Buddhist Kingship and Symbolic Architecture in Silla Korea

Abstract

The evolution of kingship in the early Korean state of Silla (ca. 300–935) was closely linked with the accommodation of various Buddhist practices that conferred symbolic legitimacy and promoted royal authority. During the sixth and seventh centuries, Silla’s sovereigns assimilated several overlapping approaches to statecraft and kingship drawing on Sinitic and imagined Indian models mediated through such Buddhist literature as the Sūtra for Humane Kings and the Sūtra of Golden Light, resonant with policies followed in the Northern and Southern Dynasties in China. Buddhist monarchs in Silla adopted several overlapping and increasingly sophisticated approaches to symbolically consolidate and project political authority. Silla merged native East Asian cosmological symbolism with Buddhist architecture to establish royal legitimacy. Hwangnyong Monastery combines Sinitic symbolism with Buddhist-inspired propaganda, which both assert Silla’s regional dominion. The significance of the yellow dragon was astrological, signifying Silla’s ascendancy among the Korean states. Hwangnyong Monastery was the locus for state-protection rituals centered on the Sūtra for Humane Kings beginning in the sixth century, but early monasteries built with a single golden hall and two pagodas may have some connection to the Sūtra of Golden Light. Sach’ŏnwang Monastery was the most important twin pagoda monastery in seventh-century Silla, with Yŏngmyo Monastery and Kamŭn Monastery also performing a magico-religious function as loci for ritual centered on divine protection by the four heavenly kings, the eight classes of divine beings, spirit generals, and wholesome deities from the unseen world.