Buddhism reaches Korea: the monk Sundo in Goguryeo

Goguryeo, the kingdom of the middle Yalu and southern Manchuria, had taken Lelang, the last Chinese commandery in Korea, in 313, but in 342 the Xianbei of the Former Yan sacked its capital, and in 371 the Baekje king Geunchogo attacked Pyongyang, where King Gogugwon was killed by an arrow. His son Sosurim (reigned 371–384) set about strengthening the state. The Samguk sagi records that in the sixth month of his second year, in the summer of 372, “the king of Qin, Fu Jian, sent envoys and the monk Sundo with Buddha images and scriptures”, and the king sent envoys back with thanks and local products. In the same year he founded a Confucian academy, the Taehak, for the sons of the nobility, and in 373 he promulgated a code of laws. In 374 another monk, Ado, arrived, and in 375 the king founded the first monasteries, Chomunsa for Sundo and Ibullansa for Ado — “the beginning of the Buddhist teaching in Haedong”, as the chronicle puts it.

In Baekje, in the south-west of the peninsula, the chronicle records that in the ninth month of 384 — the year King Chimnyu came to the throne, two months after his envoys went to the Jin court — “the foreign monk Marananta came from Jin; the king received him in the palace and honoured him. The Buddhist teaching began from this.” In 385 a monastery was built at Hansan and ten men were ordained. Marananta is described as an Indian or Serindian monk. Silla accepted Buddhism officially only in 527 or 528, and from Baekje the religion later passed to Japan.

The dates come from the Samguk sagi, completed in 1145, and the Samguk yusa. Archaeology suggests that Buddhism was known in Korea somewhat earlier: a mid-4th-century tomb near Pyongyang has Buddhist motifs in its ceiling decoration.