Ascending to a Buddha Land: A Study of a Pagoda Valley Sculpture on Namsan in Unified Silla

Long revered as a sacred realm, Namsan (South Mountain) in Kyngju, Korea, is home to both numerous temple ruins and massive boulders on which various Buddhist deities have been carved. One boulder in particular, known as T'apkok monument, is exemplary: its site and visual motif represent the Silla Buddhists' unique ideal for the Buddha Land, or pulgukt' o. Comparing the visual vocabulary of excavation sites in the Kyngju basin, this study interprets the T'apkok sculpture as a rock version of a late seventh-century monastery compound. This new perspective provides a better understanding of how the monument established a stage that anticipated the Buddha's manifestation on this mountain.