Gyeongju Namsan Mountain Guksagok Valley Je4sa Temple Site Three-story Stone Pagoda

The Je4sa temple site in Guksagok Valley lies on a ridge at an elevation of about 230m near the foot of Geumosan Mountain. To reach it, one follows the hiking trail leading off to the right from the entrance to the Namsan Mountain circular road on the eastern side of Namsan Mountain for about 360m, crosses a valley running north, then follows a narrow path uphill towards the northern ridge for a further 300m or so, passing through a bamboo grove to arrive at the site. It lies just below Gokkalbawi, a rock shaped like a gokkal (a traditional conical hat), and to the south-west the Buseok, a floating-rock formation on Namsan, can be seen across the valley. At the temple site, seven retaining walls survive, though incompletely, and the remains of five buildings have been identified. The three-story stone pagoda stands at the highest point of the site. Only the base stone and the north-western stylobate slab remained in their original positions, the other members having been scattered around the site; following excavations by the National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage, Gyeongju in 2000 and again the following year, the pagoda was restored to its present form at the end of 2001 on the basis of those findings. The Je4sa temple site three-story stone pagoda is generally presumed to be a Unified Silla stone pagoda dating from around the mid-9th century or later. The main grounds for this dating are that, unlike typical Unified Silla three-story stone pagodas, it has a single-tier stylobate; there is only one taengju, a partition pillar carved on the stylobate face, at its centre; a separately carved support for the pagoda body is set at the centre of the top of the stylobate capstone; the eave supports beneath each roof stone number four throughout; and the height up to the pagoda body, excluding the finial, is just over 5m. These features are grounds for dating the pagoda and at the same time count among its distinguishing characteristics. The pagoda shows one or two further features that set it apart from typical Unified Silla three-story stone pagodas: a tapgu, a stone border, has been laid around the base stone, and a separately carved taengju has been inserted at the centre of the stylobate slab. Even allowing that pagodas of comparable formal and artistic quality are not especially rare, and that most of the stones of the border (excluding six original pieces), three taengju stones, and the support for the pagoda body above the stylobate capstone were restored using new material rather than the original pieces, the pagoda is judged to be of sufficient value to merit preservation.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Gyeongju, Gyeongbuk

Designation

Provincial Tangible Heritage · 시도유형문화유산