Legend

　　The establishment of Ta’er Temple is closely related to the birth of religious gurus Tsongkhapa.
　　It is said that six hundred years ago, the Huangyuan county seat Lushaer was a deserted grassland. With abundant water and lush grass, it was a perfect place for herd. Five or six miles northwest of Lushaer was Huangshuwan Village of Ganhetan Town, where was a flat pasture as well. Tsongkhapa’s father and mother lived in a Tibetan tent there for grazing.
　　Tsongkhapa’s family had a female yak which was grazed on a beach nearby because it was pregnant. However, it always broke rein to eat grass on the grassland of Lushaer, and then lay down there when it had eaten enough and was unwilling to go home. As a result, the couple had to travel a long distance to look for it. The husband worried that his pregnant wife would wear out to take such trouble, so he moved their tent to the Lotus Mountain at Lushaer and settled down.
　　One day, the wife felt a great pain in her abdomen when grazing livestock at the col. She lashed about on the ground in a violent pain and finally fainted, with sweat oozeing from her forehead. When she came round, she found a golden light streaked up from the ground while the baby was born. The baby was Tsongkhapa.
　　The wife cut the umbilical cord with her Tibetan knife, held the baby in her fur pelisse and then buried the afterbirth in the soil. Curiously, after a while a bodhi tree that had never appeared in the region sprang up from the ground where the afterbirth was buried. On every leaf on the flourishing bodhi tree had a “Maitreya Buddha” which, however, were invisible to those who were not pure-hearted.


　　





　Afterwards, Tsongkhapa became a monk in a temple. He studied so hard that he was proficient in Buddhist sutras by the age of 16. He had left home for 6 years to study sutras in Tibet, which made his mother miss him very much. The old woman cut a tuft of her white hair and sent to her son with a letter, in hope to see him. In the letter, the old woman told her son about the bodhi tree. After reading the letter from his mother, Tsongkhapa thought of going home but soon dropped the idea when considering his unfinished study.
　　Tsongkhapa sent a letter back to his mother with a self-portrait drawn with his noseblood. The letter read, “I’m sorry I am too busy to go home. If you can build a pagoda at the place where I was born with the bodhi tree and the hundreds of thousands of Maitreya Buddha as the garbha, it will not only release your missing sickness, but is benefit to the prosperity of Buddhism there.”
　　After receiving her son’s self-portrait and letter, the woman built a pagoda according to his requirement, which turned out to be the Ta’e Temple afterwards with the joint efforts of Buddhist pilgrims