June 22, 2021

Assistant Professor Jack Chia (NUS Department of History) was recently featured on “History Mysteries”, a documentary hosted by Adrian Pang, where he was interviewed on the history of the long lost One Thousand Buddha Hilltop Temple in Singapore.

The temple, more commonly known as the Thousand Buddhas Temple, was situated 80 metres above sea level on Washington Hill, or Telok Blangah Hill as we know it today. Just as how some temples are built on elevated planes so that devotees have to put in effort when climbing up in order to worship, devotees of the Thousand Buddhas Temple had to climb around a hundred steps to get to the summit. Dr Chia also mentioned that many religious sites are built on mountaintops as the isolated and quieter surroundings are more suitable for spiritual cultivation.

As its name suggests, the Thousand Buddhas Temple had thousands of images and statues of Buddha. One of the most famous status was that of Buddha seated with a seven-headed Naga coiled around him. Buddhists believe that the statue was a gift from the famous Wat Suthat Temple in Thailand.

The temple was founded by the late Venerable Cheng Yuan, president of the World Buddhist Society, and contained the World Buddhist Society’s prayer hall. It was built to commemorate the Shakyamuni Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, and its main feature was the huge Buddha statue located right next to it. The temple was very popular with locals and devotees would visit the temple to pay respects on the first and 15^th of the lunar month, as well as on Vesak Day.

In the 1970s, the World Buddhist Society was relocated to Alkaff Mansion, and in the 1980s, plans to redevelop Telok Blangah Hill and its surrounding areas caused the temple and its iconic giant Buddha statue to be demolished. Though the government compensated the temple after acquiring the land which it used to be on, the amount provided was not enough for the temple to be rebuilt in a new location. Over time, further knowledge on what eventually happened to the temple and the hundreds of statues it contained was no longer available.

Watch the video here.