Friday 21 May 2010

Doseon Sa Tour Part 3 - On the way to Doseon Sa – A visit to a Buddhist temple of a different denomination

After the birth of Buddhism in India (around 2500 years ago), it spread in Asia and reached Korea after 800 years after it’s birth(1). It was later “purified” and modified refined to suit the Korean ways and the influence by the Korean Buddhist monks.

Therefore, in modern Korean, you would not find a lot of influence from India at , when it comes to design of a Buddhist temple or the different statues or architecture.

However, the widespread of a different denominations, allows you to sometimes find the Indian influence kept preserved.

By a sheer coincidence, we stumbled upon this lost temple in the edge of a mountain in Korea on our way to Doseon Sa. (actually the bus driver punched the wrong GPS location on his on-board computer and took us to the wrong Doseon Sa temple!)

I am not sure if it a case of a copyrights infringements but, anyways, I got some nice (and rare photos, according to Dr. David, our tour guide)

You will see in the photos what looks as Ganesha or Kali in Hinduism.

We are told that the many arms symbolizes helping the many people this god has to help and the many faces symbolizes that this god is looking after people’s lives to help them.

I leave you with the photos. Since they are uploaded in high resolution I highly recommend that you examine the photos in and see the items the god is handling in his hand. Very detailed art! 

After you click on the photos below, it will take you to Picasa, then click imagethis button in the top right of the statue photo to see the photo in full size. Then you can either use the mouse to drag it around or save-as on your PC.

Enjoy!

 The statue

 A closeup of the statue

 The traditional Buddhist drum overlooking the above statue

 a nice art work, click to examine in closeup

 both side by side

 

(1) Wikipedia

1 comment:

  1. The photo does look like Kali.. But m wondering on the Ganesha aspect.. something my eyes are not able to find.. anyways, I am glad to see these rare pictures through your lense..

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