Famen Temple

Driving westward from Xi'an for about 100 km along the old Silk road, the traveler comes up to a 13-tiered octagonal pagoda on the plain north of the county town of Fufeng under the municipality of Baoji. That is a stupa built in the second century by the Indian King Asoka to keep a finger relic of the Buddha.

The temple in which the pagoda stands used to be an imperial temple from dynasty to dynasty. In the course of rebuilding the pagoda in 1987, an underground vault was discovered beneath the foundation of the pagoda and a large amount of Buddhist relics were found. They include four finger sarira relics, 121 gold and silver articles, 17 glass articles, 16 pieces of olive green porcelain, more than 700 pieces of silk fabrics, 104 Buddhist figurines, hundreds of volumes of Buddhist scripture and many stone carvings and steles.