Hiaksai had given Buddhism to Japan as early as 552 A.D., but [[39]]opposition had prevented its spread, the temple was set on fire, and the images of Buddha thrown in the river. In 684 one Sayéki brought another image of Buddha from Corea, and Umako, son of Inamé, a minister at the mikado’s court, enshrined it in a chapel on his own grounds. He made Yeben and Simata, two Coreans, his priests, and his daughter a nun. They celebrated a festival, and henceforth Buddhism[1] grew apace.
The country toward the sunrise was then a new land to the peninsulars, just as “the West” is to us, or Australia is to England; and Japan made these fugitives welcome. In their train came industry, learning, and skill, enriching the island kingdom with the best infusion of blood and culture.
Hiaksai was the first of the three kingdoms that was weakened by civil war and then fell a victim to Chinese lust of conquest.
The progress and fall of the other two kingdoms will now be narrated. Beginning with Korai, we shall follow its story from the year 613 A.D., when the invading hordes of the Tang dynasty had been driven out of the peninsula with such awful slaughter by the Koraians. [[40]]
[1] There are colossal stone images at Pe-chiu (Pha-jiu) in the capital province, and at Un-jin in Chung-chong Dō. The former, discovered by Lieutenant J. G. Bernadon, U.S.N., are in the midst of a fir-wood, and are carved in half-figure out of bowlders in place, the heads and caps projecting over the tops of the trees. One wears a square cap and the other a round one, from which Mr. G. W. Aston conjectures that they symbolize the male and female elements in nature (p. 329). At Un-jin in Chung-chong Dō Mr. G. C. Foulke, U.S.N., saw, at a distance of fifteen miles, what seemed to be a lighthouse. On approach, this half-length human figure proved to be a pinnacle of white granite, sixty-four feet high, cut into a representation of Buddha. Similar statues may perhaps be discovered elsewhere. Coreans call such figures miryek (stone men, as the Chinese characters given in the French-Corean dictionary read), or miriok, from the Chinese Mi-lē, or Buddha. (In Japanese, the Buddha to come is Miroku-butsu—a verbal coincidence.) Professor Terrien de Lacouperie has written upon this theme with great learning. Besides the lop-ears, forehead-mark, and traditional countenance seen in the Buddhas of Chinese Asia, there is on the Un-jin figure a very high double cap, on which are set two slabs of stone joined by a central column, suggesting both the ceremonial cap of ancient Chinese ritual and the Indian pagoda-like umbrella. These miriok stand in what was once Hiaksai. In his “Life in Corea,” Mr. Carles gives a picture of the one at Un-jin. Smaller ones exist near monasteries and temples. [↑]
CHAPTER VI.
EPOCH OF THE THREE KINGDOMS.—KORAI.
After the struggle in which the Corean tiger had worsted the Western Dragon, early in the seventh century, China and Korai were for a generation at peace. The bones of the slain were buried, and sacrificial fires for the dead soothed the spirits of the victims. The same imperial messenger, who in 622 was sent to supervise these offices of religion, also visited each of the courts of the three kingdoms. So successful was he in his mission of peaceful diplomacy, that each of the Corean states sent envoys with tribute and congratulation to the imperial throne. In proof of his good wishes, the emperor returned to his vassals all his prisoners, and declared that their young men would be received as students in the Imperial University at his capital. Henceforth, as in many instances during later centuries, the sons of nobles and promising youth from Korai, Shinra, and Hiaksai went to study at Nanking, where their envoys met the Arab traders.