Palcho Monastery Kumbum Stupa

CHINA, Tibet, Gyantse

Kumbum means One Hundred Thousand Buddhas in Tibetan. It is located in Palcho Monastery and was built in 1427 on a magnificent scale that is rarely seen among Tibetan Buddhist stupas. Its layout, form, and architecture are a fusion of Tibetan, Nepalese, and Indian architectural styles.
The stupa stands approximately 40 m high on a large, solid adobe base. The base has eight corners and four levels, with the first level higher than the rest. Each side of the base is 40 m long. The base is surrounded by a boundary wall, which gives the impression that the base has five levels. There is a niche housing a Buddha statue on each side of every level of the base.
The body of the stupa is solid and built in adobe brick; it is cylindrical with four doors. The doors are decorated with colored reliefs around the door frames. The body is surmounted by circular eaves supported by colorful bracket sets. The harmika has multiple corners as well as four doors leading to an inner chamber. Above each entrance is a pair of painted Buddha eyes, a feature found in the Buddhist stupas of Nepal. On top of the harmika there are short eaves supported by bracket sets. The thirteen stacked rings of the conical spire have a two-story chamber inside. Above the stacked rings there is another chamber followed by a canopy and the finial.
The stupa is mainly painted in white, except for the stacked rings, canopy, and the finial, which are in resplendent gilt bronze. There are altogether 108 doors and 76 shrines on the stupa, and each shrine contains Buddha statues and murals. It is said that there are more than 1,000 Buddha images, both sculpted and painted, and 55 types of Bodhisattva images, amounting to an estimated 100,000 images in total. For this reason, it is known as the Stupa of One Hundred Thousand Buddhas.