DIAMOND MOUNTAIN MONASTERIES
It was a glorious day for the Pass of Tan-pa-Ryöng (1,320 feet above
Ma-ri Kei), the western barrier of the Keum-Kang San region. Mr.
Campbell, of H.B.M.’s Consular Service, one of the few Europeans
who has crossed it, in his charming narrative mentions that it is
impassable for laden animals, and engaged porters for the ascent, but
though the track is nothing better than a torrent bed abounding in
great boulders, angular and shelving rocks, and slippery corrugations
of entangled tree roots, I rode over the worst part, and my ponies made
nothing of carrying the baggage up the rock-ladders. The mountain-side
is covered with luxuriant and odorous vegetation, specially oak,
chestnut, hawthorn, varieties of maple, pale pink azalea, and yellow
clematis, interspersed with a few distorted pines, primulas and lilies
of the valley covering the mossy ground.
From the spirit shrine on the summit a lovely panorama unfolds itself,
billows of hilly woodland, gleams of water, wavy outlines of hills,
backed by a jagged mountain wall, attaining an altitude of over 6,000
feet in the loftiest pinnacle of the Keum-Kang San. A fair land of
promise, truly! But this pass is a rubicon to him who seeks the Diamond
Mountain with the intention of immuring himself for life in one of its
many monasteries. For its name, Tan-pa, “crop-hair,” was bestowed on
it early in the history of Korean Buddhism for a reason which remains.
There those who have chosen the cloister emphasize their abandonment of
the world by cutting off the “topknot” of married dignity, or the heavy
braid of bachelorhood.
The eastern descent of the Tan-pa-Ryöng is by a series of zigzags,
through woods and a profusion of varied and magnificent ferns. A long
day followed of ascents and descents, deep fords of turbulent streams,
valley villages with terrace cultivation of buckwheat, and glimpses of
gray rock needles through pine and persimmon groves, and in the late
afternoon, after struggling through a rough ford in which the water was
halfway up the sides of the ponies, we entered a gorge and struck a
smooth, broad, well-made road, the work of the monks, which traverses a
fine forest of pines and firs above a booming torrent.
Towards evening “The hills swung open to the light”; through the
parting branches there were glimpses of granite walls and peaks
reddening into glory; red stems, glowing in the slant sunbeams, lighted
up the blue gloom of the coniferæ; there were glints of foam from the
loud-tongued torrent below; the dew fell heavily, laden with aromatic
odors of pines, and as the valley narrowed again and the blue shadows
fell the picture was as fair as one could hope to see. The monks,
though road-makers, are not bridge-builders, and there were difficult
fords to cross, through which the ponies were left to struggle by
themselves, the _mapu_ crossing on single logs. In the deep water I
discovered that its temperature was almost icy. The worst ford is at
the point where the first view of Chang-an Sa, the Temple of Eternal
Rest, the oldest of the Keum-Kang San monasteries, is obtained, a
great pile of temple buildings with deep curved roofs, in a glorious
situation, crowded upon a small grassy plateau in one of the narrowest
parts of the gorge, where the mountains fall back a little and afford
Buddhism a peaceful shelter, secluded from the outer world by snow for
four months of the year.
Crossing the torrent and passing under a lofty _Hang-Sal-Mun_, or
“red arrow gate,” significant in Korea of the patronage of royalty,
we were at once among the Chang-an Sa buildings, which consist of
temples large and small, a stage for religious dramas, bell and tablet
houses, stables for the ponies of wayfarers, cells, dormitories, and a
refectory for the abbot and monks, quarters for servants and neophytes,
huge kitchens, a large guest hall, and a nunnery. Besides these there
are quarters devoted to the lame, halt, blind, infirm, and solitary; to
widows, orphans, and the destitute.
These guests, numbering 100, seemed well treated. Between monks,
servants, and boys preparing for the priesthood there may be 100 more,
and 20 nuns of all ages, from girlhood up to eighty-seven years. This
large number of persons is supported by the rent and produce of Church
lands outside the mountains, the contributions of pilgrims and guests,
the moneys collected by the monks, who all go on mendicant expeditions,
even up to the gates of Seoul, which at that time it was death for any
priest to enter, and benefactions from the late Queen, which had become
increasingly liberal.
The first impression of the plateau was that it was a wood-yard on
a large scale. Great logs and piles of planks were heaped under the
stately pines and under a superb _Salisburia adiantifolia_, 17 feet
in girth; 40 carpenters were sawing, planing, and hammering, and 40
or 50 laborers were hauling in logs to the music of a wild chant, for
mendicant effort had been resorted to energetically, with the result
that the great temple was undergoing repairs, almost amounting to a
reconstruction.
Of the forty-five monasteries and monastic shrines which exist in
the Diamond Mountain, enhancing its picturesqueness and supplying it
with a religious and human interest, Chang-an Sa may be taken as a
fair specimen of the three largest, as it is undoubtedly the oldest,
assuming the correctness of a historical record quoted by Mr. Campbell,
which gives the date of its restoration by two monks, Yul-sa and
Chin-h’yo, as A.D. 515, in the reign of Pöp-heung, a king of Silla,
then the most important of the kingdoms, afterwards amalgamated as
Korea.
The large temple is a fine old building of the type adapted from
Chinese Buddhist architecture, oblong, with a heavy tiled roof 48 feet
in height, with wings, deep eaves protecting masses of richly-colored
wood-carving. The lofty reticulated roof is internally supported on
an arrangement of heavy beams, elaborately carved and painted in rich
colors. The panels of the doors, which serve as windows, and let in a
“dim religious light,” are bold fretwork, decorated in colors enriched
with gold.
The roofs of the actual shrines are supported on wooden pillars 3
feet in diameter, formed of single trees, and the panelled ceilings
are embellished with intricate designs in colors and gold. In one
Sakyamuni’s image, with a distinctly Hindu cast of countenance, and
a look of ineffable abstraction, sits under a highly decorative
reticulated wooden canopy, with an altar before it, on which are brass
incense burners, books of prayer, and lists of those deceased persons
for whose souls masses have been duly paid for. Much rich brocade,
soiled and dusty, and many gonfalons, hang round this shrine.
The “Hall of the Four Sages” contains three Buddhas in different
attitudes of abstraction or meditation, a picture, wonderfully worked
in gold and silks in Chinese embroidery, of Buddha and his disciples,
for which the monks claim an antiquity of fourteen centuries, and
sixteen Lohans, with their attendants. Along the side walls are a host
of dæmons and animals. Another striking shrine is that dedicated to
the Lord of the Buddhistic Hell and his ten princes. The monks call
it the “Temple of the Ten Judges.” This is a shrine of great resort,
and is much blackened by the smoke of incense and candles, but the
infernal torments depicted in the pictures at the back of each judge
are only too conspicuous. They are horrible beyond conception, and
show a diabolical genius in hellish art, akin to that which inspired
the creation of the groups in the Inferno of the temple of Kwan-yin at
Ting-hai on Chusan, familiar to some of my readers.
Besides the ecclesiastical buildings and the common guest-room, there
are Government buildings marked with the Korean national emblem, for
the use of officials who go up to Chang-an Sa for pleasure.
It was difficult for me to find accommodation, but eventually a
very pleasing young priest of high rank gave up his cell to me.
Unfortunately, it was next the guests’ kitchen, and the flues from the
fires passing under it, I was baked in a temperature of 91°, although,
in spite of warnings about tigers, the dangers from which are by no
means imaginary, I kept both door and window open all night. The cell
had for its furniture a shrine of Gautama and an image of Kwan-yin on
a shelf, and a few books, which I learned were Buddhist classics, not
volumes, as in a cell which I occupied later, full of pictures by no
means inculcating holiness. In the next room, equally hot, and without
a chink open for ventilation, thirty guests moaned and tossed all
night, a single candle dimly lighting a picture of Buddha and the dusty
and hideous ornaments on the altar below.
At 9 P.M., midnight, and again at 4 A.M., which is the hour at which
the monks rise, bells were rung, cymbals and gongs were beaten, and the
praises of Buddha were chanted in an unknown tongue. A feature at once
cheerful and cheerless is the presence at Chang-an Sa of a number of
bright, active, orphan boys from ten to thirteen years old, who are at
present servitors, but who will one day become priests.
It is an exercise of forbearance to abstain from writing much about the
beauties of Chang-an Sa as seen in two days of perfect heavenliness.
It is a calm retreat, that small, green, semicircular plateau which
the receding hills have left, walling in the back and sides with rocky
precipices half clothed with forest, while the bridgeless torrent in
front, raging and thundering among huge boulders of pink granite,
secludes it from all but the adventurous. Alike in the rose of sunrise,
in the red and gold of sunset, or gleaming steely blue in the prosaic
glare of midday, the great rock peak on the left bank, one of the
highest in the range, compels ceaseless admiration. The appearance of
its huge vertical topmost ribs has been well compared to that of the
“pipes of an organ,” this organ-pipe formation being common in the
range; seams and ledges halfway down give roothold to a few fantastic
conifers and azaleas, and lower still all suggestion of form is lost
among dense masses of magnificent forest.
As I proposed to take a somewhat different route from Yu-chöm Sa
(the first temple on the eastern slope) from that traversed by my
predecessors, the Hon. G. W. Curzon and Mr. Campbell, I left the ponies
and baggage at Chang-an Sa, the _mapu_, who were bent on _ku-kyöng_,
accompanying me for part of the distance, and took a five days’ journey
in the glorious Keum-Kang San in unrivalled weather, in air which was
elixir, crossing the range to Yu-chöm Sa by the An-mun-chai (Goose-Gate
Terrace), 4,215 feet in altitude, and recrossing it by the Ki-cho,
3,570 feet.
Taking two coolies to carry essentials, and a _na-myö_ or mountain
chair with two bearers, for the whole journey, all supplied by the
monks, I walked the first stage to the monasteries of P’yo-un Sa and
Chyang-yang Sa, the latter at an elevation of about 2,760 feet. From it
the view, which passes for the grandest in Korea, is obtained of the
“Twelve Thousand Peaks.” There is assuredly no single view that I have
seen in Japan or even in Western China which equals it for beauty and
grandeur. Across the grand gorge through which the Chang-an Sa torrent
thunders, and above primæval tiger-haunted forests with their infinity
of green, rises the central ridge of the Keum-Kang San, jagged all
along its summit, each yellow granite pinnacle being counted as a peak.
On that enchanting May evening, when odors of paradise, the fragrant
breath of a million flowering shrubs and trailers, of bursting buds,
and unfolding ferns, rose into the cool dewy air, and the silence
could be felt, I was not inclined to enter a protest against Korean
exaggeration on the ground that the number of peaks is probably
nearer 1,200 than 12,000. Their yellow granite pinnacles, weathered
into silver gray, rose up cold, stern, and steely blue from the
glorious forests which drape their lower heights--winter above and
summer below--then purpled into red as the sun sank, and gleamed above
the twilight, till each glowing summit died out as lamps which are
extinguished one by one, and the whole took on the ashy hue of death.
The situation of P’yo-un Sa is romantic, on the right bank of the
torrent, and is approached by a bridge, and by passing under several
roofed gateways. The monastery had been newly rebuilt, and is one mass
of fretwork, carving, gilding, and color, the whole decoration being
the work of the monks.
The front of the “Temple of the Believing Mind” is a magnificent
piece of bold wood-carving, the _motif_ being the peony. Every part
of the building which is not stone or tile is carved, and decorated
in blue, red, white, green, and gold. It may be barbaric, but it is
barbaric splendor. There too is a “Temple of Judgment,” with hideous
representations of the Buddhist hells, one scene being the opening of
the books in which the deeds of men’s mortal lives are written.
The fifty monks of P’yo-un Sa were very friendly, and not impecunious.
One gave up to me his oven-like cell, but repaid himself for the
sacrifice by indulging in ceaseless staring. The wind bells of the
establishment and the big bell have a melody in their tones such as
I have rarely heard, and when at 4 A.M. bells of all sizes and tones
announced that “prayer is better than sleep,” there was nothing about
the sounds to jar on the pure freshness of morning. The monks are well
dressed and jolly, and have a well-to-do air which clashes with any
pretensions to asceticism. The rule of these monasteries is a strict
vegetarianism which allows neither milk nor eggs, and in the whole
region there are neither fowls nor domestic animals. Not to wound the
prejudices of my hosts, I lived on tea, rice, honey water, edible
pine nuts, and a most satisfying combination of pine nuts and honey.
After a light breakfast on these delicacies, the sub-abbot, took me to
see his grandmother, a very bright pleasing woman of eighty, who came
from Seoul thirteen years ago and built a house within the monastery
grounds, in order to die in its quiet blessedness. There I had to eat
a second ethereal meal, and the hospitable hostess forced on me a pot
of exquisite honey and a bag of pine nuts. These, the product of the
_Pinus pinea_, which grows profusely throughout the range, furnish an
important and nutritious article of monkish diet, and are exported in
quantities as a luxury. They are rich and very oily, and turn rancid
soon after being shelled. The honey is also locally produced. The
beehives, which usually stand two together in cavities in the rocks,
are hollow logs with clay covers mounted on blocks of wood or stone.
Leaving this friendly hostess and the seven nuns of the nunnery behind,
the sub-abbot showed me the direction in which to climb, for road there
is none, and at parting presented me with a fan.
A visit to the Keum-Kang San elevates a Korean into the distinguished
position of a traveller, and many a young resident of Seoul gains this
fashionable reputation. It is not as containing shrines of pilgrimage,
for most Koreans despise Buddhism and its shaven mendicant priests,
that these mountains are famous in Korea, but for their picturesque
beauties, much celebrated in Korean poetry. The broad backbone of the
peninsula which has trended near to the east coast from Puk-chöng
southwards has degenerated into tameness, when suddenly Keum-Kang San,
or the Diamond Mountain, with its elongated mass of serrated, jagged,
and inaccessible peaks, and magnificent primæval forest, occupying an
area of about 32 miles in length by 22 in breadth, starts off from
it near the 39th parallel of latitude in the province of Kang-wön.
Buddhism, which, as in Japan, possesses itself of the fairest spots in
Nature, fixed itself in this romantic seclusion as early as the sixth
century A.D., and the venerable relics of the time when for 1,000
years it was the official as well as the popular cult of the country
are chiefly to be found in the recesses of this mountain region, where
the same faith, though now discredited, disestablished, and despised,
still attracts a certain number of votaries, and a far larger number
of visitors and so-called pilgrims, who resort to the shrines to
indulge in _ku-kyöng_, a Korean term which covers pleasure-seeking,
sightseeing, the indulgence of curiosity, and much else.
[Illustration: THE DIAMOND MOUNTAINS.]
So far as I have been able to learn, there are only two routes by
which the Keum-Kang San can be penetrated, the one which, after
following the bed of a singularly rough torrent, crosses the watershed
at An-mun-chai, and on or near which the principal monasteries and
shrines are situated, and the Ki-cho, a lower and less interesting
pass. Both routes start from Chang-an Sa. The forty-two shrines are the
headquarters of about 400 monks and about 50 nuns, who add to their
religious exercises the weaving of cotton and hempen cloth. The lay
servitors possibly number 1,000. The four great monasteries, two on the
eastern and two on the western slope, absorb more than 300 of the whole
number. All except the high monastic officials beg through the country,
alms-bowl in hand, the only distinctive features of their dress being
a very peculiar hat and the rosary. They chant the litanies of Buddha
from house to house, and there are few who deny them food and lodging
and a few _cash_ or a little rice.
The monasteries are presided over by what we should call “abbots,”
superiors of the first or second class according to the importance
of the establishment. These _Chong-söp_ and _Sön-tong_ are nominally
elected annually, but actually continue in office for years, unless
their conduct gives rise to dissatisfaction. Beyond the confirmation
of the election of the _Chong-söp_ of those monasteries which possess
a “Red Arrow Gate” by the Board of Rites at Seoul, the disestablished
Church appears to be quite free from State interference. In the case of
restoring and rebuilding shrines, large sums are collected in Seoul
and the southern provinces, though faith in Buddhism as a creed rarely
exists.
On making inquiries through Mr. Miller as to the way in which the
number of monks is kept up, I learned that the majority are either
orphans or children whose parents have given them to the monasteries
at a very early age owing to poverty. These are more or less educated
and trained by the monks. It must be supposed that among the number
there are a few who escape from the weariness and friction of secular
life into a region in which seclusion and devotion are possible. Of
this type was the pale and interesting young priest who gave up his
room to me at Chang-an Sa, and two who accompanied us to Yu-chöm
Sa, one of whom chanted _Na Mu Ami Tabu_ nearly the whole day as he
journeyed, telling a bead on his rosary for each ten repetitions. Mr.
Miller asked him what the words meant. “Just letters,” he replied;
“they have no meaning, but if you say them many times you will get to
heaven better.” Then he gave Mr. Miller the rosary, and taught him the
mystic syllables, saying, “Now, you keep the beads, say the words, and
you will go to heaven.” Among the younger priests several seemed in
earnest. Others make the monasteries (as is largely the case with the
celebrated shrines of Kwan-yin on the Chinese island of Pu-tu) a refuge
from justice or creditors, some remain desiring peaceful indolence, and
not a few are vowed and tonsured who came simply to view the scenery of
the Keum-Kang San and were too much enchanted to leave it.
As to the moribund Buddhism which has found its most secluded retreat
in these mountains, it is overlaid with dæmonolatry, and like that of
China is smothered under a host of semi-deified heroes. Of the lofty
aims and aspirations after righteousness which distinguish the great
reforming sects of Japan, such as the Monto, it knows nothing.
The monks are grossly ignorant and superstitious. They know nearly
nothing of the history and tenets of their own creed, or of the
purport of their liturgies, which to most of them are just “letters,”
the ceaseless repetition of which constitutes “merit.” Though some
of them know Chinese, and this knowledge means “education” in Korea,
worship consists in the mumbling or loud intoning of Sanscrit or
Tibetan phrases, of the meaning of which they have no conception. My
impression of most of the monks was that their religious performances
are absolutely without meaning to them, and that belief, except among
a few, does not exist. The Koreans universally attribute to them gross
profligacy, of the existence of which at one of the large monasteries
it was impossible not to become aware, but between their romantic and
venerable surroundings, the order and quietness of their lives, their
benevolence to the old and destitute, who find a peaceful asylum with
them, and in the main their courtesy and hospitality, I am compelled
to admit that they exercise a certain fascination, and that I prefer
to remember their virtues rather than their faults. My sympathies
go out to them for their appreciation of the beautiful, and for the
way in which religious art has assisted Nature by the exceeding
picturesqueness of the positions and decoration of their shrines.
The route from Chang-an Sa to Yu-chöm Sa, about 11 miles, is mainly
the rough beds of two great mountain torrents. Along this, in romantic
positions, are three large monasteries P’yo-un Sa, Ma-ha-ly-an Sa, and
Yu-chöm Sa, besides a number of smaller shrines, with from two to five
attendants each, one especially, Po-tok-am sa, dedicated to Kwan-yin,
picturesque beyond description--a fantastic temple built out from the
face of a cliff, at a height of 100 feet, and supported below the
centre by a pillar, round which a blossoming white clematis, and an
_Ampelopsis Veitchiana_, in the rose flush of its spring leafage, had
entwined their lavish growth.
No quadruped can travel this route farther than Chang-an Sa. Coolies,
very lightly laden, and chair-bearers carrying a _na-myö_, two long
poles with a slight seat in the middle, a noose of rope for the feet,
and light uprights bound together with a wistaria rope to support the
back, can be used, but the occupant of the chair has to walk much of
the way.
The torrent bed contracts above Chang-an Sa, opens out here and there,
and above P’yo-un Sa narrows into a gash, only opening out again at
the foot of the An-mun-chai. Surely the beauty of that 11 miles is not
much exceeded anywhere on earth. Colossal cliffs, upbearing mountains,
forests, and gray gleaming peaks, rifted to give roothold to pines and
maples, ofttimes contracting till the blue heaven above is narrowed to
a strip, boulders of pink granite 40 and 50 feet high, pines on their
crests and ferns and lilies in their crevices, round which the clear
waters swirl, before sliding down over smooth surfaces of pink granite
to rest awhile in deep pink pools where they take a more brilliant
than an emerald green with the flashing lustre of a diamond--rocks and
ledges over which the crystal stream dashes in drifts of foam, shelving
rock surfaces on which the decorative Chinese characters, the laborious
work of pilgrims, afford the only foothold, slides, steeper still, made
passable for determined climbers by holes, drilled by the monks, and
fitted with pegs and rails, rocks with bas-reliefs, or small shrines
of Buddha draped with flowering trailers, a cliff with a bas-relief of
Buddha, 45 feet high on a pedestal 30 feet broad, rocks carved into
lanterns and altars, whose harsh outlines are softened by mosses and
lichens, and above, huge timber and fantastic peaks rising into
The summer heaven’s delicious blue.
A description can be only a catalogue. The actuality was intoxicating,
a canyon on the grandest scale, with every element of beauty present.
This route cannot be traversed in European shoes. In Korean string
foot-gear, however, I never slipped once. There was much jumping from
boulder to boulder, much winding round rocky projections, clinging to
their irregularities with scarcely foothold, and one’s back to the
torrent far below, and much leaping over deep crevices and “walking
tight-rope fashion” over rails. Wherever the traveller has to leave the
difficulties of the torrent bed he encounters those of slippery sloping
rocks, which he has to traverse by hanging on to tree trunks.
Our two priestly companions were most polite to me, giving me a hand
at the dangerous places, and beguiling the way by legends, chiefly
Buddhistic, concerning every fantastic and abnormal rock and pool, such
as the Myo-kil Sang, the colossal figure of Buddha referred to before,
a pothole in the granite bed of the stream, the wash-basin of some
mythical Bodhisattva, the Fire Dragon Pool, and the bathing-places of
dragons in the fantastic Man-pok-Tong (Grotto of Myriad Cascades), and
the Lion Stone which repelled the advance of the Japanese invaders in
1592.
Beyond the third monastery the gorge becomes wider and less fantastic,
the forest thinner, allowing scattered glimpses of the sky, and finally
some long zigzags take the traveller up to the open grassy summit of
the An-mun-chai, on which plums, pears, cherries, blush azaleas, and
pink rhododendrons, which had long ceased blooming below, were in
their first flush of beauty. To the west the difficult country of the
previous week’s journey, gray granite, deep valleys, and tiger-haunted
forest faded into a veil of blue, and in the east, over diminishing
forest-covered ranges, gleamed the blue Sea of Japan, more than 4,000
feet below.
On the eastern descent there are gigantic pines and firs, some of them
ruthlessly barked, and the long dependent streamers of the gray-green
_Lycopodium Sieboldii_ with which they are festooned, give the forest a
funereal aspect. Of this the peculiar fringed hats are made which are
worn on occasion by both monks and nuns. After many downward zigzags,
the track enters another rocky gorge with a fine torrent, in the bed
of which are huge “potholes,” shown as the bathing-places of dragons,
whose habits must have been much cleanlier than those of the present
inhabitants of the land.
The great monastery of Yu-chöm Sa, with its many curved roofs and
general look of newness and wealth, is approached by crossing a
very tolerable bridge. The road, which passes through a well-kept
burial-ground, where the ashes of the pious and learned abbots of
several centuries repose under more or less stately monuments, was much
encumbered near the monastery by great pine logs newly hewn for its
restoration, which was being carried out on a very expensive scale.
The monks made a difficulty about receiving us, and it was not till
after some delay, and the production of my _kwan-ja_, that we were
allotted rooms in the Government buildings for the two days of our
halt. After this small difficulty, they were unusually kind and
friendly, and one of the young priests, who came over the An-mun-chai
with us, offered Mr. Miller the use of his cell on Sunday, saying that
“it would be a quieter place than the great room to study his belief”!
I had hoped for rest and quiet on the following day, having had rather
a hard week, but these were unattainable. Besides 70 monks and 20
nuns, there were nearly 200 lay servitors and carpenters, and all were
bent upon _ku-kyöng_, the first European woman to visit the Keum-Kang
San being regarded as a great sight, and from early morning till late
at night there was no rest. The _kang_ floor of my room being heated
from the kitchen, it was too hot to exist with the paper front closed,
and the crowds of monks, nuns, and servitors, finishing with the
carpenters, who crowded in whenever it was opened, and hung there hour
after hour, nearly suffocated me, the day being very warm. The abbot
and several senior monks discussed with Mr. Miller the merits of rival
creeds, saying that the only difference between Buddhists and ourselves
is that they don’t kill even the smallest insect, while we disregard
what we call “animal life,” and that we don’t look upon monasticism and
other forms of asceticism as means of salvation. They admitted that
among their priests there are more who live in known sin than strivers
after righteousness.
[Illustration: TOMBSTONES OF ABBOTS, YU-CHÖM SA.]
There are many bright busy boys about Yu-chöm Sa, most of whom had
already had their heads shaved. To one who had not, Che-on-i gave a
piece of chicken, but he refused it because he was a Buddhist, on which
an objectionable-looking old sneak of a priest told him that it was all
right to eat it so long as no one saw him, but the boy persisted in his
refusal.
At midnight, being awakened by the boom of the great bell and the
disorderly and jarring clang of innumerable small ones, I went, at the
request of the friendly young priest, our fellow-traveller, to see him
perform the devotions, which are taken in turn by the monks.
The great bronze bell, an elaborate piece of casting of the fourteenth
century, stands in a rude, wooden, clay-floored tower by itself. A
dim paper lantern on a dusty rafter barely lighted up the white-robed
figure of the devotee, as he circled the bell, chanting in a most
musical voice a Sanscrit litany, of whose meaning he was ignorant,
striking the bosses of the bell with a knot of wood as he did so. Half
an hour passed thus. Then taking a heavy mallet, and passing to another
chant, he circled the bell with a greater and ever-increasing passion
of devotion, beating its bosses heavily and rhythmically, faster and
faster, louder and louder, ending by producing a burst of frenzied
sound, which left him for a moment exhausted. Then, seizing the
swinging beam, the three full tones which end the worship, and which
are produced by striking the bell on the rim, which is 8 inches thick,
and on the middle, which is very thin, made the tower and the ground
vibrate, and boomed up and down the valley with their unforgettable
music. Of that young monk’s sincerity, I have not one doubt.
He led us to the great temple, a vast “chamber of imagery,” where a
solitary monk chanted before an altar in the light from a solitary
lamp in an alabaster bowl, accompanying his chant by striking a small
bell with a deer horn. The dim light left cavernous depths of shadow
in the temple, from which eyes and teeth, weapons, and arms and legs
of otherwise invisible gods and devils showed uncannily. Behind the
altar is a rude and monstrous piece of wood-carving representing the
upturned roots of a tree, among which fifty-three idols are sitting
and standing. As well by daylight as in the dimness of midnight, there
are an uncouthness and power about this gigantic representation which
are very impressive. Below the carving are three frightful dragons,
on whose faces the artist has contrived to impress an expression of
torture and defeat.
The legend of the altar-piece runs thus. When fifty-three priests come
to Korea from India to introduce Buddhism, they reached this place, and
being weary, sat down by a well under a spreading tree. Presently three
dragons came up from the well and began a combat with the Buddhists,
in the course of which they called up a great wind which tore up the
tree. Not to be out-manœuvred, each priest placed an image of Buddha
on a root of the tree, turning it into an altar. Finally, the priests
overcome the dragons, forced them into the well, and piled great rocks
on the top of it to keep them there, founded the monastery, and built
this temple over the dragons’ grave. On either side of this unique
altar-piece is a bouquet of peonies 4 feet wide by 10 feet high.
The “private apartments” of this and the other monasteries consist of a
living room, and very small single cells, each with the shrine of its
occupant, and all very clean. It must be remembered, however, that this
easy, peaceful, luxurious life only lasts for a part of the year, and
that all but a few of the monks must make an annual tramp, wallet and
begging-bowl in hand, over rough, miry, or dusty Korean roads, put up
with vile and dirty accommodation, beg for their living from those who
scorn their tonsure and their creed, and receive “low talk” from the
lowest in the land.
Just before we left, the old abbot invited us into his very charming
suite of rooms, and with graceful hospitality prepared a repast for
us with his own hands--square cakes of rich oily pine nuts glued
together with honey, thin cakes of “popped” rice and honey, sweet
cake, Chinese sweetmeat, honey, and bowls of honey water with pine nuts
floating on its surface. The oil of these nuts certainly supplied the
place of animal food during my enforced abstinence from it, but rich
vegetable oil and honey soon pall on the palate, and the abbot was
concerned that we did not do justice to our entertainment. The general
culture produced by Buddhism at these monasteries, and the hospitality,
consideration, and gentleness of deportment, contrast very favorably
with the arrogance, superciliousness, insolence, and conceit which I
have seen elsewhere in Korea among the so-called followers of Confucius.
When we departed all the monks and laborers bade us a courteous
farewell, some of the older priests accompanying us for a short
distance.
After descending the slope by the well-made road which leads down
to the large monastery of Sin-kyei Sa, at the northeast foot of the
Keum-Kang San, we left it for a rough and difficult westerly track,
which, after affording some bright gleams of the Sea of Japan, enters
dense forest full of great boulders and magnificent specimens of the
_Filix mas_ and _Osmumda regalis_. A severe climb up and down an
irregular, broken staircase of rock took us over the Ki-cho Pass,
3,700 feet in altitude, after which there is a tedious march of some
hours along bare and unpicturesque mountain-sides before reaching the
well-made path which leads through pine woods to the beautiful plateau
of Chang-an Sa. The young priest had kept our baggage carefully, but
the heat of his floor had melted the candles in the boxes and had
turned candy into molasses, making havoc among photographic materials
at the same time!