The Temple located in the northeastern suburbs of Nanjing, on the east of Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum was first built in 515 under the reign of the Liang dynasty(502-557). Since Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang chose the place to be his mausoleum and then the temple was moved to the present place. The temple was named by Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang himself. It used to be large and covered an area of over 30 hectares. Later it was destroyed in warfare under the reign of Emperor Xianfeng and rebuilt under the reign of Emperor Tongzhi in the Qing Dynasty(1644-1911). In the temple, except for Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, Monk Xuanzang and his relic were enshrined and worshiped.
Among the 70 temples, it's the only one to be preserved today. Covering an area of about 500 Mu and accommodating over thousand monks, the Temple was very large in scale in the Ming Dynasty. However, except the Beamless Hall, it's a pity that all the palaces were destroyed by the wars taken place in the period of emperor Xian Feng of the Qing Dynasty.
Beamless Hall (Wuliang Hall) lies within the Linggu Temple. It was constructed in 1831, and is 22 meters high and 53.8 meters wide. The hall enjoys high reputation for its special architectural techniques. It has three archways on the front and rear sides respectively. The structure was built with bricks from the bottom to the top entirely, without a piece of wood or a single nail. Thus it was called Wuliang Hall, since Wuliang means beamless. It happens that the hall originally enshrined Amitayus (Buddha of Infinite Life) whose Chinese name pronounces the same with Wuliang. Later in 1928, the hall was turned into the memorial hall of soldiers sacrificed in the War of Northern Expedition(1926-1927). More than 30,000 soldiers were enshrined. In November 1928, the government of Nationalist Party decided to reconstructed the Linggu Temple with the cemetery for commemorating the military officers and men falling in the battles of the Northern Expedition (1926-1927). More than 33,000 soldiers' names were carved on the hall.
