신라 五岳과 불교의 산신신앙 연구

Abstract

Mountains had been a target of awe and ground of living by ancient people in the Korean peninsula. It soon became a mountain god faith taking the form of a mountain worship deeply rooted as one of our nation's unique folk beliefs. Judging from the record of Samgukyusa that wrote Dangun transformed himself as the mountain god after settling in Asadal, the concept of mountain spirit of our nation stemmed from Dangun Joseon Dynasty. From the Three Kingdoms Period of Goguryeo, Silla, and Baekje, it was held by law to have memorial service to each mountain spirit and Silla was the one that had the most systematic and organized system. Before Silla unified the Three Kingdoms, it had included Five Greatmountains centering around Kyung-Ju. Accordingly they had developed with the expansion of the country. Since the establishment of its memorial service to these extended three mountains and Five Greatmountains, the king himself had shown his worship at the mountains in the country. Our nation's faith in the mountain stemming from the worship of the mountain has become an indigenous religion and has continued until today. Mountain Spirit is the most generalized and oldest among the other nature spirituals that Korean people believe. Faith in the mountain had became a sacrifice to the mountain and developed into a national service in which serving to mountains was considered as protecting the throne, while keeping the country and was also used for the purpose of defeating the natural disasters. This faith that settled in the lives of the ancients faced a change with the introduction of foreign religion, Buddhism. Unlike Goguryeo and Baekje that accepted Buddhism smoothly without resistance under the authority of the king, Silla had to suffer from internal conflict over a long period of time. The blame was the deep-rooted indigenous faith in Silla society. Yichadon's martyrdom was of a representative event that showed a confliction between indigenous beliefs and Buddhism. But as the Buddhist doctrine was extremely open and based on tolerable and latitudinarian pluralism, such characteristics had helped combining with mountain spirits, serving as indigenous religion that had little relevance to Buddhism. In addition, religious belief of the Holy Land of Buddhism had been a fusion of Buddhism faith with values of uncontaminated and bright future coupled with Korean distinctive mountain spirit, faith, and mountain worship. These notions about the mountain contributed to easily putting the mountain spirit faith into temples. The status of mountain god in Korean Buddhism today has been accepted as the god to whom to pray for tranquility of clean-minded asceticism life with the role of the patron saint of a Buddhist temple