Linh Tien Tu is a temple of the ancient Vietnamese village of Tu Ky. Judging from the content of a Chinese stele with the 8th Chinh Hoa date of the Le Trung Hung dynasty (1687) still preserved here, it can be guessed that the pagoda was built around the same time as composing and engraving on the stele. . It should be remembered that that was the period after Buddhism in Tonkin was gradually recovering from decline with new Zen sects.
Tu Ky village, abbreviated as Tu village, named Nom Dinh Gach, was originally located in a land with a long history and strategic defensive position, located in front of important waterway routes connecting Thang Long citadel with the southern area. The village’s specialty is vermicelli, formerly Tu Ky vermicelli sold throughout Ha Thanh markets and is easy to recognize because it is wrapped in lotus leaves, which used to be a lot in Dam Dai.
Tu Ky Pagoda is located on a rather high and wide mound in the east of Linh Dam Lake. Going along from Phap Van pagoda to the south along Ngoc Hoi street or passing along the 3rd ring road connecting with Thanh Tri bridge, from afar, visitors can recognize the pagoda’s special big-bottomed stupa, although the top The tower is only slightly higher than the surrounding roofs.
In 1992, the Ministry of Culture and Information ranked the pagoda as a National Art and Architecture Monument.
Over the past 300 years, Tu Ky pagoda has been repaired and embellished many times. In the 2010s, the temple was restored to a great extent and built a number of new items. The current abbot of the temple is nun Dam Vinh.
ARCHITECTURE
The pagoda is made in the traditional style with a full range of main components, from the outside to the inside, including: the three gates, the stele house, the front hall, the upper palace, the ancestral house, the mother house, the stupa, the garden, the back house. After rebuilding and restoring from the mid-twentieth century to the present, in general, the shape of the pagoda and the adjacent village communal house right next to it still retains the artistic and architectural style of the Nguyen Dynasty.
The face of Tu Ky pagoda looks slightly to the east, closes to the North-South railway and opens to National Highway 1A. After rebuilding at the end of 2013, the gate of Tam Quan is much taller than before. The top of the main roof has a chakra, all 24 heads of the sword are decorated with a dragon worshiping phoenix. The bell tower is on both sides, and in the middle is a statue of Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva, whose heavenly eyes are shielded from front and back by two books of letters. Surrounding the pagoda is a series of flower walls, roofed with green pipe tiles.
Behind the gate is a rather large yard paved with flat stone, the middle path leads directly to the front of the street. To the right of the yard is the gable of the communal house of Tu Ky village. On the left side of the yard there is a small stone tower 4 floors high and a white stone statue of Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara… Fading behind the green branches are two communal houses with a roof of matches, in each house there is a plate. beer on the back of a stone turtle.
The front street is 5 compartments wide, built in the style of 2 floors, 8 roofs are divided into upper and lower quartiles, the gable is on the arm of the throne, the truss structure is stacked with the gong rack. The upper hall is the highest, with 3 floors and 12 roofs, connected to the front street according to the mallet structure. From the front yard, guests can go directly upstairs through a dragon platform with very wide steps in the middle. The two houses on either side are connected to the Three Treasures building by a corridor without a roof.
The backyard adjacent to the steps of the Ancestral Church was also built in the style of a gable, simple architecture with new materials after the renovation in 1993. The Mother Church is 5 compartments wide. To the right of the courtyard is a wide octagonal bottom stupa, 9 floors high, with a green tiled roof with modern patterns and heads. Behind the tower there is another statue of Avalokitesvara standing in the middle of a young garden on the path leading to the new Zen hall, built on 2 floors and 8 very large roofs with back doors opening to Linh Duong street to the northwest of the temple. .
artifact
As mentioned, most of the works of Tu Ky Pagoda are very new, contrasting with the more than 300 years old antiquities. The pagoda currently preserves about 20 round statues, created from the 17th century to the present. The most notable is the wooden statue in the 3rd layer of the upper hall, carving Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara on a lotus throne, wearing a cap, hands clasped lotus bud, 17 other hands radiating evenly from both sides. Two Bodhisattva statues wearing crowns on either side are also meditating, one hand outstretched in front of their chest. The whole body and pedestal of the statue are painted ornately painted in the artistic style of the XVIII-XIX centuries.
There is also a statue of a queen sitting in a cave carved with a woman with her hair pulled up, her head covered with three lotus petals; Now it has been changed from the paint color to blue, located near the Mausoleum. According to the three gods in the temple, this is the image of the grandmother of the palace, surnamed Nguyen, whose name is Dieu Tam or Vien Kinh. Three deities painted in gold and painted in gold, carved with the image of the sun, placed on a demon’s foot lotus pedestal. All are also in the style of art of the XVIII-XIX centuries.
Next to the back wall of the forecourt hangs a rather large bell engraved with 4 Chinese characters “Linh Tien Tu Chung”, cast in the year of Thieu Tri (1841). In addition to the oldest stele with the name Chinh Hoa 8 (1687), the pagoda also keeps a stele with the first Thieu Tri era (1841), a Duy Tan stele and a Khai Dinh stele. 9 (1924).
Source: Collected internet.