Sakya monastery is located in Sakya County, Shigatse region. Zhong Qu river flows through the temple, the temple is naturally divided into the north and south two temples, the north temple buildings have collapsed abandoned, the south temple still exists, Because the temple walls are painted with red, white and black patterns representing Manjushri, Guanyin and vajra bodhisattva, the temple is also known as the flower temple, and the Sakya school is also known as the flower school. The temple looks like a huge castle surrounded by a 13-meter-high city wall, with a square plan and an area of 15,000 square meters.
The main building in the temple is the grand sutra hall. It is known for its four famous pillars. On the west side of the grand sutra hall, there are 12 buddhas and 2 pagodas: the main one is Sakyamuni Buddha. There are many small statues under the big Buddha. The pillars and walls in the hall are painted in dark red. The west wall, south wall and north wall of the sutra hall are the sutras, which reach to the top of the temple through the rack. The sutras on the rack are more than 44,000 Buddhist classics, including the gold, silver and precious stone powder, which are made into ink and hand-written.
Sakya monastery every year holds a large or small number of dharma activities, One of the larger scale, unique characteristics to calculate summer and winter’s fete dance of Tha Kung. Sakya Monastery’s summer god dance in the Tibetan calendar is in July, and winter god dance in the Tibetan calendar is on November 19. During the performance, the dancers all wore the protective deities of Sakya Monastery and various kinds of animal-like masks. After the festival, all masks are to be hung in the temple till the next year, year after year.
Sakya temple has an important position in Chinese history and Tibetan Buddhist history. It is the first monastery of the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism and the central temple of the Sakya school. There are rich historical, religious, architectural and artistic relics in the temple, especially a large number of precious books and murals, comparable to Dunhuang literature art, so Sakya monastery is also known as “the second Dunhuang”.
Bam Devil Female
Miniature Bam masks said to have been consecrated by bam’s family, hang from wooden pillars in the protective shrine of the Sakya monastery in Shigatse, Tibet. According to the folk saying, BAM is a devil female who lives in the world and eats human flesh and blood. In Sakya, there was bam alive, and there was bam dead. Sakya Monastery has two ways to identify the bam, one is to burn a kind of animal fat in the simmer, this fat-burning will emit a strange smell, some women can not stand will scream out, then you can identify the person is bam. The other is that when the living Buddha touches the top, the living Buddha will give each person a red rope of long life. If the living Buddha gives any woman a black rope of long life, it means that the woman is henceforth bam. Every woman who is identified as bam should give money and other things to Sakya Monastery every year, so bam is usually a rich woman. When the living bam died, she asked her family to report to the Sakya monastery. The temple would make a mask for her, dress her and then lock her in the temple dedicated to bam. Bam’s family sends bam clothes and shoes every year (the clothes are small, similar in size to children’s clothes, a symbol at this time). Now that the shrine to bam has been torn down, some concerned family members hang small masks on the pillars of the temple.
The mask used for the god dance
Sakya monastery every year holds a large or small number of dharma activities, One of the larger scale, unique characteristics to calculate summer and winter’s fete dance of Tha Kung. Sakya Monastery summer god dance in the Tibetan calendar in July, winter god dance in the Tibetan calendar on November 19. During the performance, the dancers all wore the protective deities of Sakya Monastery and various kinds of animal-like masks.
After the annual fete dance of Tha Kung, all masks are to be hung in the temple till the next year, year after year. Some temples do not have the historical heritage of the god dance, but there are still a lot of masks, they have long hung above the temple of protection, the same role with the god dance.
