It was usually said that the big bell had been cast in the
second year of the reign of Yongle (1404). Another erroneous
argument is that the big bell was cast after the death of Emperor
Yongle. There is no scientific ground for the two arguments. The
former argument is based on the verse "cast in the second year of
Yongle" in the Ode to the Big Bell written by Shen Deqian, a
poet of the Qing Dynasty. When we investigated in Nanjing the ties
between the Hongwu Bell and the Yongle Bell, we learned from
historical data that when Shen Deqian arrived in Nanjing, the
Hongwu Bell there had been lying on the ground for many years. Shen
Deqian formed a wrong opinion that the bell had been cast in the
second year of the reign of Yongle. The bell was located
northwest of the Jiming (Cockcrow) Temple, Nanjing. In the Ode
to the Big Bell, Shen Deqian described the bell of the Big
Bell Temple in Beijing and then wrote about the ties between the
bell in Nanjing and the bell in Beijing:
???
???? "I think of
the place northwest of the Cockcrow.
????????????
The big bell is sleeping on the earth overgrown with
weeds.
??????
????? It was cast in the second year of
Yongle
???????????
?To take Heavenly credit for merits at two places."
Later people took this as the only ground to determine the year
when the big bell of the Big Bell Temple was cast. They drew the
wrong conclusion that the bell was cast in the second year of the
reign of Yongle.
???
We have learned from many historical documents that the Yongle
Bell was "cast in the days of Emperor Wen (namely, Emperor
Yongle)," "the bell was cast in the days of Emperor Chengzu (the
dynastic title of Emperor Yongle)," and the Yongle Bell was "an
imperial bell of Emperor Wen." Cast on the east wall of the Yongle
Bell was "made on an auspicious day of the reign of Yongle of Great
Ming," an inscription indicating that the bell was made by imperial
order. It is thus clear that the bell was cast undoubtedly during
the reign of Yongle.
???
Is it possible to reach an opinion on the exact year when the
big bell was cast?
In 1980, staff members of the museum found from the
Jiaxing Edition of Tripitaka that the 188th case of the
book was the Sutra of the Names of Buddha, Bhagavat,
Tathagata, Bodhisattva, Arya and Miracle - working Buddhists
(thereafter referred to as the Sutra of Names). The sutra
consists of 40 fascicles. The first 20 fascicles (to-tailing more
than 100,000 characters) were cast on the main part of the Yongle
Bell. The sutra was completed in the 15th year of the reign of
Yongle by Emperor Yongle's order. The preface and postscript of the
Sutra of Names were written in the 15th year of the reign
of Yongle. The block - printed edition of the Sutra of
Names made by Emperor Yongle's order was found later. Its
content is identical to what has been collected in the Jiaxing
Edition of Tripitaka. So the Yongle Bell should not have been
cast before the 15th year of the reign of Yongle. Judging from the
technological level of casting and the difficulties involved in the
work, we may conclude that it took at least two or three years to
prepare the mould of the Yongle Bell. The casting was done at one
stroke, but the whole process from the first-phase preparations to
the later - stage work required three to five years for the birth
of such a superb big bell. An acceptable assertion is that "the
Yongle Bell was cast around the 18th year of Yongle (1420)."