Fa-men Temple figured prominently in Tang times because emperors of the Tang Dynasty paid homage to the legendary "relic of the Buddha," or more specifically, "the finger-bone of the Buddha," that had been enshrined in the pagoda attached to this temple. Although the worship of this finger-bone relic predated Tang, it was practiced with much more fervor during the Tang. However, in the later part of the Tang Dynasty, the finger-bone relic disappeared as a result of the Huichang Suppression of Buddhism. Since its disappearance, Chinese Buddhists have tried to find it for many centuries but their efforts were of no avail. Surprisingly, it was rediscovered by Chinese archaeologists in 1984 in an unearthed crypt near the old pagoda site.
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