This stupa, which was built in honor of a Silla monk named Master Yeomgeo (廉居, d. 844), is shaped like an octagonal house and has an octagonal platform, which subsequently became the standard shape for Korean stupas for monks. When it was being moved during the Japanese colonial period, an engraved bronze plate was discovered, which documents the year of Yeomgeo’s death and suggests that the stupa had royal patronage.

Although part of the platform is missing, making the base look somewhat incomplete, the stupa for Master Yeomgeo still displays outstanding sculptural craftsmanship and aesthetic beauty. The body was meticulously sculpted to resemble a wooden building, complete with roof tiles, rafters, front and back doors, locks, pillars, and lintels. The walls of the house are decorated with relief carvings of flying apsaras (female spirits) and the Four Heavenly Kings. In addition to their sculptural excellence, these carvings also resonate with symbolism, expressing the meaning and philosophy of the stupa.

Notably, a stupa for Master Doui(道義), who was Master Yeomgeo’s teacher, is located at the site of Jinjeonsa Temple in Yangyang, Gangwon-do Province. After being trained in Seon (Zen) Buddhism in China, Master Doui returned to establish the Seon sect in Korea during the Unified Silla period. His Seon lineage was then passed on to his disciple, Master Yeomgeo. The stupa for Master Doui at Jinjeonsa Temple has a square platform, like those of a conventional stone stupa, but its body is shaped like an octagonal building, reminiscent of a stone lantern. As the earliest known example of a stupa with this distinctive form, this stupa seems to have been an attempt to establish a new prototype.

Later, the stupa for Master Yeomgeo, the second patriarch of Seon Buddhism, maintained the octagonal body, but also adopted an octagonal pedestal, like those often found on Buddha statues, to match the body. The relief carvings of the Four Heavenly Kings, who are revered as the guardians of Buddha and Buddhism, reflect the contemporaneous faith that monks were to be held in the same high regard as Buddha himself.

While stupas were built for the practical purpose of enshrining the relics and remains of monks, they also served as monuments exemplifying the belief that their respective monk had attained the same status as Buddha. This is expressed by the very act of erecting a stupa or pagoda, a practice that originated with Sakyamuni Buddha, as well as the presence of carved images of the Four Heavenly Kings (and later additions like Indra and Brahma), who were the personal protectors of Buddha.

Unlike most images of the Four Heavenly Kings found on pagodas or sarira reliquaries, the Four Heavenly Kings on this particular stupa are wearing armor, much like traditional stone carvings of the twelve zodiac animals found around the tombs of kings. Also, the wide sleeves of the kings’ robes extend out from beneath their armor, as if blowing and twisting in the wind, a motif that is also associated with images of the twelve zodiac animals from royal tombs. In fact, wide sleeves like these have never been seen on any other images of the Four Heavenly Kings from pagodas or sarira reliquaries. Moreover, there are some striking similarities between the image of Virūpākṣa (guardian of the western direction) on this stupa and an image of the rooster (one of the twelve zodiac animals) from Neungji Pagoda in Gyeongju.

The stupa for Master Yeomgeo is the first stupa on which the engraved images of the Four Heavenly Kings bear such a close resemblance to the twelve zodiac animals from royal tombs in Gyeongju. This implies that the stupa may have been built by official government artisans, who also made the stone artifacts installed around the royal tombs. According to the inscription on the stele that was erected alongside the stupa, the king permitted the erection of the stele and the inscription was composed by a literary scholar appointed by the king.

Moreover, some stupas from the Goryeo Dynasty, such as the stupa for Master Wonjong at Godalsa Temple in Yeoju (977), are accompanied by steles documenting that they were produced by government artisans. Therefore, both the sculptural style and the inscribed record on the stele indicate that government artisans may have been involved in the construction of the stupa for Master Yeomgeo. More clues related to the royal court can be found on the bronze plate below.

Around 1911, during the Japanese colonial period, the stupa for Master Yeomgeo was being moved from the site of Heungbeopsa Temple in Wonju to Seoul by a Japanese antiquities dealer named Kondo Sagoro. During the move, a bronze plate was discovered with an engraved inscription of forty-eight Chinese characters, providing details about the stupa’s origins. Elegantly engraved in a unique font, in which only the outlines of the characters are expressed, the inscription reveals important information about the time period and aesthetics of the stupa:

會 昌1) 四 秊2) 歲 次3) 甲 子 季
秋4) 之 月 兩 旬 九 日 𨗇 化
廉 巨 和 尙 塔 去 𥼶(釋) 迦 牟
𡰱(尼) 佛 入 𣵀(涅) 槃 一 千 八 百 四
秊 矣
  當5) 此 囯 慶 膺6)大 王 之 時

“In the fourth year of Huichang (會昌, 844), the Gapja year (from the sixty-year Asian calendar cycle), Master Yeomgeo died on the twenty-ninth day of the ninth lunar month. This stupa was built for Master Yeomgeo 1804 years after the nirvana of Sakyamuni Buddha, during the reign of King Gyeongeung (i.e., King Munseong) of this country.”

Notes:
1) “Huichang” is the era name of Emperor Wuzong of China’s Tang Dynasty, who ruled from 841 to 846.
2) The character “秊” means “year,” same as “年.”
3) The term “歲次” refers to the order of the years according to the sexagenary cycle.
4) “季秋” refers to the last month of autumn, equivalent to the ninth month in the lunar calendar.
5) “當” is a notation referring to the current reigning king.
6) “慶膺” is the name of King Munseong according to Volume 11 of Annals of the Silla Kingdom from History of the Three Kingdoms (三國史記).

In ancient inscriptions (which were written vertically), there are various ways of showing the highest respect whenever the king is mentioned. Some of these methods include always placing the king’s name at the top of a new column, elevating characters related to the king above the characters in adjacent columns, or leaving a space of one to three characters around the king’s name. The latter practice can be seen on an inscription about the seated statue of Vairocana Buddha from Borimsa Temple in Jangheung.

Inscription about the seated statue of Vairocana Buddha at Borimsa Temple in Jangheung, Jeollanam-do Province, Unified Silla (859), H: 251 cm (Buddha statue), National Treasure. Notice that a space was left on either side of the character “情” in the name of King Heonan, which was a customary practice to honor the king.

However, in the engraved record of the stupa for Master Yeomgeo, the name of the king, which appears in the final column, is both lower and smaller than most of the other characters. It seems that the font size was reduced in order to fit all nine characters into the reduced space of the last column, matching the other columns. At the time, no subject of the king would dare to render the king’s name in such a fashion without the explicit approval of the king himself. Thus, this unusual notation provides compelling evidence that the stupa was likely sponsored by King Gyeongeung, also known as King Munseong.

Thus far, it has been widely believed that the stupa was built in 844, the year of Master Yeomgeo’s death, as mentioned in the inscription. Significantly, however, the inscription also includes the date according to the Buddha’s nirvana. The exact year of the Buddha’s nirvana differs between Northern and Southern Buddhism. In Northern Buddhism, which developed in China, the year of the Buddha’s nirvana is believed to be 949 BCE, as documented in Strange Accounts of the Book of Zhou (周書異記).

Various records show that early Korean Buddhists also regarded 949 as the year of Buddha’s nirvana, in accordance with Northern Buddhism. These records include the “Biography of Monk Uieon” from Lives of Eminent Korean Monks (海東高僧傳) and the records of the seated statues of Vairocana Buddha at Borimsa Temple in Jangheung and Dopiansa Temple in Cheorwon. It is particularly noteworthy that the inscription for the seated statue of Vairocana Buddha at Borimsa follows Northern Buddhism, as the head monk at the time was Monk Chejing (體澄, 804–880), who was a direct disciple of Master Yeomgeo. The inscription of the stupa for Master Yeomgeo reads, “This stupa was built for Master Yeomgeo 1804 years after the nirvana of Sakyamuni Buddha...”. Hence, using 949 as the year of Buddha’s nirvana, we can estimate that the stupa was built in 855, the seventeenth year of King Munseong.

After being introduced to Korea in the ninth century, Seon Buddhism quickly flourished with the support of local clans. Thus, it has sometimes been claimed that Seon stupas were likely produced by these local clans. But the close resemblance between the images of the Four Heavenly Kings on the stupa for Master Yeomgeo and images of the twelve zodiac animals in royal tombs, as well as the details from the engraved record of the stupa, strongly suggest that King Munseong and royal artisans were involved in the stupa’s construction.