Why do temples use quadruped dragon totems?

Dragons are very spiritual in Buddhism. In Buddhist scriptures, dragons are divided into four categories, namely, Tianlong, Kong Long, Hailong and Lulong. Tianlong lives in heaven, is the patron saint of heaven, and is a living body between heaven and animals. This is a gift from heaven, and it is also a reward for animals. Buddhism's protector Tianlong is mostly like this. Empty dragons live in the air, land dragons live on land, and sea dragons live in the sea. Dragons in Buddhist scriptures can be deformed at will, and they can change as they want. Some of them, influenced by the Buddha, even became human and asked the monks to quit. Because the dragon's karma cannot be deformed at five o'clock (life, sleep, lust, resentment and death), the Buddha forbids non-human monks to become monks, and the main element of non-human is dragon. Dragons were very active in the Buddha's time, and most of them were surrendered by the Buddha and his disciples and converted to the Three Treasures, so they became the protectors of the Three Treasures. Dragons can move clouds, spread clouds and rain, be fickle and have magical powers, so Buddhism has the saying of "eight dragons" to protect the law.

However, because the dragon has a special symbolic significance in China and is a typical representative of secular power, generally only the royal family and nobles can use objects and decorations with dragons. As a special concern for religion, temples are allowed to have dragon columns, but their specifications have special restrictions. Five claw dragon is the highest level. Since the Yuan Dynasty, only the royal family can use the shape of the dragon with five claws, while the folk can only use the pattern of the dragon with three claws or four claws. Some people use five-claw dragons to decorate utensils and so on, which is illegal. In the Qing Dynasty, only emperors could use five-claw dragons, while princes and Beizi could only use four-claw and three-claw dragons. However, due to the special position and significance of dragons in Buddhism, they could not be used, so the ancient emperor allowed temples to have dragon totems, but not five-claw dragons. It is already a high specification to use a four-claw dragon.