Transcription of Mahavaipulya purnabudha Sutra (The Complete Enlightenment Sutra) in Gold on Oak Paper

The Mahavaipulya purnabudha Sutra, also known for short as the 'Complete Enlightenment Sutra', was adopted as a set text in the curriculum of Korean Buddhist monks and served as a guide to Buddhist practice. In Korea it gained wide popularity after Jinul of Goryeo came to revere it deeply and gave it the name 'Sutra of Final Meaning'. This transcription, the Mahavaipulya purnabudha Sutra in Gold on Oak Paper, was made by carefully copying the sutra in gold characters on brown paper, and adorned splendidly and solemnly with a frontispiece illustration (byeonsangdo) summarising its content. It is in a format that unfolds like a folding screen, with the first and second scrolls bound together into a single volume; when folded it measures 26.5 cm in height and 11.5 cm in width. According to its colophon, it was produced in 1357, the sixth year of King Gongmin of Goryeo, by Choe Jeok, Kim Cheong and others, to pray for the repose of the soul of a man named Gyehang. At the front of the book, guardian deity figures and a frontispiece illustration are painted in gold, and the main text includes the Dharma Talk on the Precept of No-Birth by the monk Jigong and the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch by Huineng. The calligrapher is unknown, and the overall workmanship is somewhat inferior, but it is regarded as an important record that retains the proper form of Goryeo-period Buddhist sutras.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Gwanak-gu, Seoul

Designation

Treasure · 보물