The Korean Samguk Yusa Accounts of Miraculous Buddhist Relics

Record summary

Il연’s Samguk Yusa combines dynastic history, Buddhist foundation stories, saints’ biographies, shrine traditions and accounts of relics or supernatural signs. It is a productive comparison case because its genre is neither a modern report nor a purely doctrinal scripture: it preserves competing local memories within a Buddhist historical framework. Questions of source layering, oral tradition, Chinese textual models and later editorial arrangement remain important. Miraculous episodes should be analyzed as narrated religious claims and historiographical devices, not verified paranormal events.