Avatamsaka Sutra (The Flower Garland Sutra), Zhou Version, the First Tripitaka Koreana Edition, Volume 1

The Great Expansive Buddha Flower Garland Sutra, the Avatamsaka Sutra, is known for short as the Hwaeomgyeong. The fundamental scripture of the Hwaeom school, whose central teaching is that the Buddha and sentient beings are not two but one, it is one of the sutras that, with the Lotus Sutra, did most to shape Korean Buddhist thought. This is one volume of the first Tripitaka Koreana, carved under King Hyeonjong of Goryeo (r. 1011–1031) in the hope that the power of the Buddha would repel the Khitan invasions: volume 1 of the eighty-volume Zhou version translated by Shikshananda of Tang. It is a woodblock print on mulberry paper, kept rolled as a scroll, 28.5 cm high and 1,223.5 cm long overall. The first Tripitaka differs in several ways from the later Haeinsa Tripitaka (the second carving, or Tripitaka Koreana). Its cutting is precise, but its characters per line differ from Haeinsa's, it has no printing records, and taboo avoidances (omitting a stroke of, or replacing, characters in the names of past kings, out of reverence) and abbreviated characters appear here and there. It usually numbers its sheets with the character jang (丈) or pok (幅), where the Haeinsa edition uses jang (張) throughout. Here too the first edition's features show: a stroke missing from 敬, 23 lines of 14 characters to the sheet against Haeinsa's 24 of 17, sheets numbered with 丈, and no printing record. The only volume 1 among the first-edition copies of the sutra in Korea, it is a precious record of the first Tripitaka as printed around the eleventh century.

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Visitor information: Korea Tourism Organization · KOGL Type 1

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Region

Yongin, Gyeonggi

Designation

National Treasure · 국보