User:Urashimataro/ARS
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Japanese Buddhist temple can vary greatly in size and structure, but it is usually composed of several buildings having different name, structure and function, one or more gardens, a cemetery, and often a pond and a small Shinto shrine to the temple's tutelary kami. The name, structure and function of its parts depend largely, but not exclusively, on the sect (Jōdo, Nichiren, Rinzai, Sōtō, Tendai, and so on) the temple belongs to. A layout it often adopts is the shichidō garan (七堂伽藍, seven building garan), or "seven-building garan, where garan is Japanese for sougya ranma, or Sanskrit for "garden for monks". Also called sōen (僧園, lit. monk garden), shūen (衆園, lit. public garden) or shōja (精舎), a garan was originally just a park where monks congregated, but in Japan the term later came to mean temple if it consisted of seven buildings, hence the name.
The word appears for the first time in the sixth century but, because of the hostility of supporters of local kami beliefs towards Buddhism, no monastery of the era survives, and we don't know what they were like. Thanks to the Nihon Shoki, we do know that an architect, six Buddhist and an image maker from the Korean kingdom of Paekche came to Japan in 577 specifically to teach the Japanese about the arrangement of monasteries and temples. For example, the layout of Osaka's Shitennō-ji is a copy of Chongyimsa temple in Puyo, capital of Paekche from 538 to 663.