PRECIOUS Buddhist relics from an ancient town in Qingpu District have been found.

The discovery was made when the foundations of a historic pagoda built in the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127) were unearthed in Qinglong Town, which served as Shanghai’s earliest port for foreign trade, Chen Jie, an archeologist with Shanghai Museum taking charge of the excavation, said yesterday.

The brick and stone foundation of Longping Temple Pagoda includes an underground vault in the middle of it, with many cultural relics stored inside.

The octagon foundation implies the pagoda, which has long since been destroyed, was bigger than all Shanghai’s 13 existing ancient pagodas, Shanghai Museum announced.

“It is estimated the pagoda had seven floors and was 50 meters tall, which was not only served as a religious site but also a navigation mark for merchant fleets sailing on the ancient Wusongjiang River to and from the sea,” said Chen.

The underground vault, a rectangular shape about 1.8 square meters and 1.4 meters tall. Two small pagodas of King Asoka and more than 10,000 historic coins, including the Wuzhu bronze coins dating back to Western Han Dynasty (206BC-25AD), were sprinkled on the stone floor of the vault.

Four small balls, three of them crystal, are of particular interest. They were found in boxes in the middle of the underground vault, according to the museum. The priceless relics were placed inside a bronze bottle sealed inside the four boxes made of wood, iron, gold and silver.

Some 40 other cultural relics, such as a gold sculpture of the Gautama Buddha, two crystal rosaries, silver tortoise, silver chopsticks, silver spoons and a bronze mirror, were found inside the boxes.

“The excavation not only reveals the prosperity of Shanghai during the Tang and Song dynasties, but also provides important resources for researches on China’s ancient architecture and Buddhism,” said Chen.

The museum unveiled the relics to media and invited citizens for the first time yesterday. They will now go back to the museum’s conservation center for further research.

Meanwhile, the pagoda foundation will be refilled with earth to protect the structure for future excavation and development, according to the museum.

Apart from the foundation, more than 6,000 porcelains of the Tang Dynasty (618-907) have been unearthed from the ancient town since the archeological excavation was launched in 2010.

Most of the porcelain teapots, bowls and jars from the town were made by famous southern Chinese kilns, such as Jingdezhen, and were often shipped to Japan and Korea.

The findings from Qinglong Town proved Shanghai had become a major port for foreign trade in the Tang Dynasty as well as a critical stop along the ancient Maritime Silk Road, Chen said.

Other findings include four furnaces in a 60-square-meter area thought to have been an iron workshop. Five ancient wells also were found nearby, and bronze mirrors, three-legged iron pots, silver hairpins and other objects were discovered in the wells.

Archeologists will continue excavating the ancient town, because it was important to Shanghai’s history, said cultural heritage officials.

Blessed with its sophisticated river network, Qinglong Town stood as a wealthy settlement along the southern Yangtze River during the Tang and the Song dynasties, but a war during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) sent the town into terminal decline.