A Study on the Dancing Costumes for the Buddhist Ceremony of 'Spirit Vulture Peak'

한국 불교 영산재 -무복에 관한 연구-

The Buddhist costumes, unlike the ordinary ones, have not been studied comprehensively due to their religious, non-popular and non-social features. In this regard, this paper aimed at reviewing the styles and symbolic Characters of the monks' dancing costumes for the traditional Buddhist ceremony of 'Spirit Vulture Peak'(The Intangible Cultural Asset No.50.) Here, the 'Spirit Vulture Peak Ceremony' is a kind of Buddhist ceremony commemorating the Buddha's preaches on the peak of Mt. Grdhrakuta by means of symbolized ritual and reformation procedures. The methodology of this study depended on the research of literatures, personal observation of the actual ceremony and the discussion with Priest Park Song-am. The dancing style of the Ceremony can be divided into four categories; the cymbal dancing., the drum dancing , the butterfly dancing and the column-beating dancing. And for the dancing costumes, the loose ritual mantle, the long-sleeve robe and the buddhist costume are used; the loose mantle and the long-sleeve robe are for the drum dancing. The style of the loose mantle is rectangular, sewn every odd knot between 5 and 25 ones. According to the record, its color was initially grey or red-yellow, but varied depending on the local rules. The four corners of the loose mantle have a rectangular-cloth embroidery of sky & king patterns, and the center is embroidered with the Sun'Moon designs or 'Om/Nan' letters in the Korean spells. The light of Sun/ Moon designs symbolizing the sky and the earth respectively are indigenous to a particular school in Korea. The long-sleeve robe has a traditional over-coat style. and is called otherwise of if some design is added. The total clothing or dancing costumes for the Ceremony include 'the Dae-ryung (meaning great peake)loose mantle', 'the White Paldad(meaning Chinese Character eight) long-sleeve robe and the peaked hat. The Dae-ryung mantle is a kind of ritual costumes with the shorter length than the ordinary mantles, and has a character 'Ryung' in Chinese spell attached with three to six colors. The White Paldae robe is shorter than the ordinary robes in the total length but longer in the length of sleeves. It is put on over the mantle from the left shoulder, and used often for the butterfly and column-beating dancings. It is hoped that this study will promote the study on the customs and rites of the Buddhism rather than on the thoughts, and contribute to the further studies.