Page:Illustrations of China and Its People vol. IV.pdf/18



WEST of the Yung-ho-kung, the great Lamasary, where a living Buddha rules, stands the college attached to the Confucian temple and known as the Kwo-tsze-keen. In this building, prior to the reign of Kien-lung, the ancient classics were expounded. But that monarch determined to imitate a much more ancient structure, and accordingly built the edifice known as the Pi-yung-kung, or Hall of the Classics, which we can here discern through the archway in Plate No. 9. The building is a square, and its three remaining sides correspond with that shown in the photograph. Its upper roof rests on a series of carved wooden brackets; pillars of wood also support the lower one, and the whole is crowned with a gilded copper ball. The base is marble, and the edifice is approached by four bridges of the same material, spanning a marble-walled moat, surrounded with white marble balustrades. The hall stands in the centre of a court, and on the right and left of it, in long open verandahs, there are about 200 tablets of upright stone. On these tablets the complete text of the nine classics has been engraved, an idea repeated from the Han and Tang dynasties, " each of which had a series of monuments engraved with the classics in the same way."

In front there is a yellow porcelain triple archway, or pai-Iau, having the inner portion of its arches built of white marble. It was through the centre of this structure that the picture here presented was taken.