Three-story Stone Pagoda in Ha-ri, Yeoju

This pagoda originally stood at an old temple site in the Ha-ri area, and was moved to its present site in 1958 together with the three-story pagoda from Chang-ri. It has a three-story body set on a single-tier platform. The platform is carved at the four corners of each side to resemble pillars, and around the centre of its topmost stone runs a two-tiered raised border carved to support the first-story body stone. The pagoda body has one body stone and one roof stone at each level, and shallow pillar-shaped carvings appear at each corner of the body stone. The underside of the roof stones has four tiers of eaves-supports, and the eaves run horizontally before curving gently upward at both corners. The overall regularity of the stone-assembling technique and the gentle sense of proportion suggest that the pagoda was built in the mid- rather than the early Goryeo period. When the pagoda was dismantled and moved, a distinctively shaped relic cavity (sarigong, a hollow for enshrining Buddhist relics) was discovered in the first-story body stone, which has attracted particular interest. A thin raised band 3 cm high runs around the centre of the top surface of the body stone, with two holes bored inside it, and the underside of the roof stone that meets it is also deeply hollowed out, as if made to correspond with it. This is unusual in that, rather than the common practice of placing a single deep cavity in the top surface of the body stone alone to hold the relics, it takes the opposite form.

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Where it is

Region

Yeoju, Gyeonggi

Designation

Treasure · 보물