652 henrik h. sørensen
few, none of these can be directly connected with Esoteric Buddhism.
Among the few that can are those on which the six-character mantra
has been engraved.
Sculptures reflecting a clear-cut Esoteric Buddhist iconography are
rarely met within the extant sculptural art from the Chosŏn period. It
is of course possible that such images may have existed, as much of
the Buddhist art made prior to 1592 was lost in the course of the Imjin
War (1592–1598).^75 Nevertheless, even if such statues and images were
lost, the many written records should still provide us with evidence of
their existence if indeed they had been a reality. However, virtually no
records can be turned to for such information. It is highly probable
that images of the various Esoteric Buddhist forms of Avalokiteśvara
existed prior to the Imjin War, but none have in any case survived. As
would seem to have been the case with Esoteric Buddhist sculptural
art during the Koryŏ, it would appear that the same was the case for
the Chosŏn period.
As was the case in China and Korea, the Chosŏn Buddhists produced
a vital, but highly localized, tradition of votive paintings (t’aenghwa
) to be hung in the Buddhist halls for ritual use. While extant
paintings of Esoteric Buddhist divinities are largely absent for the
entire period of the Koryŏ, a fair number of surviving examples from
the Chosŏn have been documented. The majority of these paintings
feature one of several aspects of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, thus
testifying to the continued popularity of this divinity. Esoteric Bud-
dhist forms of this important bodhisattva represented in the t’aenghwa
include the thousand-armed form, Ekādaśamukha, and Cundī. The
cult of Avalokiteśvara is also evident in the early Chosŏn paintings
transmitted via the Sŏn master Ch’oŭi Uisun (1786–1866)
from Taehŭng Temple (figure 8).^76
(^75) The general destruction and plundering of Buddhist temples across the Korean
Peninsula at the hands of the invading Japanese armies dealt a hard blow to Korean
Buddhism from which it took several decades to recover. The destruction of the Bud-
dhist temples was partly caused by the fact that the Korean monastic communities had
organized themselves into a virtual monks’ army, which, even when greatly outnum-
bered and out-gunned, fought with considerable courage and determination against
the invaders. Cf. U 1985, 255–304.
(^76) Some of these paintings are now in the collection of the museum of Taehŭng
Temple. Due to its remote location on the southern-most tip of South Chŏlla prov-
ince, this temple escaped the ravages of the Imjin War. Hence, many Buddhist paint-
ings predating the Japanese invasion of 1581 were preserved there while they were
almost all lost elsewhere on the Korean Peninsula.