Sumajejeon Hall of Donghwasa Temple, Daegu

Sumajejeon Hall of Donghwasa Temple, Daegu, was built in 1465, the eleventh year of King Sejo, and records state that it was rebuilt in 1702, the twenty-eighth year of King Sukjong, after the Japanese invasions of 1592–1598. The surviving structure combines building techniques from after the seventeenth century with earlier, archaic methods, matching this recorded history and confirming the dates of its construction. Sumajejeon Hall is a Buddhist worship hall measuring a single bay on each side, with dapo-style bracket sets and a matbae (gable) roof; it is currently the only surviving example in Korea of a single-bay, dapo-style hall with a gable roof. As a gable-roofed hall it has no bracket sets on its sides, yet it does have a pyeongbang (a horizontal beam linking the columns) and corner bracket clusters (jeongakpo) at the hip corners — a rare feature suggesting that an earlier dapo-style hip-and-gable (paljak) roofed building may have been dismantled and rebuilt using some of its original members. This raises the possibility of reconstructing the hall's history in more detail: built in 1465 as a dapo-style hip-and-gable roofed hall, it was damaged during the Japanese invasions, then dismantled in 1702 and rebuilt reusing some of its original members. As with Geungnakjeon Hall, the bracket design of Sumajejeon Hall uses an ox-head (gyodu) shape at the ends of the bracket arms, both front and back and inside and outside, without forming suseo or angseo (upturned bracket-arm ends). This bracket design is a regional characteristic concentrated in the Yeongnam region around Palgongsan Mountain during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, showing that the hall was built by the same lineage of craftsmen active in the area at the time. The roof-framing technique is also worth noting. Overall the hall is a samryangga (three-purlin frame), yet at first glance it appears to be the double-beam structure of an oryangga (five-purlin frame): the inner end of the seungdu, which supports the inner purlin, is extended inward and supported below by a plank-shaped king post (pandaegong), above which a ridge beam (jongbo) is placed to support the ridge purlin (jongdori). In fact, however, it is an unusual variant of the samryangga with a single set of rafters and no middle purlin. As a result, the horizontal alignment between the front and rear purlins is strengthened, producing an original structure that supports the ridge purlin more stably. This roof-framing technique is not found in any other heritage building, and stands as an important example of the diversity of traditional timber roof-framing methods. It is also worth noting that an archaic pair of raking struts (sotseulhapjang) installed between the ridge purlin and the inner purlin survives.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Dong-gu, Daegu

Designation

Treasure · 보물