The Asoka Pagoda at Liaodong Fortress遼東城育王塔

It is recorded in the Sambo gamtongnok (三寶感通錄), the Record of Responses of the Three Treasures.

Of the pagoda beside Liaodong Fortress in Goguryeo, an old man passed down this account.

Long ago a holy king of Goguryeo was touring the borders of the country. When he reached this fortress, he saw five-colored clouds covering the ground and went into the clouds to look. A monk was standing there leaning on a staff. When the king came near, he vanished at once; seen from far off, he appeared again.

Beside him was an earthen pagoda of three tiers, its top like an upturned kettle, and no one could tell what it was. He went again to look for the monk, but there was only wild grass.

They dug down one gil and found a staff and shoes. Digging further they found an inscription, and on it was Sanskrit (梵語). An attending minister recognized it and said, "This is a Buddhist pagoda."

The king questioned him closely, and he answered, "Han has these. They call it the King Podo (蒲圖王)."〔It was originally written King Hyudo, the golden man to whom sacrifice was made to heaven.〕

Because of this, faith arose in the king and he built a wooden pagoda of seven stories. Later, when the Buddha's teaching first arrived, the beginning and end of the matter came to be fully known.

Now its height has been reduced again, and the original pagoda has rotted and collapsed.

King Asoka (阿育王) set up pagodas everywhere throughout the whole world he ruled, so there is nothing strange in it.

Also, during the Longshuo years of Tang, when there was a campaign in Liaodong, Xue Rengui (薛仁貴), marching with the army, came to the old ground where the Sui emperor had attacked Liaodong and saw an image carved in the mountain. It was an empty, desolate place where no travelers passed. He asked an old man, who said, "This appeared in a former age," so he had it drawn and brought the picture to the capital.

Looking at the geographical treatises of the Western Han (西漢) and the Three Kingdoms, Liaodong Fortress lay beyond the Yalu and belonged to Youzhou (幽州) of Han.

Who the holy king of Goguryeo was cannot be known. Some say it was the Holy Emperor Dongmyeong, but that seems wrong. Dongmyeong ascended the throne in the second year of Jianzhao under Emperor Yuan of Former Han and died in the imin year of Hongjia under Emperor Cheng. At that time even Han had not yet seen the Buddhist scriptures, so how could a vassal beyond the sea already have been able to read Sanskrit?

Yet since the Buddha was called King Podo, it seems that in Western Han times there were some who knew the writing of the Western Regions. That is the only reason it is called Sanskrit writing.

Looking at old tradition, King Asoka commanded a host of spirits to set up one pagoda in every place where nine hundred million people lived, and in this way he set up eighty-four thousand throughout the whole world and hid them inside great rocks.

Now the auspicious signs that appear here and there are not one or two. In general, the responses of the relics of the true body are hard to fathom.

In praise it is said:

Asoka's treasure pagodas spread through all the dusty world, Soaked by rain, buried in cloud, mottled with moss. Picture the eyes of those who walked the road in those days, How many pointed and called it a grave mound for sacrifice to spirits?