Ssanggye-sa and Local Buddhist History: Propaganda and Relics in a Struggle for Survival, 1850s-1930s

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Korean Buddhism needs to be studied at the national, regional and local levels, and their interrelationships clarified. This is a study of how Ssanggye Monastery tried to preserve its independence in the face of natural disasters, monastic rivalries and colonial interventions. The monastery, associated with Huineng (d. 713), the founder of Chan, in an 887 stele written by Ch’oe Ch’iwŏn, is not mentioned properly again until 1489 and then again in 1854, when it was destroyed by a landslide. It used the association with Huineng to finance the rebuilding. In 1914, a propaganda campaign asserted that a relic of Huineng existed in the monastery and had started emitting miraculous lights. The temple relied on a text allegedly written in 1103 by Kakhun, actually the author of the 1215 Haedong Kosŭng chŏn. I conclude that Ssanggye monks were attacking Yi Hoegwang, for Yi was pro-Japanese, he had discovered Kakhun’s text, and was abbot of Haein Monastery, which the Japanese authorities had made overlord of Ssanggye Monastery. He was thus accused of betraying Korean Sŏn. The two monasteries remained in conflict to the 1920s, and so the relic campaign was meant to show the Buddha’s approval of Ssanggye Monastery and disapproval of Haein Monastery and its traitorous abbot.