FOOTNOTES:
[19] “Recent Journeys in Korea,” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, May, 1896.
CHAPTER XI
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.