Butter flower in Ta'er Temple

Name of China's national intangible cultural heritage: butter flower of Ta'er Temple

Applicant: Huangzhong County, Qinghai Province

Item No.: 347

Project No.: Ⅶ - 48

Time of publication: 2006 (the first batch)

Category: traditional art

Region: Qinghai Province

Type: new item

Applicant: Huangzhong County, Qinghai Province

Protection unit: Management Committee of Ta'er temple, Huangzhong County, Qinghai Province

Brief introduction of butter flower in Ta'er Temple

Applicant: Huangzhong County, Qinghai Province

Ta'er temple is located in Lianhua Mountain in the south of lushar town in Huangzhong County, Qinghai Province, 25 kilometers away from Xining. It is the first batch of national key cultural relics protection units announced by the State Council. The temple is called "gunben xianbalin" in Tibetan, which means "Shiwan Buddha body cishizhou", referred to as "gunben", and "Ta'er Temple" in Chinese. Butter flower is a kind of special skill of using butter to shape statues. It is one of the "three wonders of Ta'er Temple" (butter flower, mural and embroidery).

Butter flower originated from Bon religion in Tibet. It is a small decal on the food supply. According to another legend, Princess Wencheng came to Tibet in 641, brought a 12-year-old statue of Sakyamuni and offered it to the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa. The Tubo people made flowers with butter and offered them to the Buddha to show their reverence. Later, various Tibetan Buddhist temples used them one after another and regarded them as treasures of Buddha worship. Therefore, offering butter flowers became an important part of the first month praying Dharma Assembly. In the process of development, the shaping way, color, variety, content, theme and technology of butter flower are constantly changing. In 1409, when master zongkaba first launched the praying Dharma Assembly at the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa, he organized the production of large-scale three-dimensional figures of butter flowers for worship in front of the Buddha. Since then, the butter flower was introduced into the Ta'er temple, the birthplace of master zongkaba, where they learned from each other. On the 15th of the first month of every year, the bright moon rises and the lanterns begin to bloom. The annual Lantern Festival is held in Ta'er temple. People make and enjoy flowers and pray for good luck and peace, which has never stopped for hundreds of years.

There are six processes in the production of butter flower, including skeleton binding, tire making, plastic coating, gold beam drawing, hanging and polishing. The large-scale butter flowers in the temple are mainly religious themes (such as the story of Sakyamuni's birth, the twelve elements of Sakyamuni's life, the story of lianhuasheng's life, the story of zongkaba's life, etc.), as well as Tibetan opera, myths and legends, historical figures (such as Princess Wencheng's going to Tibet), and some unique small-scale butter flowers Oil flower. The raw material of butter is very particular. It is necessary to mix the old butter and fine plant ash, which were removed after the butter was molded last year, to form a tough black tire material. When molding, the temperature requirement is high and the production is difficult. As a whole, there are dozens of pavilions and pavilions with hundreds of characters and animals, ranging from Bodhisattva Vajra of one or two meters in size to flowers, birds, fish and insects of tens of millimeters in size. The combination of relief and round sculpture, the combination of characters and scenery, the combination of Buddha world and mortal world, the combination of dynamic and static, the continuous division of time and space, the complexity of objects but not chaos, and the unity of colors make people happy as the acme of perfection. A small band of more than ten people accompanied the show.

There are two institutions in Ta'er temple, namely "Shanghua yuan" and "Xiahua yuan", which are specialized in making butter flowers. Each institution has about 20 art monks. These art monks are generally admitted to hospital at the age of 15 or 16 and have been engaged in art all their lives. The technique of making butter flower is mainly handed down by mouth and hand, and handed down from master to apprentice. The top and bottom two flower yards were presided over by the director (called "Zhang Chi"), who decided the theme, composition, production division and other matters of the year. At present, the main inheritors of the technique of making butter flower in Ta'er temple are zaxinima, luozang Longzhu, gazang Jiacuo, Jiayang Xiere, Zhihua ruozi, etc.

After the religious reform in 1958, religious activities in Tibetan areas stopped and monks were sent out of the temple. By the time the production of butter flower was resumed in the 1980s, most of the famous monks had died one after another. It's very easy to deform and can't be preserved for a long time, which makes it difficult to get a fixed model in the inheritance of traditional skills. We should further strengthen the protection of the production technology of butter flower, so as to make this distinctive national handicraft survive in the world for a long time.