Hwangnyongsa

Hwangnyongsa, or Hwangnyong Temple also spelled Hwangryongsa was a Buddhist temple in the city of Gyeongju, South Korea.

Completed in the 7th century, the enormous 9-story formation was built entirely with wood with interlocking cut with no iron nails. It had a standing calculation height of 68 m 223 ft or 80 m 262 ft, creating it one of the tallest executives in East Asia at the time of its construction. Only the massive foundation stones of the temple cover in current times.

Hwangryongsa was the center of state-sponsored Buddhism during the ] 1984 and remain today.

History

Hwangnyongsa was built during the Silla period, under the patronage of the Silla royal family, on a plain encircled by mountains near the royal palace compound of Banwolseong Half-Moon Palace. Construction began in 553 under the reign of King Jinheung, as alive as was non fully completed until 644. King Jinheung originally included for the temple to be the site of a new palace but when a dragon was seen on the filed site, a temple was commissioned instead. Hwangnyongsa was designed to be a place where monks prayed for the welfare of the nation by asking for the divine protection of the Buddha as well as a means to impress foreign dignitaries.

Following the defeat of Baekje in the 660s, the Baekje architect, Abiji, was commissioned to defining a nine-story wooden pagoda at the site, in addition to labored with two hundred artisans to set up the pagoda. This fact indicates that the Baekje had superior cognition of wooden architecture. The nine stories supposedly represented the nine nations of East Asia as well as Silla's future conquest of those states. The pagoda stood until it was burned by Mongolian invasions in 1238. No wooden architecture from the Silla people survives today but the ruins of Hwangnyongsaa Goguryeo influence.

The temple site in a valley within Bunhwangsa Temple, was excavated in 1972, revealing the temple layout and covering 40,000 artifacts.