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Forgotten Traces of the Buddhist Incantation Practice from Early Korea: Incantation of Wish-Fulfillment (Mahāpratisarā) Amulet Sheets from the Silla Kingdom
Han, J.H.; Kim, Y.-M. Forgotten Traces of the Buddhist Incantation Spell Practice from Early Korea: Amulet Sheets of the Incantation of Wish-Fulfillment (Mahāpratisarā) from Silla. Religions2023, 14, 340.
Han, J.H.; Kim, Y.-M. Forgotten Traces of the Buddhist Incantation Spell Practice from Early Korea: Amulet Sheets of the Incantation of Wish-Fulfillment (Mahāpratisarā) from Silla. Religions 2023, 14, 340.
Han, J.H.; Kim, Y.-M. Forgotten Traces of the Buddhist Incantation Spell Practice from Early Korea: Amulet Sheets of the Incantation of Wish-Fulfillment (Mahāpratisarā) from Silla. Religions2023, 14, 340.
Han, J.H.; Kim, Y.-M. Forgotten Traces of the Buddhist Incantation Spell Practice from Early Korea: Amulet Sheets of the Incantation of Wish-Fulfillment (Mahāpratisarā) from Silla. Religions 2023, 14, 340.
Abstract
Through an investigation of recently discovered Incantation of Wish-Fulfillment amulets from the Silla kingdom, this paper reveals that early Korea had more diverse forms of dhāraṇī practices than previously assumed. This paper’s analysis of these amulets from Korea contributes toward filling the gap in our current understanding of the material practice pertaining to the Incantation of Wish-Fulfillment widely practiced in medieval East Asia. Based on an interdisciplinary analysis of the two amulet sheets of the Incantation of Wish-Fulfillment from Silla, this paper explored hitherto unknown aspects of early Korean dhāraṇī practice. Previously, the only material dhāraṇī practice in early Korea was thought to be the enshrinement of textual relics in pagodas based on the Pure Light Incantation, which has little connection to contemporaneous Chinese dhāraṇī practice. However, the newly discovered Incantation of Wish-Fulfillment amulets, whose date this paper inferred to be between the eighth and ninth century, show that the Unified Silla also had a dhāraṇī practice closely linked to the Chinese practice. However, unlike the Chinese Incantation of Wish-Fulfillment amulets that were buried in tombs, the Silla amulets were likely enshrined in one of the pagodas erected on Mount Nam, Gyeongju. At the same time, the Silla epigraph from Myogilsang Pagoda at Haeinsa shows that the Incantation of Wish-Fulfillment was placed in the pagoda so as to wish for good afterlives of the soldiers who died at the battle, suggesting that placing the Incantation of Wish-Fulfillment in a pagoda had a function similar to that of burying the Chinese amulet in the tomb.
Keywords
Incantation of Wish-Fulfillment; Mahāpratisarā; dhāraṇī; Buddhism; practice; amulet; early Korea; Silla; pagoda; tomb; cross-cultural practice; inter-Asian interconnection
Subject
Arts and Humanities, Art
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
