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A Korean Buddhist Illuminated Manuscript A KOREAN BUDDHIST ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT BETH McKILLOP DURING the selection of manuscripts for loan to the 'Arts of Korea' Gallery which opened in the British Museum in July 1997, a richly decorated Korean Buddhist sutra copied in gold pigment around 1390 was identified, conserved and prepared for display. The manuscript seems to have received little attention since it was acquired by the Department of Printed Books of the British Museum in 1884, as part of a collection of important Japanese, Chinese and Korean editions amassed in Japan by the bibliophile Sir Ernest Satow (i 843-1929). It may be surmised that the volume moved to Japan from Korea between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, perhaps like so many Korean inventions, treasures and skills, leaving Korea in the course of the Hideyoshi invasions of the 1590s. The pioneering French bibliographer Maurice Courant described it in the introduction to Bibliographie Coreenne (1895-1901): I must not omit to mention two ancient manuscripts which are not well-made copies but works of art; one, dated 1446 is in the Varat Collection... the other is in the British Museum; these are a volume of the Mahavaipulya purnabbuddha sutra prasannartha sutra (no 2634, II) and a volume of the Buddhavatamsaka mahavailpulya sutra (no 2635, V); these two manuscripts are in the form of a concertina, on a very thick paper, both with covers painted dark blue; the characters beautifully written, and the paintings quite perfect, are executed in gold. Of the second sutra, Courant wrote: The British Museum, I5io3.e.t4. possesses a fragment of an edition of this work; it is a tall, narrow volume of the height of a tall octavo, set out as a concertina, 58 leaves; it is hand-written in golden letters; two leaves of illustration executed in the same fashion are at the head of the text; blue cover with golden designs.' This article attempts to place the volume in its historical context and to point out some of the distinguishing features of Korean manuscript copies of Buddhist scriptures. I. KORYO, A KINGDOM DEVOTED TO THE BUDDHIST FAITH The kingdom of Koryo succeeded Silla in governing the Korean peninsula, when Wang Kon £^ (d. A.D. 943) seized power in 918. Already during the United Silla period, from 158 668 to 918, the Buddhist faith had taken firm hold over Korean society at all levels Devout believers attended services and processions at the imposing temples and monastic communities which flourished across the length and breadth of the country. First in the eleventh century, and again between 1237 and 1251, the entire corpus of Buddhist scriptures, the Trtpitaka, was carefully copied, carved on blocks and printed as an act of devotion, and to beseech Buddha's protection against successive northern attackers who threatened the survival of the state. Religious communities accumulated great wealth, and commissioned ceremonial furniture such as bronze bells to be positioned in temple courtyards and halls; fine green-glazed ceramics for use during ceremonies, and wooden chests covered with lacquer and inlaid with burnished mother- of-pearl to contain the holy scriptures. As well as large devotional paintings of Buddhist deities such as Maitreya and Avalokites'vara, finely painted in glowing mineral colours on silk to hang in temple halls, artists also produced small-scale images of the preaching Buddha, surrounded by angels and disciples. These scenes, known in Korean -A.^ pyonsang ^1^@ or transformation images, preceded the text of copies of scriptures, such as the Lotus, Diamond and Garland Sutras. In common with sculpture and ceramics, these paintings are devotional in inspiration, and were produced by craftsmen at the behest of royal and noble sponsors wishing to gather merit through the production of a portrait of a deity or copy of a holy scripture. Because pyonsang paintings have normally been conserved in temple libraries, guarded by monk librarians, a good number have survived until the present day, providing one of the most valuable sources of information about the painter's art in mediaeval Korea. II. THE TEXT OF THE AVATAMSAKA SUTRA The British Library volume forms part of an important Buddhist scripture, the Buddhdvatamsaka-mahdvaipidya Sutra., usually known as the Avatarnsaka (Garland., or Flower Ornament) Sutra (T 279 in the Taisho numbering). The Avatanisaka Sutra is one of the major texts of the Huayan (Korean Hwaom ^Wt) school, a syncretist branch of Buddhism that flourished in China during the Tang dynasty (618-917). Huayan Buddhism continues until the present day to attract millions of followers, particularly in East Asia. The volume is a section from the translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra into Chinese made by a Khotanese monk, Siksananda, between A.D. 695 and 699. This translation is sometimes called the 'Tang' or 'new' translation, to distinguish it from the earlier, shorter translation by Buddhabhadra made between A.D. 418 and 421. Siksananda's translation is in eighty chapters, compared to Buddhabhadra's sixty, principally because the longer version contains records of more Assemblies and Audience Places - these are sermons delivered by the Buddha to gatherings of monks and bodhisattvas, and are the narrative framework around which the philosophical and devotional teaching of the text is structured. The British Library volume is number 32; it forms part of chapter 25. 159 Chapter 25 is devoted to the 'Ten Dedications' (in Korean sip hoehyang -VM'k ), and describes the acts of bodhisattvas as they bestow merits on other beings in order to bring about universal enlightenment. The Ten Dedications is one of the longest and most important chapters of the Avatarnsaka Sutra. Its description of the merging of individual bodhisattvas with the enlightenment of all beings refers to one of the central strands of Huayan: the bodhisattva's quest for the enlightenment of all beings pursued through fifty-three stages and countless kalpas. Each of the Ten Dedications has a particular character: the tenth is the 'boundless dedication equal to the cosmos'. The following extract from Cleary's translation^ gives a flavour of the text with its lush imagery and repetitive similes: Great etilightening beings also dedicate the roots of goodness cultivated by giving of teaching to the aspirarion to purify all buddha-lands and adorn them with inexpressibly many embellishments, each buddha-land as vast as the cosmos, purely good, without obstructions, with pure light, the Buddhas manifesting the attainment of true awakening therein, the pure realms in one buddha-land able to reveal all buddha-lands, and as of one buddha-land, so of all buddha- lands, each of those lands adorned with arrays of pure exquisite treasures, as measureless as the cosmos - countless thrones of pure jewels spread with precious robes, countless jewelled curtains and jewelled nets draping, countless precious canopies with all kinds of jewels reflecting each other, countless jewel clouds raining jewels, countless jewel flowers all around, completely pure, countless pure arrays of balustrades made of jewels, countless jewel chimes always emitting the subtle tones of the Buddhas circulating throughout the cosmos, countless jewel lotuses of various jewel colours blooming with glorious radiance, countless jew^el trees arrayed in rows all around, with flowers and fruits of innumerable jewels, countless jewel palaces with innumerable enlightening beings living in them, countless jewel mansions, spacious, magnificent, long and wide, far and near, countless jewel ramparts with exquisite jewel ornaments, countless jewel gates hung all around with strings of beautiful jewels, countless jewel windows with pure arrays of inconceivable numbers of jewels, and countless jewel palms, shaped like crescent moons, made of clusters of jewels - all of these embellished with myriad jewels, spotlessly pure, inconceivable, all produced by the roots of goodness of the enlightened, replete with adornments of countless treasuries of jewels. We shall note below that this passage is vividly conjured up in the landscape and assembly scene which precedes the text of the British Library volume. Francis Cook has written of the Avatarnsaka Sutra as follows: Reading this mammoth work is, to put it mildly, an unforgettable experience[...]everything is done on a gargantuan scale. If one simile is good, ten are always much better. The reader is staggered by the loving description of scenery, down to the number of leaves on the trees with their configuration and coloring; with the descriptions of perfumed trees and golden lotuses, singing birds, clouds that emit wonderful odors and sounds, varieties of clothing and jewels, the long lists of names of Bodhisattvas and Sravakas assembled to hear the teaching, more numerous than all the sands in a million Ganges Rivers, and so on for page after page. Moreover, the sutra is a vehicle for [...] the doctrine of the infinitely repeated intercausality and identity of all 160 phenomena. There is a great amount of drama and color in the Avatatnsaka, but it is all there to serve the overriding concern of Buddhism, to show man what he must do to become free, and what freedom is.^ It is interesting to note as an aside that the final chapter of the Avatamsaka, the Gandavyuha or 'Flower Collection' Stltra, existed as an independent text in Sanskrit before its incorporation into the Chinese translation of the Avatamsaka. It concerns the wanderings of a young hero, Sudhana, whose quest for all-pervading knowledge has been compared to the Pilgrim's Progress in the Christian tradition. The protagonist travels over India to visit fifty-three sages, before his final encounter with the bodhisattva Samantabhadra. Sudhana's journeys form the subject matter for illustrated books and scrolls in China and Japan and inspired the famous stone carvings at Borobudur, Indonesia.* The Avatanjsaka Sutra was copied out and printed many times in Korea. Its evocation of the blessings and joy awaiting those who recognize and embrace the Buddha^s teachings exerted a strong influence on believers.
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