Esoteric Buddhism under the Koryŏ in the Light of ... - Buddhism.org

International Journal of Buddhist Thought & Culture 67
the officiating monks at these events must have been adepts in Esoteric
Buddhist practices in one form or the other.
Although only some Koryŏ rulers are recorded as having received
the abhiseka, we have sufficiently strong evidence that the mandate and
spiritual authority of the Koryŏ kings were formally bestowed on them
by Buddhism. It can of course be discussed to which extent these rites
had a purely formal function, but the fact remains that Buddhism was
lending its authority and power to the official sanctioning of the Koryŏ
rulers. In other words the Koryŏ kings received the right to rule - at
least symbolically - from the Buddhas which must be seen as the
equivalent of the Confucian rite for the bestowal of the Heavenly
Mandate (Kor. ch’ŏnmyŏng 天 命 ). We know that during most of the
Song dynasty this practice was not followed, but in Heian Japan similar
rites were conducted.
Another important aspect of the relationship between Esoteric
Buddhism and the Koryŏ ruling class is the economic one. Although
this aspect is a universal one as far as state-Buddhist relationship goes
in all the cultures of medieval East Asia, and indeed one of the
historically touchy points as regards excessive Buddhist power, it is
abundantly clear that under the Koryŏ the government spent
ridiculously large amounts of funds on the Buddhist establishments and
the monastic communities in general. If we limit our discussion of the
state expenses that went to Buddhism relating to the costs set aside for
the performances of Esoteric Buddhist rituals, including meagre feasts,
i.e. vegetarian banquets, special donations to monk-leaders etc., all part
and parcel of the reality of staging these elaborate and evidently
pompous rituals, the financial burden must have been a heavy one
indeed. 19 Especially so when we remember that the periods when
state-sponsored rituals were performed peaked during periods of natural
19 The KS provide us with information on the performance of some Esoteric Buddhist rituals
which shows that large sums were spent. Moreover, the mere feeding of as many as thirty
thousand monks on the occasion of a single assembly, in any case an accessory to the ritual
itself, is a good indicator of how costly these rites actually were. Cf. KS.I.159b. See also Lee
(1984: 132-3).