Tripitaka Koreana

UNESCO World Heritage Site

The Tripitaka Koreana 팔만 대장경
Name as inscribed on the World Heritage List
Type	Cultural
Criteria	iv, vi
Reference	737
UNESCO region	Asia and the Pacific
Inscription history
Inscription	1995 (19th Session)

The Tripitaka Koreana (lit. Goryeo Tripitaka) or Palman Daejanggyeong ("Eighty-Thousand Tripitaka") is a Korean collection of the Tripitaka (Buddhist scriptures, and the Sanskrit word for "three baskets"), carved onto 81,258 wooden printing blocks in the 13th century.^[1] It is the world's most comprehensive and oldest intact version of Buddhist canon in Hanja script, with no known errors or errata in the 52,330,152 characters which are organized in over 1496 titles and 6568 volumes. Each wood block measures 24 centimeters in height and 70 centimeters in length.^[2] The thickness of the blocks ranges from 2.6 to 4 centimeters and each weighs about three to four kilograms. The woodblocks are almost as tall as Mount Baekdu at 2.74 km when stacked, measure 60 km long when lined up, and weigh 280 tons in total.^[3] The woodblocks are in pristine condition without warping or deformation despite being created more than 750 years ago.^[4][5] The Tripitaka Koreana is stored in Haeinsa, a Buddhist temple in South Gyeongsang province, in South Korea.

There is a movement by scholars to change the English name of the Tripitaka Koreana.^[6] Professor Robert Buswell, a leading scholar of Korean Buddhism, called for the renaming of the Tripitaka Koreana to the Korean Buddhist Canon, indicating that the current nomenclature is misleading because the Tripitaka Koreana is much greater in scale than the actual Tripiṭaka, and includes much additional content such as travelogues, Sanskrit and Chinese dictionaries, and biographies of monks and nuns.^[7]

The Koreana Tripitaka was designated a National Treasure of South Korea in 1962, and inscribed in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 2007.^[8][1]

History

Tripitaka Koreana sutra page in 1371.

The name Goryeo Tripitaka comes from "Goryeo", the name of Korea from the 10th to the 14th centuries.

Work on the first Tripitaka Koreana began in 1011 during the Goryeo–Khitan War and was completed in 1087.^[9] The act of carving the woodblocks was considered to be a way of bringing about a change in fortune by invoking the Buddha's help.^[10][11] The first Tripitaka Koreana was based primarily on the Northern Song Tripitaka completed in the 10th century,^[12][13] but other scriptures published until then, such as the Khitan Tripitaka, were also consulted in order to identify items in need of revision and adjustment.^[9] The first Tripitaka Koreana contained around 6,000 volumes.^[9]

The original set of woodblocks was destroyed by fire during the Mongol invasions of Korea in 1232, when Goryeo's capital was moved to Ganghwa Island during nearly three decades of Mongol incursions, although scattered parts of its prints still remain. To once again implore divine assistance with combating the Mongol threat, King Gojong thereafter ordered the revision and re-creation of the Tripitaka; the carving began in 1237 and was completed in 12 years,^[2] with support from Choe U and his son Choe Hang,^[14] and involving monks from both the Seon and Gyo schools. This second version is usually what is meant by the Tripitaka Koreana.^[15] In 1398, it was moved to Haeinsa, where it has remained housed in four buildings.

The production of the Tripitaka Koreana was an enormous national commitment of money and manpower, according to Robert Buswell, perhaps comparable to the US missions to the Moon in the 1960s.^[16] Thousands of scholars and craftsmen were employed in this massive project.^[15]

Evaluation

The Tripitaka Koreana is the 32nd national treasure of Korea, and the Haeinsa Temple Janggyeong Panjeon, the depository for the Tripitaka Koreana, has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.^[17] The UNESCO committee describes the Tripitaka Koreana as "one of the most important and most complete corpus of Buddhist doctrinal texts in the world".^[18] Not only is the work invaluable, it is also aesthetically valuable and shows a high quality of workmanship.^[19]

Haeinsa, the temple in which the Tripitaka Koreana is stored, is notable for its scientific design to ensure the optimum condition to best preserve the woodblocks, which have remained in pristine condition for more than 750 years.^[5]

The historical value of the Tripitaka Koreana comes from the fact that it is the most complete and accurate extant collection of Buddhist treatises, laws, and scriptures.^[2] The compilers of the Korean version incorporated older Northern Song Chinese, Khitan, and Goryeo versions, and added content written by respected Korean monks.^[2][20] Scholars can get an idea of the older Chinese and Khitan versions of the Tripitaka from the Korean version today. The quality of the wood blocks are attributed to the National Preceptor Sugi, the Buddhist monk in charge of the project,^[2] who carefully checked the Korean version for errors.^[20] Upon completing the Tripitaka Koreana, Sugi published 30 volumes of Additional Records which recorded errors, redundancies, and omissions he found during his comparisons of the different versions of the Tripitaka.^[21] Because of the accuracy of the Tripitaka Koreana, the Japanese, Chinese, and Taiwanese versions of the Tripitaka are based on the Korean version.^[2]

The Tripitaka Koreana was one of the most coveted items among Japanese Buddhists in the Edo period.^[16] Japan never managed to create a woodblock Tripitaka, and made constant requests and attempts to acquire the Tripitaka Koreana from Korea since 1388.^[22] 45 complete printings of the Tripitaka Koreana were gifted to Japan since the Muromachi period.^[16] The Tripitaka Koreana was used as the basis for the modern Japanese Taishō Tripiṭaka.^[15]

Copy of a Tripitaka Koreana woodblock at Haeinsa complex grounds used to allow visitors to make an inked print of the Heart Sutra while at the temple. See: for image of woodblock print.

Each block was made of birch wood from the southern islands of Korea and treated to prevent the decay of the wood. The blocks were soaked in sea water for three years, then cut and then boiled in salt water. Next, the blocks were placed in the shade and exposed to the wind for three years, at which point they were finally ready to be carved. After each block was carved, it was covered in a poisonous lacquer to keep insects away and then framed with metal to prevent warping.^[23]

Every block was inscribed with 23 lines of text with 14 characters per line. Therefore, each block, counting both sides, contained a total of 644 characters. The consistency of the style, and some sources, suggests that a single man carved the entire collection but it is now believed that a team of 30 men carved the Tripitaka.^[2][20]

Modern edition

The modern edition has 1,514 texts in 47 volumes.

See also

• National treasures of South Korea
• Buddhism in Korea
• Buddhist texts
• Pali Canon
• List of Korea-related topics

References

Cited works

• Keown, Damien; Prebish, Charles S., eds. (2010). Encyclopedia of Buddhism. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-203-49875-0. 
• Turnbull, Stephen (2003). Genghis Khan & the Mongol Conquests 1190–1400. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. ISBN 1-84176-523-6. 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tripitaka Koreana.

• Tripitaka Koreana (Site in Korean with electronic scans of the tripitaka)
• The Korean Tripitaka
• National Heritage
• (Haeinsa) National Treasures 32
• UNESCO

Coordinates: 35°48′N 128°06′E / 35.800°N 128.100°E / 35.800; 128.100