User:Waygugin/Stone Flower Garland Sutra of Hwaeomsa

Several thousand fragments are all that remain of the stone walls engraved with the Flower Garland Sutra that adorned Jangnyukjeon Hall, once the principle edifice of Hwaeomsa, a Buddhist temple in Gurye County, South Korea. The hall was destroyed in 1593, during the Imjin War and for much of their subsequent history the fragments were badly preserved. Today the fragments are registered as Treasure 1040.

Origins
Although several records from the Joseon Dynasty state Hwaeomsa was first built during the reign of King Jinheung (r. 540–576), the closest contemporary evidence suggests it was not established until at least the mid-8th century, during the Unified Silla period. Hwaeomsa is listed as one of the "Ten Temples of the Flower Garland" (Hwaeomsipchal) in the Life of Master Fazang and the Memorabillia of the Three Kingdoms, indicating it was an influential monastery of the Flower Garland school, the most influential order of Silla Buddhism. The school first came to prominence in China as the Huayan school, and venerated the Flower Garland Sutra as its principle scripture.

Prior to the construction of Gakhwangjeon Hall in the 17th century, the principle edifice of Hwaeomsa was Jangnyukjeon Hall. The earliest description of the hall is found in Revised and Augmented Survey of the Geography of Korea (1530). Although not mentioning it by name, the passage clearly states that the hall's stone walls were engraved with the Flower Garland Sutra. In The Record of Bongseong (1797) it is written that King Munmu (r.661–681) commanded Uisang, founder of the Korean Flower Garland school, to build the hall and that he engraved the walls with the 80 fascicle sutra. This claim is clearly spurious, as the 80 fascicle sutra was not completed until 699, two to three years before Uisang's death.

According to Choi Chiwon (b.857), writing in a passage that has been preserved in the Bulguksa Chronicle (1740), the walls were carved in the 9th century from the 60 and 40 fascicle versions of the Flower Garland Sutra. The work was commissioned by King Jeonggang of Silla (r. 886–87) to pray for the soul of his elder brother, the late King Heongang (r. 875–86). Choi writes that the venerable Hyeonjun received permission from the king to organize the officialdom to carry out the work in conjunction with ministers of state. Great calligraphers were chosen from among the temple monks to write it. Kim Ilbo, Sunheon and Geumil assisted in writing the 60 fascicle sutra while the National Patriarch (Guktong) and the Monks Registrar (Seungnok) participated in writing the 40 fascicle sutra. This record though appears to confuse the carving of the Hwaeomsa stone sutra with that of another from the Silla period, especially as there is no evidence that the 40 fascicle was used. And since the other stone sutras from the period—the Diamond Sutra of Chilbulam Hermitage and the Lotus Sutra of Changnimsa Monastery—were probably crafted during the 8th century, it is likely that the Hwaeomsa stone sutra was as well, especially considering that much of the temple's stonework was also built around this period.

Structure
Stone remnants of Jangnyukjeon Hall were uncovered underneath the wooden flooring of Gakhwangjeon Hall during its colonial era restoration (1936 to 1941). A surviving diagram titled Pre-restoration ground plan of Gakhwangjeon Hall has been instructive in understanding the structure of Jangnyukjeon Hall. The diagram shows the condition of the stone platform, the interior floor, and the column bases. On the sides of the interior column bases remain traces of groves where the stone plates would have been inserted. When connected with each other they create a three by five bay interior space, suggesting this was where the sutra walls were once situated. This is substantiated by the ridge beam scroll (sangnyangmun) of Gakhwangjeon Hall which describes Jangnyukjeon Hall as being two stories high and that the sutra walls were erected at the center of the hall. The round hole at the the top center of each panel and the groves along the bottom were likely for used to insert the panels into the walls, indicating the stone panels were likely inserted into some kind of wooden frame.

Examples of stone scriptures can be found as early as the 5th century in Shandong, China, occurring in a variety of forms such as cliff carvings, stele, or panels, and is thought to have had considerable influence in Silla. The 석경산 장경동 (石经山藏经洞), in particular, which incorporated statues surrounded by stone sutra panels encased in a wooden frame, likely had a close connection to the stone sutra walls of Hwaeomsa.

The name Jangnyukjeon (丈六殿, Hall of Sixteen Feet), itself, indicates that a statue of the Buddha measuring about 4.8 m in height was enshrined inside. It appears to have stood on a stone altar measuring 3.5 m by 2.5 m accompanied by two smaller platforms about half that size on each side for Bodhisattvas.

Kim Bongnyeol writes that the size of the hall makes it likely it was used to give Buddhist sermons, while monks would also have been able to walk along its walls and memorize the sutra verses.

Fragments
There are 19,333 existing fragments of varying size and thickness, of which 13,115 have some form of writing or illustration. Each line of text measures 2 cm in height, with 28 characters per line. There are horizontal lines drawn between each row of text and vertical ones between each individual character. The illustrations include both relief and counter-relief imagery of Bodhisattvas, altars, animals, and plants. The fragments are composed of phyllite, while discoloration from fire damage has rendered their surfaces blue, gray, crimson, or dark brown.

Lee Song-jae argues that the text is the 60 fascicle version of the Flower Garland Sutra, the walls consisting of columns of eight panels arranged one on top of the other. He calculates that each panel measured 52 cm in height, making for a total columnar height of about 416 cm, which probably bore some relation to the height of the main altar statue.

Calligraphy
The act of engraving of scripture in stone was an ascetic practice for attaining merit. Copyists would engrave each character while in a pious position. As such it was similar to the creation of a pagoda or statue, with the calligraphy showing great regularity in the brushstrokes and structure. However in the process of copying such a vast quantity of scripture, the work does appear to have been rushed in some area and many characters are joined. The smallest characters appear to have been carved more carelessly, and there is also difference in the brushstrokes depending on the skill of the copyist.

According to Lee, the stroke endings are conspicuously deeper that the beginnings, a condition known as jwagyeonujung (左輕右重). As a result of this, characters are off-center. To overcome this effect, the carvers naturally made the ending part of the strokes deeper.