Korean Buddhist sculpture is one of the major areas of Korean art. Buddhism, a religion originating in what is now India, was transmitted to Korea via China in the late 4th century.Arts of Korea | Explore & Learn | The Metropolitan Museum of Art Buddhism introduced major changes in Korean society. The complexity of the religious sutras sent to Korea required the aristocrats who adopted the religion to become literate and required the training and importation of literate scribes. Little evidence of religious art exists in Korea before the introduction of Buddhism. Subsequent to its introduction, the religion inspired the production of devotional art as well as the beginnings of sophisticated temple architecture.
Images of the Buddha were probably first imported by monks sent from China and the Buddhist sculpture of Korea is indebted to prototypes developed in India, Central Asia, and China. From these influences, a distinctive Korean style formed.Korea And The Korean PeopleBest, "Yumedono", 13 Korean Buddhas typically exhibit Korean facial characteristics, were made with native casting and carving techniques, and employed only some of the motifs that were developed earlier in Buddhist art. Additionally, Korean artisans fused together different styles from different regions with their own tastes to form a native art tradition.Korean Buddhist Sculpture (5th–9th century) | Thematic Essay | Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art Korean art is too often incorrectly described in Western literature as merely a passive bridge transmitting Chinese art to Japan. One area of Korean art where this is decidedly not the case is in Korean Buddhist sculpture. Korean stylistic developments and forms were greatly influential in the Asuka, Hakuhō, and Tenpyo periods of Japanese Buddhist sculpture when Korea transmitted Buddhism to Japan in the 6th century. Standing Buddha
Buddhist sculpture remains an important form of art in Korea today.
Background
Korean Buddhist sculpture are relatively rare. The Joseon dynasty suppressed Buddhism with Confucianism as the state religion and destroyed most Buddhist sculptures. According to the Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty on April 5, 1424, only 36 Buddhist temples were allowed to exist and the others were destroyed. The relative scarcity of images makes it especially difficult for scholars to completely understand the development of the art in Korea. Images available for study are generally those that have been excavated, the lucky survivors of peninsular tumult, or those images preserved in Japan. Experts may, therefore, have differing opinions on the exact age or place of manufacture for any specific image based on available information.
Each individual Buddhist sculpture has various characteristics and attributes which art historians use as clues to determine when and where it was made. Sometimes a statue will have an inscription or contain a document which attests to when, where, and who made it. Reliable archaeological records which state where a statue was excavated are also valuable clues for the historian. However, when neither of these sources of information are available, scholars can still glean important information on an individual statue by its style, the particular iconography employed by the artist, physical characteristics such as the material used to make the statue, the percentage of metals used in an alloy, casting and carving techniques, and various other contextual clues.
Images in Korea are made from a variety of material: wood, lacquer, metal, clay, and stone. Those that survive today are typically small bronze votive images used for private worship and sculpture carved in granite, the most abundant sculpting material available in Korea. Monumental images made for state-sponsored monasteries and devotional objects the royal and aristocratic families, for the most part, have unfortunately not survived. Although wood and lacquer images were known to have been made in Korea based on historical records and can be assumed based on surviving images in China and Japan, the fragility of these materials mean very few have survived in Korea.
Three Kingdoms period (traditionally 57 BCE–668), 4th and 5th centuries
During the Three Kingdoms period, Korea was divided into three competing states, Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla, whose boundaries ran from Manchuria to the tip of southern Korea. A fourth polity in the south, Gaya also flourished during this period but no Buddhist image can be definitively attributed to this state. According to the Samguk sagi and Samguk yusa, the two oldest extant histories of Korea, Buddhism was officially introduced to Korea during the 4th century. In addition, the Haedong goseungjeon states that monks from China were already in Korea prior to its official reception. Sundo, a monk from Former Qin, a northern Chinese state, was received by the king of Goguryeo in northern Korea in 372 and an Indian monk via Serindian, Malananda (Kr. Marananta), from southern China's Eastern Jin dynasty was received by the king of Baekje in the southern Korea in 384.Kim, Won-Yong, pg. 71 Ado, a Buddhist monk, brought Buddhism to Silla in central Korea."Malananta bring Buddhism to Baekje" in Samguk Yusa III, Ha & Mintz translation, pp. 178-179. Archaeological discoveries have corroborated these assertions of the early introduction of Buddhism into Korea with the discovery of Goguryeo tomb murals with Buddhist motifs and the excavation of lotus shaped roof tiles dated to the 4th century.Lena Kim The rulers of both Korean kingdoms welcomed the foreign monks and immediately ordered monasteries be built for their use. The construction of Buddhist images soon followed.
The Ttukseom (McCune–Reischauer: Ttuksŏm) Buddha (image), named for the area of Seoul in which it was discovered, is the earliest statue of Buddha in Korea. Scholars date it to the late 4th or early 5th century, around 400. The five centimeter tall gilt-bronze statuette follows certain stylistic conventions originating in Gandhara (present-day Pakistan), which were later adopted by China.Pak and Whitfield, pg. 42 These include the rectangular platform upon which the Buddha sits which depicts two lions, a common symbol of Buddha. Additionally, it displays the dhyana mudra, a gesture of meditation, commonly found in early seated Buddhas of China and Korea, where the hands are interlocked and rest on the lap. A 5th-century mural of Buddha found in a tomb just to the north of the modern border of North Korea shares several stylistic similarities with the Ttukseom Buddha including the depiction of the dhyana mudra, the fact that the robes cover both shoulders of the body, and the depiction of two lions around the rectangular base.
The stylistic similarities of this Buddha to those found in China lead most scholars to conclude that the image is an import. The possibility remains that the image is a Korean copy of a Chinese prototype.Korea, 1–500 AD | Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art One reason to argue for a Korean provenance is the fact that the rectangular base of the Ttukseom Buddha is solid while Chinese examples are hollow, perhaps indicating a still developing sculpture casting tradition in early Korea. The discovery of the Ttukseom Buddha near the proposed site of Baekje's first capital and major citadel suggests the figure may be an example of Baekje sculpture. A very similar meditating Buddha discovered in the later Baekje capital of Sabi (now known as Buyeo) supports this theory, indicating these first images of Buddha were influential many years after their introduction or had been preserved to be transferred to a new capital.Pak and Whitfield, pg. 66 Other scholars suggest that the Ttukseom figure may be a Goguryeo piece because of the close stylistic similarities the figure has with the northern dynastic art, a typical feature of early Goguryeo sculpture.
Two Chinese examples shown below, one at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the other at the National Palace Museum in Taipei illustrate the similarities between early Korean and Chinese images. A Serindian example from the 5th century also displays the dhyana mudra and similar treatment of the robes in addition to also being example of the confluence of cultures along the Silk Road from India to Gandhara to China to Korea.
The only other examples of Korean Buddhist sculpture from the 4th or 5th century are some terra cotta fragments from Goguryeo. Some scholars believe that the paucity of extant images from the earliest period of Korean Buddhism is due to the fact that the religion was practiced by a small number of aristocrats and did not become popular with the general population until the 6th century. Another reason for the lack of early images may be because the site of the earliest period of Baekje history is within the city of Seoul, an area so developed that it is difficult to excavate, while Goguryeo archaeological sites are generally off limits to South Korean scholars because they lie mostly in North Korea.
Three Kingdoms period, 6th century
Buddha images Seated Buddha images
Seated Buddha imagery remained popular during the 6th century in Korea. As mentioned above, an archaic seated Buddha resembling the Ttukseom Buddha was discovered in modern-day Buyeo, a city the Baekje king made his capital in 538. This old style was soon discarded for newer influences. By the second half of the 6th century while sculptors maintained the dhyana mudra they opted to displace the rectangular lion throne iconography for complicated drapery which were depicted cascading over the Buddha's seat. A seated Buddha at the National Museum of Korea while starkly different from its chronological counterpart, the Kunsu-ri seated Buddha from Baekje, in style shows that both kingdoms were adopting this new approach to seated figures. The Goguryeo seated Buddha displays typical Goguryeo traits, such as the rounded ushnisha and head and hands disproportionately larger relative to the body.Pak and Whitfield, pg. 82 The depiction of the folds of the robe over a now lost rectangular throne are exuberant with no sense of following a set scheme.
A Baekje soapstone seated Buddha discovered at the Kunsu-ri temple site in Buyeo displays the soft roundness and static nature of the early Baekje style during the second half of the 6th century.Divinity, pg. 194 Unlike the Ttukseom seated Buddha, the Kunsu-ri Buddha features the robes of the Buddha draped over the rectangular platform and does away with the lions common in earlier images. The symmetrically stylized drapery folds is followed in later Japanese images, such as the Shakyamuni Triad in Hōryū-ji. Like the Ttukseom Buddha, the Kunsu-ri Buddha follows early Chinese and Korean conventions displaying the dhyana mudra. This particular mudra is notably absent in subsequent Japanese Buddhist sculpture which perhaps indicates that the iconography was out of style in Korea by the time Buddhist sculpture began arriving in Japan in the mid-6th century. The seated Buddhas of the late 6th century begin to do away with the meditation gesture in favor of the wish-granting gesture and protection gesture. An example of this kind of seated Buddha is the Paekche triad now at the Tokyo National Museum and is followed by subsequent Japanese images, such as the aforementioned Shakyamuni Triad (image ) held at Hōryū-ji.
Standing Buddha images