| The Blue-Rooster Mtn & Temple: Cheong-gye-san Cheong-gye-sa |
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| Cheong-gye-san is one of Seoul City's guardian mountains, protecting it from the far south-southwest. Cheong-gye-sa has stood on its western foot for a thousand years. The San-shin and Deok-seong in it's San-shin-gak are done in gold-lines-on-black, which was the motif used for the illustrations included in deluxe editions of Buddhist sutras all over Northeast Asia, during the "Golden Age" of Buddhism. Use of this style for the non-Buddhist San-shin certainly elevates his status in the realm of Buddhist icons. |
| ABOVE LEFT: a collection of small Buddha and child-monk statues placed by laymen on the rocks outside the San-shin-gak -- perhaps an informal Deok-seong shrine. ABOVE: the giant stone-mosaic laying-down Buddha (a rare motif in Korea) at the rear of Cheong-gye-sa; my friend David Kenat standing up on it. LEFT: in the Chil-seong [Seven Stars] painting, a group of six donga [attendants] playing music or holding symbolic things, like those that usually appear in San-shin icons. |
| In the old & magnificent "Assembly of the Spirits" painting (see pages 113-117 of my book) of Cheong-gye-sa, the San-shin (left, on the left) wears the leaf-mantle which echoes National-Founder-King Dan-gun and China's cultural-patriarch Fu-xi (see pages 132-8) -- this is very rare, it's usually only a male dongja who wears that. This makes the connection between San-shin and Dan-gun quite explicit. The Yong-wang (right photo) or Dragon-King (see pgs 110-11) stands in a unique and striking Dragon-face helmet! |
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| At the small, humble and obscure Baek-un-sa [White Clouds Temple, a very common name in Korea], at Baek-un-san a half-hour's drive doun south of Cheong-gye-san, is a fairly normal but very nice antique San-shin painting (right) in a San-shin-gak. The tiger is as ridiculous as his master is dignified! The twin dongja-boys hold sacred fruit, while their master holds a white leaf-fan. In the Seven-stars-spirit painting (above), the North-star spirit boasts an extrordinary head and excellent dragon-head staff, while wearing a Taoist cloud-shawl, while a boy-dongja offers holy peaches -- similar motifs to a San-shin. |