The Buddhist architecture of the Three Kingdoms period in Korea

In recent decades, East and South-East Asia have became both politically and economically significant for the West and it is no longer possible to ignore the history and culture of this large portion of the world's population. Advanced studies on the various aspects of the rich heritage of these civilisations will contribute to a better understanding of the aspirations and strength of these countries as well of their cultural and historical antecedents and social limitations. The achievements of Korean civilisation are still largely unknown in the West and Korean Buddhist architecture is no exception to this rule. The present thesis discusses the earliest evidence of Buddhist architecture on the Korean peninsula and thus tries to establish a basis on which future studies on Korean architecture can be built. The discussions of the relationship between the Buddhist architecture of the Korean peninsula and that of the Chinese mainland and the Japanese archipelago lead to a reappraisal of the place of early Korean Buddhist architecture in the history of world architecture on an equal footing with that of China and Japan. The thesis is divided into five chapters, the first of which introduces the history and culture of Korea before the introduction of Buddhism. The second to fourth chapters present the historical and material evidence of Buddhist architecture in the early Korean kingdoms of Ko-gu-ryo (Chapters 2.1 and 2.2.), Baek-che (Chapters 3.1. and 3.2.) and Ka-ya and Ancient Sin-la (Chapters 4.1. and 4.2.). The characteristics of the various traditions and their relationships to China and Japan are explored in the last part of each chapter (Chapters 2.3., 3.3. and 4.2.). The time scale of the study stretches from the introduction of Buddhism into Ko-gu-ryo in the late fourth century AD to the unification of the larger portion of the peninsula by Sin-la in the middle of the seventh century AD. This period of Korean history is commonly called the Three Kingdoms' period in spite of the fact that until the middle of the sixth century four political entities shared the Korean peninsula. The conclusions form the fifth chapter which includes a summary of the main results (Chapter 5.1.), a comparison of the Buddhist architectures of the Korean Three Kingdoms period (Chapter 5.2.), discussions of the "archetypes" of East Asian Buddhist architecture and the development of the temple layout types in Korea (Chapter 5.3. and 5.4.), as well as an assessment of the various influences on the development of temple layouts and Buddhist architecture in Korea (Chapter 5.5.). The main results of the study are as follows. The Buddhist architectural traditions of Ko-gu-ryo and Baek-che were directly introduced from the Chinese mainland. While many typical Chinese architectural elements were shared by the Buddhist architectures of both these Korean kingdoms (site selection, polar organisation, wooden skeleton structure, tile roofs, etc.), the differences of temple layou