Seolsongdang Hall Yeon Cho Portrait

This portrait depicts Seon Master Yeoncho of Seolsongdang Hall, who resided in the 17th century at Pyochungsa Temple in Miryang and at Unmunsa Temple and Tongdosa Temple in Cheongdo. It is a full-length seated portrait in a chair, shown in seven-tenths left profile. Yeoncho was born on the first day of the fifth month of 1676, the second year of King Sukjong, in Jain-hyeon, present-day Gyeongsan, North Gyeongsang Province. In 1688, at the age of thirteen, he entered the priesthood at Unmunsa Temple in Cheongdo, first studying under Seokje and later under Hwanseong Jian. Having received the dharma transmission from both teachers, he united into one the two schools that had split apart since Cheongheo Hyujeong. He studied the Buddhist scriptures widely and attained deep learning; in his later years he turned students away and devoted himself solely to meditation, passing away in 1750, the twenty-sixth year of King Yeongjo, at the age of seventy-five, in the sixty-second year of his monastic life. After his cremation his sarira (relics) were divided and enshrined at Tongdosa and Unmunsa temples, and four years later a memorial stele composed by Yi Cheon-bo was erected at Unmunsa. At Tongdosa's stupa field stand his memorial stupa and a stele, and the temple museum holds a wooden plaque inscribed with the stele's text and preface. A reliquary excavated from the memorial stupa (built in 1854) at Tongdosa's stupa field is also on display in the museum. In the painting the Seon master sits in a chair draped with a monastic robe, against a two-tiered background of an upper wall painted with a vermilion lotus-scroll design and a lower woven mat; his left hand holds a ceremonial whisk (bulja) and his right rests on the armrest. On the right side of the painting is a hwaje — an inscription identifying the subject — written in white on a vermilion ground and reading 扶宗樹敎國一都大禪師弘覺登階雪松堂大禪師之眞 ("Portrait of the Great Seon Master Honggak of Seolsongdang, Upholder and Propagator of the Teaching, First Preceptor of the Nation"); on the left is a yeongchan, a eulogy composed for the portrait, also written in white on a vermilion ground. The painting measures 81.8 cm in width and 123.9 cm in height.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Yangsan, Gyeongnam

Designation

Provincial Tangible Heritage · 시도유형문화유산