The Journal of Korean Art and Archaeology

Journal of Korean Art and Archaeology, published annually since 2007, has contributed greatly toward bridging Korean academia with the English-speaking world. The journal published by the National Museum of Korea translates recent studies on Korean art and archaeological achievements into English, making them available to a wider audience. For almost a decade, the journal’s academic articles have served as useful readings for teaching Korean art to students young and old.

The special feature of Volume 10 focuses on Buddhist art, especially the Buddhist sculpture of the Unified Silla dynasty. Ever since art history was introduced to Korea as a modern discipline in the early twentieth century, Buddhist art has been one of the major subjects in the historiography of Korean art. Buddhist art was an important subject of study for Ko Yuseop (高裕燮, 1905–1944), who is widely accepted as the first art historian in Korean history. Majoring in art history and aesthetics at Keijō Imperial University, Ko was exposed to the theoretical work of European art historians, including Alois Riegl (1858–1905) and Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945). After graduating, Ko was appointed director of Gaeseong City Museum in 1933, and began conducting extensive field research and publishing copious academic articles on Korean art. Although he studied painting and Buddhist sculpture as well, the main focus of his scholarship was the stone pagodas that dotted the Korean landscape. These pagodas, which were built to enshrine Buddhist relics, are the most representative examples of Buddhist architecture. Unlike China and Japan where timber and bricks were the most common building materials for pagodas, the pagodas in Korea have a long history of being built of stone. After the premature death of Ko, who established the foundations of Korean Buddhist art history as a modern discipline, his disciples Hwang Sooyoung (黃壽永, 1918–2011) and Chin Hongsup (秦弘燮, 1918–2010) continued to develop the field. In subsequent generations, a more diverse group of art historians trained in Korea, America, Europe, and Japan published on various topics in Buddhist painting, sculpture, and architecture, expanding the scope of the art historical methodologies applied.

In the West, interest in Buddhism was sparked as early as the nineteenth century and began to influence intellectuals such as the German philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). As European archaeologists and sinologists, including Alexander Cunningham (1814–1893), Paul Pelliot (1878–1945), and Aurel Stein (1862–1943), started to excavate ancient Indian Buddhist monuments and collect Buddhist artwork and manuscripts in Central Asia and China, Buddhist art also began drawing the attention of European collectors and museum curators. Among the first to introduce Japanese Buddhist art to America was the art historian Ernest Fenollosa (1853–1908), but Buddhist art is now an important subject in many art history departments in the West. The amount of academic publications on Korean Buddhist art in English, however, remains small compared to those on Indian, Chinese, and Japanese Buddhist art. My colleagues in the West have expressed a dire need for more English publications on Korean Buddhist art to use in their teaching. The publication of Volume 10 of Journal of Korean Art and Archaeology, I believe, will serve as a valuable resource for scholars and students of Asian art who want to teach and learn more on the subject.

This volume includes three featured articles on Buddhist sculpture of the Silla dynasty (新羅, 57 BCE–935), two articles on archaeology, an article on Buddhist craft from the Goryeo dynasty (高麗, 918–1392), and an article on a landscape painting from the Joseon dynasty (朝鮮, 1392–1910) currently in the National Museum of Korea’s collection. The first featured articles in this volume, “Vairocana, Image of Dharmakāya in the Late Silla Dynasty” by Kang Heejung, offers answers to important questions about the socio-religious context and doctrinal meaning of the Vairocana sculptures produced in Silla. Most of the surviving Vairocana sculptures come from the late Silla period. Based on inscriptional and scriptural evidence, Kang’s article suggests that these Vairocana sculptures were produced as part of the Silla kings’ efforts to strengthen their power as their authority weakened in the late Silla period. Kang’s article also solves the question as to why these Vairocana sculptures form the wisdom-fist mudrā, a hand gesture from Esoteric Buddhism, although they represent the principal Buddha of the Hwaeom (華嚴, Ch. Huayan) school in the Silla period. The article further examines how the production of the Vairocana sculptures in late Silla reflects the fusion of Seon (禪, Ch. Chan) Buddhism with Hwaeom in the context of Silla.

So Hyunsook’s paper, “The Relationship between Buddhist Sculpture of the Unified Silla Period and Tang Dynasty Painting: A Study of the Buddha and Bodhisattva Sculptures from Gamsansa Temple,” reveals the interregional cultural exchange from Perisa to Korea as well as the cross-media exchange between painting and sculpture. Through careful examination of the stylistic distinctiveness of two sculptures in Gamsansa temple—especially the butterfly-shaped knots above the shoulders and the densely overlapping U-shaped creases on the drapery—the paper demonstrates that these famous Silla sculptures from the year 719 were based on painted models from Tang China. As So points out, such details commonly appeared in contemporaneous murals in Dunhuang which reflected influence from Khotan, while Chinese sculptures from that era lacked such details. The paper further infers the ways in which such painted models may have been brought to Silla from China by Kim Jiseong, the patron of the two Gamsansa sculptures, as well as the intimate relationship between painting and sculpture in China.

Focusing on the sculpture in Seokguram Grotto, Huh Hyeonguk explores the sculptures of Brahmā and Indra in India and East Asian in his article, “Iconography of Brahmā and Indra in Seokguram Grotto: Its Origins and Formation.” Over the last two decades, Huh has conducted in-depth research on the images of these two important but surprisingly little-studied deities. Due to their iconographic precision, the eighth-century reliefs at Seokguram Grotto in Gyeongju, Korea are important works that can improve our understanding of Brahmā and Indra in the Buddhist tradition. The most significant contribution in his article is Huh’s ground-breaking illumination of the influence of the Hwaeom school of Buddhism on the inclusion of the Brahmā and Indra reliefs inside the round main chamber of Seokguram Grotto. Also remarkable is Huh’s finding that the iconographic details of these reliefs were based on the explanation of the Tuoluoni ji jing (陀羅尼集經, Compiled Dhāraṇi Sūtras). Since Huh’s article also examines the earlier and later images of Brahmā and Indra in India and China, his article will be useful not only for students of Korean art but also for scholars of Buddhist art in general.

Ahn Sung-Mo, author of the first archaeological article in this journal and emeritus professor of Wonkwang University, has devoted his life to the development of palaeoethnobotany, which involves the study of the remains of plants cultivated or used by men at archaeological sites in Korea. His article, “A Study of Utilization Patterns of Nuts and Nut-yielding Trees from the Neolithic Times through the Three Kingdoms Period in Korea Based on Plant Remains,” analyzes pollen and macro plant remains from archaeological sites and traces changes in the usage of nuts and nut-yielding trees. According to Ahn’s findings, acorns were a key component of the diet during the Neolithic period and oak was a preferred building material; however, as grain cultivation technology developed in the Bronze Age, acorns lost their importance. Instead, chestnuts and chestnut trees became more prevalent, and people in the southern Korean Peninsula seem to have begun cultivating chestnut trees during this time.

The other archaeological article in this issue, “The Chronology and Changing Nature of the Lime Mortar Burials of the Joseon Period” by Kim Hyunwoo, examines the Joseon dynasty’s tombs built using lime mortar, which were related to Neo-Confucianism. Until now, these tombs have not been systematically studied because archaeologists have focused more on the prehistoric and ancient periods. Kim’s study, however, shows these tombs to be a significant part of the material culture, the study of which can improve our understanding of the Joseon dynasty. After examining how the Neo-Confucian funerary rituals supported by the Joseon court promoted lime mortar burials, Kim’s paper offers a chronological analysis of these tombs. This study will serve as a sound basis for future study of the Joseon dynasty’s lime mortar burials, encouraging interdisciplinary studies that bridge archaeology, history, and cultural studies.

“Tradition and Originality in Buddhist Incense Burners of the Goryeo Dynasty” by Lee Yongjin examines the process by which the unique styles and methods of decorating the Goryeo dynasty’s Buddhist incense burners gradually developed, while investigating their relationship with the previous craft tradition from the Silla dynasty. Lee suggests that Goryeo incense burners of a particular design originated from similar incense burners in the Silla dynasty. Lee also examines traces of the Silla tradition in the hyangwan, the representative type of Goryeo incense burner that takes the shape of a large pedestal bowl. On the other hand, the hanging style of incense burner known as hyeonno and the silver inlay decorations, as Lee points out, are unique to the Goryeo style. Also noteworthy is Lee’s in-depth exploration of the Siddhaṃ characters inlaid in the Goryeo incense burners and their origin.

The last piece in this journal, “Bihaedang’s Poetry Scroll of the Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers and Its Relationship to Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers from the Former Yūgensai Collection in Japan” by Park Haehoon offers an in-depth study of an album from the National Museum of Korea’s collection. This album, entitled Bihaedang’s Poetry Scroll of the Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, was originally a poem-and-picture scroll collectively created by Prince Anpyeong (安平大君, 1418–1453) and cultural luminaries of the time. Park’s research suggests that Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers from the former Yūgensai collection likely copied the painting that had been included in the Bihaedang’s Poetry Scroll. As Park notes, the two paintings had a strong influence on later paintings that depicted the same theme, and further study of the two will contribute to the study of the missing works attributed to An Gyeon (安堅), the most important landscape painter of the early Joseon period.

Sanskrit terms in this journal are marked in italics only when they do not appear in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. Those included in this dictionary have become part of English terminology, and thus need not be marked in italics. “T.” in the references is an abbreviation of Takakusu Junjiro (高楠順次郎) and Watanabe Kaigyoku (渡辺海旭), eds., 1924–1934. Taishō shinshū Daizōkyō (大正新脩大蔵経), 100 vols. Tokyo: Taishō Issaikyō Kankōkai. The editing and reference style follows that of previous issues of Journal of Korean Art and Archaeology. I assumed the role of senior editor for this volume at the last minute due to the illness of my predecessor, Dr. Robert D. Mowry. I put my utmost efforts into editing this journal despite the very limited time available before publication. I hope for Dr. Robert D. Mowry to recover from his illness soon. Any errors in this volume are my own.