Hwaamsa Temple Pan Lotus Sutra vol. 4~7 held at Seondeoksa Temple

The Hwaamsa Temple Pan Lotus Sutra held at Seondeoksa Temple, kept in the Obaengnahan-jeon Hall (Hall of the Five Hundred Arhats) at Yeongwonsa Temple in Yeongsil, survives only as the volume covering chapters 4 to 7; of the original seven chapters bound in two volumes, the volume containing chapters 1 to 3 is missing. The text was transcribed over four years, from 1432 to 1435, by Seong Dal-saeng — grandfather of Seong Sam-mun, one of the Sayuksin, the "Six Martyred Ministers" — who wrote chapters 1 and 7, together with Im Hyo-in, who wrote chapters 2 to 4, and Jo Jeol, who wrote chapters 5 and 6. The blocks were then carved at Hwaamsa Temple over some eight years, from 1435 to 1442. In terms of physical form, taking the first page of chapter 1 as a reference, the border is a single frame on all four sides, and the printed area measures 13.7 cm wide by 21 cm high. There are no ruled column lines, and each half-page has ten lines of twenty characters each. Notably, the centrefold shows no fish-tail pattern, apparently reflecting the influence of Goryeo-period editions, bearing only the title character "法" (Beop, "Dharma") followed by the chapter and page numbers. This layout is one of the distinctive features found in editions transcribed by Seong Dal-saeng. The layout matches that of the original edition, although the front and back covers have been removed, apparently to place the volume inside a Buddha statue as part of its sacred contents; this in fact offers a valuable clue to its binding method. It is generally held that old Korean books were bound with five stitches, but the Seondeoksa edition clearly shows traces of having been bound with seven stitches and covered in silk, which is of particular interest. The Seondeoksa edition carries the same colophon as the original edition, but it is confirmed that the names of Seong Dal-saeng, Seong Seung and Seong Sam-mun have been removed. This indicates that, because Seong Seung and Seong Sam-mun were implicated in the "Sayuksin Incident" of 1456, the second year of King Sejo, these names were carved out and the text reprinted after the event; the volume is accordingly judged to be a later impression produced during the reign of King Seongjong. This copy of the Lotus Sutra was given to the monk Hakgyun in 1982 by the Venerable Goam, former Supreme Patriarch of the Jogye Order, while he was serving as officiating monk for the reconstruction of Seondeoksa Temple. After being designated as heritage it was kept at Seondeoksa Temple, before being moved and enshrined here at Yeongwonsa Temple in Yeongsil on 11 December 2007. The founding date of Yeongwonsa Temple in Yeongsil is unknown, but records that many eminent monks came to Yeongsil from early times to practise at sites such as Jonjaam Hermitage and Suhaenggul Cave suggest that hermitages have stood here since ancient days. In the early 1980s the Venerable Goam, who had served as Supreme Patriarch of the Jogye Order, visited the site and cleared the ruined hermitage grounds; it was later restored and sponsored by the lay Buddhist Choi Yong-ju and his wife.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Seogwipo, Jeju

Designation

Provincial Tangible Heritage · 시도유형문화유산