to have been built before the Jokhang Temple. The structure that has been preserved to this day probably dates from the 17th century.

History of the temple from the 9th century AD

The Ramoche Temple

With the decline of Buddhism in the 9th century, the Ramoche Temple also fell into disrepair. In 1474 it was inaugurated as the " Upper Tantric Faculty ". The temple and the famous Buddha statue were badly damaged during the Chinese Cultural Revolution . In the great temple hall there was only a huge portrait of Mao Tsetung until February 1985 . The monks' quarters had been converted into apartments for families. After the fall of the " Gang of Four ", lamas accidentally found the lower part of the statue in a junk collection point, and in late 1982 government officials of the Tibet Autonomous Region found the upper part of the statue in the Palace Museum (the Forbidden City ) in Beijing , which ended up there the Cultural Revolution had been spent. The statue was reassembled or reconstructed under the supervision of the 10th Panchen Lama and re-inaugurated in 1985.

Meaning of the name

One explanation says that the Tibetan name 'Ra-mo-che' means "big goat". This is based on a legend according to which a goat helped to fill up and drain a lake that is said to have originally been on the site of today's temple.

In fact, when explaining the meaning of the word, it must be taken into account that the old name of Lhasa (Tib .: Ra-sa ) was "fenced goat place" and 'Ramoche' should therefore have referred to nothing more than a large goat pasture.

The Chinese name of the Ramoche Temple, 'Xiǎozhāo Sì' 小昭寺, has a close connection with the Jokhang Temple, in Chinese 'Dàzhāo Sì' 大昭寺. The word 'zhāo' 昭 is a phonetic takeover of the Tibetan 'Jowo' (Tib .: jo bo ; "Lord") and is a name of the Tathagata ; the two temples are called the Small and Large Tathagata Temples in Chinese.

Today's inventory of the temple

There are 27 lion statues in the assembly hall. Statues of Tsongkhapa and his most important disciples are displayed in a showcase . On the left wall there are statues of the three medical deities Guhyasamaja , Chakrasamvara and Bhairab . Upstairs there is a chapel in which the Buddha is depicted as the Naga king, surrounded by 16 sages; In another chapel there are representations of the eight Medicine Buddhas and an edition of the Kanjur (Tib .: bka '' gyur ), the first part of the Tibetan Canon, which contains writings with the words of the Buddha.

The Ramoche Temple has been on the list of monuments of the People's Republic of China (5-411) since 2001 .

literature

  • Wāng Yǒngpíng 汪永平: Lāsà jiànzhù wénhuà yíchǎn拉萨 建筑 文化遗产 ( Architectural cultural heritage in Lhasa. Nanjing, Dōngnán dàxué chūbǎnshè 东南 大学 出版社 2005), ISBN 7-5641-0024-9 .
  • Françoise Pommaret: Lhasa in the Seventeenth Century. The Capital of the Dalai Lamas. Brill, Leiden / Boston / Cologne 2003, ISBN 90-04-12866-2 .
  • Stephen Batchelor: The Tibet Guide. London 1987, ISBN 0-86171-046-0 .

Web links

Commons : Ramoche Temple  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Friedemann Berger : Faces of Tibet. Verlag für foreign language literature, Beijing 2002, ISBN 7-119-01343-2 , pp. 175–176.
Ramoche Temple (alternative names of the lemma)
ར་ མོ་ ཆེ་ གཙུག་ ལག་ ཁང༌; ra mo che gtsug lay khang; Ramoche Tsuglagkhang

Coordinates: 29 ° 39 ′ 31 ″  N , 91 ° 7 ′ 50 ″  E