by Ilyon
On the seventh of September in the third year of T'ien-shou, in the year of the dragon (692), King Hyoso of Silla made Puryerang the son of Taehyon-Salch'an his favorite Hwarang and placed a thousand youths under his command. Among these youths An Sang became his lieutenant and intimate follower.
In March of the second year of Chang-shou, in the year of the snake (693), Puryerang led his youthful followers on a pleasure trip to Kumnan (T'ongch'on in Kangwon Province). But when the party arrived at a point north of Puk-myong (near Wonsan Bay) it was attacked by a band of armed thieves and Puryerang was taken captive. (These appear to have been a group of Malgal, a fierce nomadic tribe of the north.) There were so many of them that the Silla youths were overwhelmed and had to flee for their lives. But An Sang stayed and followed his master into the enemy camp. This happened on March 11.
The King was dismayed. He said to his courtiers, “Since my royal father handed down the sacred flute to me, I have kept it safe in the High Heaven Vault together with the Hyon-gum (a harp with six silk strings), which protect us from all evils with their holy might. Why has my favorite Hwarang fallen into the hands of thieves?”
While His Majesty thus lamented, a sea of clouds appeared in the sky and shrouded the High Heaven Vault. More troubled still, the King ordered his servants to examine it to see if anything was amiss. Sure enough the two treasures—the harp and the flute—had disappeared. The King's grief knew no bounds. “One misfortune rides on the neck of another,” he exclaimed. “First I lost my favorite Hwarang, and now I have lost the harp and flute, the most sacred possessions of my royal heritage and the dearest treasures of the nation. Ah, the sad day!” In great rage he imprisoned the five vault-keepers, including Kim Chong-ko.
In April the King offered a reward to anyone who would recover the harp and flute, together with a year's exemption from taxes in kind. Meanwhile, Puryerang's father and mother worshipped in the Golden Hall of Paengnyul-sa every night until the fifteenth of May, praying for the safe return of their son. On that night they found the harp and flute on the table of the incense-burner and Puryerang, attended by An Sang, standing behind the Buddha image. The old parents fell upon the neck of their beloved son weeping for joy, and asked him how he had returned.
“My honored parents,” he said, “when the enemy carried me away, they made me a cowherd of Taedo-kura, their chief, and I was set to caring for his cattle in the field of Taejo-rani. (Ilyon says there was also a rumor that he was ordered to watch cattle grazing in a meadow called Taemaya.) There a kind-looking monk holding a harp in one hand and a flute in the other appeared and said, 'My good lad, don't you feel homesick?'
“Partly overawed by his noble face and partly overcome with grateful emotion at his gentle words, I fell to my knees and answered, 'Honorable monk, carry me back to Kyongju. I long to see my King and my parents in my native land, a thousand li far away to the south.'
“'Come with me, my lad,' he interposed, and took me by the hand and led me to the seacoast, where I met An Sang once again. Here the monk broke the flute in two and handed each of us a piece, 'Ride on them!' he said, while he rode the harp. We flew high above the clouds and in a twinkling we had landed here.”
When all this was reported to the King he rejoiced exceedingly and sent out courtiers to receive Puryerang like a prince of the blood. So Puryerang repaired to the palace, taking the harp and flute with him.
The King praised his valor and good fortune, and graciously rewarded the flying monk from Paegnyul Temple with two sets of gold dishes each weighing fifty yang, five fine robes, 3,000 rolls (one roll was forty yards) of gray hempen cloth and 1,000 kyong of farmland to recompense the grace of the Buddha. Moreover, the King granted a general amnesty to all prisoners, promoted each official by three ranks, exempted the people from taxes in kind for three years, and transferred the abbot of the temple to a higher ranking monastery named Pong-song-sa.
Puryerang was made Tae-Kakkan (Prime Minister), his father Taehyon Ach'an was made Tae-tae Kakkan (Supreme Elder Statesman) and his mother Lady Yongbo became Princess of Kyongjong in Saryang-pu, while An Sang was made Chief Priest of the State. The five vault-keepers were all pardoned and promoted to the fifth grade in rank.
On the twelfth of June a comet appeared in the eastern sky, and on the seventeenth another in the west. The royal astrologer reported to the throne that these signs had appeared because the harp and flute had not been promoted to the fourth rank of the higher grade. The King therefore gave to the flute the title Man-man-p'a-p'a-sik-jok (the Flute to Calm Ten Thousand Times Ten Thousand Waves) instead of Man-p'a-sik-jok (the Flute to Calm Ten Thousand Waves), whereupon the comets disappeared.
There are endless tales of the wonders wrought by the Buddha of Paengnyul-sa, all of them indescribably interesting.
80. Minjang Temple
There was once a poor woman in Ugum-ni named Po-kae who had a son named Chang-ch'un. In order to improve their lot, the boy joined the crew of a merchant ship, and for a long time nothing was heard from him. His lonely old mother waited long in vain. Finally she visited Minjang Temple (which had been built with funds donated by Minjang Kakkan, a Kyongju nobleman), and prayed for seven days to the Kwanum Bodhisattva to bring her son home safe. As she rose from her prayers on the seventh day and raised her eyes to heaven, thinking of her son, there he was standing before her. She greeted him joyfully and asked him how he had come. Chang-ch'un related his adventures as follows.
“My good mother, we set sail before a favorable wind, but when we were out in the open sea, suddenly dark clouds hid the sky and a great storm came up, with foaming waves which tossed our ship about like a toy. Then a whirlpool appeared which seized the ship, and the valuable cargo and all the crew except myself went to the bottom. I managed to cling to a plank and floated on the waves until I was cast ashore on the coast of Wu in south China.
“A kind-hearted old man in that country took me in and set me to plowing his fields. One day a strange monk came to comfort me, and bade me walk with him as far as the bank of a stream. There he seized me in his arms, and leaped into the sky, flying higher and higher and then swooping low again until my feet lightly touched the ground. I was dazed, my head spun like a top, and my ears hummed like a hive of bees. But I heard the voices of men, women and children speaking in Korean, and, opening my eyes, found I was back in Silla.
“It was interesting to fly through the air, though I was a little frightened. We left Wu at the hour of the monkey (between three and five in the afternoon) and arrived here early in the hour of the dog (between eight and nine in the evening).”
Mother and son alike wept with gratitude. Hand in hand they bowed low before the image of the Kwanum Bodhisattva and thanked her again and again.
This event happened on the eighth of April (Buddha's birthday) in the fourth year of T'ien-pao, the year of the cock (745). When King Kyongdok heard this wonderful story, he bestowed rice fields and many other gifts on Minjang Temple.
81. Buddhist Relics Brought to Silla
(As has been pointed out before, these relics abounded in the Orient. The “sari” (sarira in Sanskrit) were generally small white balls, believed to be fragments of Buddha's bones and also believed, as we have seen earlier, to confer magic powers. The pagodas which are common features of Buddhist temples were usually built to house such relics. A genuine tooth of Buddha would have been extraordinarily rare and valuable.
(The Mongols invaded China early in the thirteenth century and eventually conquered her, taking the dynastic title Yuan. This involved domination of Korea also, and for a time the Koryo government resisted, moving the court from the capital (Kaesong) to Kanghwa Island at the mouth of the Han River. When at last resistance was seen to be futile the court returned to Kaesong in 1270. A few die-hards held out, first on Kanghwa and later on Cheju Island, but they were ultimately wiped out. Ilyon lived during the period of Mongol domination.)
According to the Samguk Sagi, in the third year of Ta-ch'ing, in t
he year of the snake (549), the Liang Emperor sent some sari (to Silla) with his envoy Shen-hu. In the seventeenth year of Chen-kuan, in the year of the Hare (643) Chajang Popsa, the great Silla monk, brought back a skull, a cheek-tooth of Buddha, and a red-striped, gold-embroidered robe which Buddha had worn. The sari were divided into three groups; some were enshrined in Hwangnyong Pagoda and some in Taehwa pagoda, and the rest were laid, together with the robe, on the two-story altar at T'ongdo Temple (near Pusan). The stone urn containing the sari on the upper story had a lid shaped like an inverted pot.
Tradition says that during the early days of Koryo a bold local magistrate on two occasions bowed before the altar and lifted the lid of the urn. The first time a large snake was seen coiled within and the second time there was a large toad crouching in the receptacle. No one dared touch it after that time.
More recently, general Kim I-saeng, accompanied by the court official Yusok, proceeded to the south at the command of the King (Kojong of Koryo) to take command of the army which was fighting the Mongol invaders east of the Naktong River. One day he visited the temple (T'ongdo-sa) and attempted to lift the lid of the urn with his bow, but was warned off by the chief monk lest the snake or the toad be still there. He then commanded his soldiers to lift the lid, and they obeyed. There was no snake or toad inside, but only a stone box enclosing a glass tube containing four sari. The tube was cracked, so Yusok, who was with the general, presented the temple with a crystal tube to replace it. This account was placed in the court diary for the year of the goat (1235), the fourth year after the removal of the court from Songdo (Kaesong) to Kanghwa Island during the Mongol invasions.
The old record says there were one hundred sari which were divided into three groups and preserved in three places, but in the present instance we find only four of them. This is not greatly to be wondered at, however, because the number of sari seen depends upon the seer.
Folk tales relate that when Hwangnyong Pagoda caught fire the stone vessel inside incurred a large spot on its side. (It still bears this mark.) The fire broke out in the third year of Ying-li of Liao, in the year of the ox (953), the fifth year of King Kwangjong of Koryo, the third time the pagoda burned. Chogye-Muui-ja (punning nickname for Hyetam, a monk who lived during the reigns of Kings Sinjong and Kojong of Koryo) lamented in a poem, “When the King Dragon's pagoda went up in flames, nothing was left after the spreading fire.”
After the years of Chin-yuan (1264) envoys from Yuan (i.e. from the Mongol court in China) and courtiers from the royal court at Songdo (Kaesong) worshipped the sari urn at T'ongdo-sa more frequently than ever, while pilgrims thronged the temple precincts to see the famous relics. It was found that only the four genuine sari had survived, while the counterfeit ones had been crushed to powder and were scattered outside the urn, spreading a wonderful perfume to the four winds.
In the fifth year of T'ang Ta-chung, in the year of the goat (851), Won Hong, a Koryo (obvious mistake for Silla) envoy brought back a cheek-tooth of Buddha from China. Nobody now knows the whereabouts of this tooth, but it is said to have arrived during the reign of King Munsong of Silla (839-856).
In the first year of Hou-T'ang Tung-kuang, in the year of the goat (923), when T'aejo (the founder) of Koryo had been on the throne for six years, Yun Chil, a Koryo envoy, brought back from China the images of the Five Hundred Nahans (disciples of Buddha), and they were placed in Sinkwang temple on Mt. Puksung. In the last year of Ta-Sung Hsuan-huo, in the year of the hare (1119), when King Yejong had been on the throne for fifteen years, two Koryo tribute envoys, Chong Kuk-yong and Yi Chi-mi, brought some cheek-teeth of Buddha from China. These were enshrined in the inner palace of the King.
According to folktales, in the old days, when the famous Silla monk Uisang Popsa was studying under Chih-yen Tsun-tzu at Chih-sang Temple on the South Mountain of Changan, the T'ang capital, there was a holy man named Hsuan-lu-shu in a neighboring monastery. He subsisted on provision which were prepared and sent down from heaven each time he performed the Buddhist service for the dead. One day Hsuan-lu-shu invited Uisang to participate in the ceremony, and the Silla monk solemnly took his place in the Golden Hall. But the food from heaven did not appear, and after waiting a long time Uisang rose and departed with an empty bowl.
When Uisang had gone, the angel came down from heaven with the table spread with offerings from the heavenly emperor as usual. On being asked why he was so late, the angel replied, “We were unable to gain access to your monastery because a company of heavenly spirits blocked the way.” From this Hsuan-lu-shu understood that Uisang was protected by heavenly guards, and admired his superior attainments. Leaving the heavenly food untouched, he invited both Chih-yen and Uisang to the services next day and told them what had happened.
Uisang said to his host in a gentle voice, “I have heard that one cheek-tooth of Buddha is being kept in the Chesok Temple in heaven. Since you are so much loved by the heavenly emperor, would you kindly ask him to bless us by sending that tooth to the human world?”
Hsuan-lu-shu forwarded Uisang's wish to heaven through the angel, and the heavenly emperor delivered the tooth of Buddha to Uisang on condition that it be returned after seven days. (This was not to be taken literally, as we shall see.) Uisang thanked heaven and kept the tooth in a sanctuary near the palace gate.
When Hui-tsung was on the throne of Ta-Sung (Sung Dynasty Emperor, 1100-1125), his people worshipped the left-way gods (i.e. were Taoists). They were encouraged by the yellow turbans (Taoist priests) to spread a prophecy that the “men of gold” would ruin the nation. Moreover, the yellow turbans bribed the royal astrologer to interpret this prophecy to the throne as meaning that the “men of gold” were the Buddhists, and that they were plotting the subversion of the state. The court was alarmed, and the Emperor contemplated suppressing Buddhism, massacring the monks, burning the Buddhist scriptures, and placing the tooth of Buddha on a small boat to drift away on the sea.
A diplomatic mission from Koryo was visiting China at this time. When they learned of this situation, they bribed the ship's captain with fifty sticks of “heaven flower” antlers and 300 rolls of china-grass to give them the tooth of Buddha. This he did, and they returned and presented the tooth to the King. The King (Yejong) was greatly rejoiced, and enshrined the tooth in the Left Hall of the Palace of Ten Saints, under lock and key, with incense-burning lanterns hung at the door-posts, and worshipped it whenever he visited this palace.
In the nineteenth year of King Kojong (1232), when the court moved to Kanghwa Island, the tooth of Buddha was left behind in the hurry and confusion of departure. In April of the year of the monkey (1236) the King visited Sinhyo Temple to pray to Buddha for the peaceful repose of his patriotic warriors (who had been slain by the Mongols). On this occasion, Onkwang, the chief monk asked the king to pay his respects to Buddha's tooth. His Majesty ordered the grand chamberlain to look for it in the detached palace, but it was not there, whereupon Ch'oe Ch'ung, the court inspector, ordered his man Sol-sin to search the quarters of all the palace officers.
Kim Sung-no the grand chamberlain, then said, “Look in the Purple Gate Diary (the official record of daily events at court).” When this was checked, an entry was found to the effect that the chief eunuch Yi Paek-chon had the box containing Buddha's tooth. The eunuch, however, presented a receipt to the throne showing that Kim So-ryong, a palace officer, had the tooth. When this official was interrogated, he could say nothing of the matter. The King then approved a suggestion of Kim Sung-no and imprisoned all the temple and shrine officials who had been in service during the five years between Im-jin and Pyong-sin (i.e. during the past five years), but all investigation proved fruitless.
On the third night of the interrogations a great noise was heard in the garden of Kim So-ryong's house by an object apparently thrown over the wall from outside. In the torchlight it was found to be the vessel containing Buddha's tooth. It had originally been protected by layers of aloewood, gold, silver, glass and mother-of-
pearl, but now only the glass container remained, Kim So-ryong took the glass vessel to the palace and presented it to the King. The court authorities planned to behead Kim So-ryong and all of the temple and shrine officials for neglect of their duty to preserve Buddha's tooth. However, the Chinyang-pu presided over by Ch'oe Wu opposed killing so many people involved in Buddhist affairs, and all the prisoners were released. (The Ch'oe family had at this time established a sort of military dictatorship with the King reduced to a figurehead. The Chinyang-pu was a supra-government organ through which they ruled.)
The King had a special shrine built in the middle court of the palace (Sip-won-jon) in which he kept the holy treasure under strong guard. Then on an auspicious day he summoned thirty monks headed by Onkwang, the chief priest of Sinhyo-sa, to the palace for a ceremony to commemorate the happy event. The court secretary Ch'oe Hong, generals Ch'oe Kong-yon and Yi Yong-chang, eunuchs and tea officials each held the vessel containing the tooth on their heads in turn in order to pay the highest respect to it. There were some sari scattered around the tooth which the Chinyang-pu placed in a silver vessel on the altar of the shrine.
When these rites had been completed the King said to his courtiers, “When the tooth of Buddha was lost, I had four suspicions: first, that it had ascended to its place in heaven after the expiration of the seven-day period; second, that during the Mongol invasion the wonderworking treasure had moved to a sanctuary in a quieter Buddhist nation; third, that thieves had taken the valuable container and thrown the tooth away; and fourth, that some treasure and curio collector had stolen it and later repented, but too late to confess his guilt. Now I see that my fourth suspicion was correct.” And with these words the King burst into a loud cry and all the courtiers attending him wept in chorus and shouted “Long live the King!” Some of the more emotional ones burned their foreheads and forearms in token of their resolution to become monks. Kak-yu, the former chief priest of Chirim Temple, who was the ritualist of the inner palace temple at that time, was an eyewitness of these events and told me about them, and they are also recorded in the court annals.