Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 19

Encomium on the Clay Image (塑像) of Vairocana, One Jang and Six Feet High (丈六) — with a preface丈六毗盧遮那塑像贊幷序

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) 東國李相國集 · Yi Gyubo · Compiled 1241 (Goryeo, 28th year of King Gojong); revised and enlarged 1251 · 2 passages · 102 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 19 The collected writings of Yi Gyubo of Goryeo, gathered and cut in woodblock by his son Yi Ham in 1241 and revised and enlarged by his grandson Yi Ikbae in 1251. It holds poems and rhapsodies, memorials and reports sent up to the king, records written for temples and pagodas, stele and tomb inscriptions, letters and prefaces, and the state letters that passed to and from the Mongols during the invasions. The Lay of King Dongmyeong, which sings the founder of Goguryeo, stands in volume 3 of the first collection, and the daily life of a man who called himself the White Cloud Layman — with his wine, his zither and his verse — fills the later collection. The book closes with the last poem he wrote as his eyes failed and he laid down the brush, and with the dirge and tomb inscription others made for him after his death.

1Preface

浮屠學珠。塑成香山寺堂主丈六毗盧像。請予作記。子復瞻禮尊相。敢稽首作贊云。

The monk Hakju (學珠) completed in clay the image of Vairocana, one jang and six feet high, the principal image of the hall (堂主) of Hyangsan Temple (香山寺), and asked me to compose a record (記) for it. I in turn looked up and did reverence to the venerable form (尊相), and making bold to bow my head I compose this encomium.

2Encomium

毗盧大士淸淨體。長甚麽許吾未知。子復以爲丈六耶。將甚麽尺而度之。瞠目而視愈微眇。秋毫蠛蠓難與較。閉眼而觀斗巍大。天地六合尙爲小。若以尺計丈以量。石女木兒撫掌笑。

The pure and undefiled body of the Great Being Vairocana — how long it is, I do not know. Do you, for your part, take it to be one fathom and six feet? With what measure, after all, was it measured? Open your eyes wide and look, and it is smaller and more remote still, so that an autumn hair or a mayfly can hardly be compared with it; close your eyes and look, and it towers so great that Heaven and Earth and the six directions are small beside it. If one would reckon it by feet and measure it by fathoms, the stone woman and the wooden child would clap their hands and laugh.