Daebuljeongjubeomja Stele in Songgye-ri, Jecheon

In early February 1988, during road-widening works from Hansu-myeon, Songgye-ri, Jecheon (then Jewon-gun) to Deokjugol, the stele was discovered on a rice-paddy embankment at Songgye-ri, lot 147 (paddy field), near the entrance to the Wolgwangsa Temple Site. It was moved to the Woraksan National Park management office by the office's then director, Yi Sang-cheol. It has since been relocated to the grounds of Hadeokjusa Temple, where a stele pavilion was built over it. Only the first line of the inscription is carved in Chinese characters, reading "Daebuljeongju" (Great Buddha's Crown Dharani); from the second line onward the text is carved in Sanskrit (beomja) script, in eleven lines in total. The number of characters per line is uneven, and even the Sanskrit letters vary in size: the first four lines have eight characters each, lines five and six have seven characters, and lines seven to eleven have twelve to thirteen characters, with irregular letter sizes throughout. The total is estimated at around 105 characters. The stele is thought to date from the Goryeo period and to be connected with Wolgwangsa Temple. Wolgwangsa was the site of the stupa stele of Seon Master Wonrang (Treasure No. 360), showing that it had been a renowned temple of the Unified Silla period. The stele is a roughly square natural stone of poor-quality granite, 161 cm high and 163 cm wide, with rounded edges throughout. Its thickness is irregular at the top, ranging from 30 to 40 cm, and 28 cm at the bottom. The bottom surface in particular shows clear chisel marks, indicating that the stele originally stood on a base stone. Of the Sanskrit-inscription steles known in Korea to date, four are recorded in the Joseon Geumseok Chongnam, a compendium of Korean epigraphy. All share the same title, "Daebuljeong Darani-dang" (Great Buddha's Crown Dharani Pillar), and all are located north of the Military Demarcation Line. The Sanskrit stele at the Sipsinsa Temple Site in Gwangju is likewise called a "Sanskrit stele" in the Dongguk Yeoji Seungnam, a geographical gazetteer, but only the upper part of its body bears a stylised rendering of the Sanskrit syllable Om, while the rest of the inscription is entirely in Chinese characters, so strictly speaking it cannot be called a Sanskrit-inscription stele. This means that, at present, the Daebuljeongju Stele at Songgye-ri is effectively the only genuine Sanskrit-inscription stele surviving in South Korea.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Jecheon, Chungbuk

Designation

Provincial Tangible Heritage · 시도유형문화유산