Gilsangtap Pagoda of Haeinsa Temple, Hapcheon

This pagoda stands before the Iljumun, the entrance gate of Haeinsa Temple, and unlike the typical layout of temple buildings, it is set beside the road. It has a three-storey body raised on a two-tier base, a structure typical of stone pagodas of the Unified Silla period. The lower tier of the base rests on a foundation stone, and the upper tier is set upon it above a thin carved moulding. The upper tier of the base is carved from a single stone, a distinctive feature rarely seen in other pagodas. In the pagoda body, the first-storey body stone is larger than those of the second and third storeys, and the underside of each roof stone has five tiers of supporting brackets. The eaves of the roof stones run straight before curving up sharply at the four corners, giving the whole an airy, buoyant feel. Of the finial at the top, only the square base stone remains, the rest having been lost, and a hole for an iron mast can be seen bored into its upper surface. The relics recovered from the pagoda are held at the National Museum of Korea. Among them are 157 miniature pagodas; as such miniature pagodas are traditionally deposited in sets of ninety-nine or seventy-seven, nineteen appear to have been lost from an original total of 176. There are four sheets of the tapji (a record inscribed about the pagoda), famously composed by Choe Chi-won, a great literary figure of the late Unified Silla period. The text records that the pagoda was erected in 895, the ninth year of Queen Jinseong of Silla, to console the souls of monks who died defending the temple's treasures amid the turmoil of the late Unified Silla period. Overall, it is a representative small pagoda of the late Unified Silla period, displaying an elegant yet simple beauty, and the inscription on the tapji provides an important clue to the social and economic conditions of the time.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Hapcheon, Gyeongnam

Designation

Treasure · 보물