Longmen Monastery, Celestial Kings Hall  龍門寺天王殿

Building Information

The foundation of the Jin dynasty Celestial Kings Hall is made of stone with a height of 1.5 meters. The hall is three bays wide and four rafters deep with a single-eaves, overhanging-gable roof (xuanshan 懸山頂). The transverse structure of the building employes a four-rafter beam (sichuanfu 四椽栿) and the space is equally divided into two parts by central and eaves columns (fenxincao 分心槽). The central bay of the front facade has a panel door (banmen 板門) and the two secondary bays have straight lattice windows (zhilingchuang 直欞窗). The tops of the eaves pillars (yanzhu 檐柱) are narrowed showing entasis (juansha 卷殺). The front eaves pillars support 5-puzuo (鋪作) bracket sets (dougong 斗拱) with double slanted arms (xia’ang 下昂). There is only one intercolumnar bracket set (bujian puzuo 補間鋪作) in the central bay (dangxinjian 當心間), which is constructed with angled bracket arms (xiegong 斜栱). On the other hand, the back facade has a panel door in the central bay but no windows. The back eaves pillars only support single slanted arms (ang 昂) and single perpendicular bracket arms (huagong 華栱), however the central bay intercolumnar bracket also employs angled bracket arms. 1