TEMPLE ADVENTURES 10 kings of Buddhism's bureaucratic, hellish underworld

With Halloween in our proverbial rear-view mirror, and the specter of Christmas and the haunting of Scrooge’s three ghosts nearly upon us, it seemed like an apt time to talk about the wandering spirits found in Korean Buddhism and the Ten Kings of the Underworld that rule over these wayward spirits.

So first, who are the Ten Kings that rule over the Buddhist dead? They each rule over their own kingdoms and courts in the Buddhist afterlife. In Korean Buddhism, the soul is judged and goes through a journey that takes place over a three-year period that later results in rebirth. The cycle with which a soul passes through the underworld is at a rate of seven days for the first seven kings. It then slows down to 100 days for the eighth king, one year for the ninth king and three years for the 10th and final king, before a soul is reincarnated into the next life, which can take several forms.

As a result of their journey through the underworld, a spirit can undergo punishments for their misdeeds in various forms of hells like the “Hell of the Pit of Fire,” “Hell of Tongue Ripping,” “Hell of Ice” and “Hell of Dismemberment.”

The Ten Kings can send these sinners to these hells based upon their accumulated karma. In Sanskrit, this hell is known as Naraka, and in Korean, it is “Jiok.” The traditional view of Naraka in Buddhism is closer to the Christian concept of Purgatory than to Hell. The main reason for this is that there is no divine punishment; instead, it’s one’s accumulated karma that results in one’s punishment. And secondly, the length that one is punished, while it can be for an extremely long period of time, isn’t forever. After this finite amount of time and karma is used up, the individual will be reborn in one of the higher underworlds.

Jiok is thought to vaguely resemble Naraka. Jiok consists of several levels, but instead of consisting of the four to 1,000 levels found in Indian Buddhism, it consists of four to only 18 levels. And it’s these 18 hells that make appearances as punishments either independently or incorporated into temple murals, which can typically be found around the Myeongbu-jeon Hall, which is where both Jijang-bosal (the Bodhisattva of the Afterlife) and the Ten Kings reside at a Korean Buddhist temple.

So how did the Ten Kings first come to play such a prominent role in the afterlife and Korean Buddhism?

In Buddhism, predating its entry into China around year 150, descriptions of the afterlife are somewhat vague and simple. At this time, all that the afterlife is associated with is the cold and darkness. There is no mention of punishments for the dead. It’s starting with the Han Dynasty (202 B.C.E. – 220 C.E.) that we start to see tombs being built as imitations of houses. This represents an evolutionary change from the former cold, dark view of the afterlife. It’s starting at this time that the afterlife becomes something familiar that could be understood by the living.

The physical structure and description of the underworld for the dead still remains obscure at this time at least until the beginning of the Eastern Han (25-200). Added to this new world for the dead is an extension of the bureaucratic norms found in Han governance, including both civil and military aspects. This bureaucracy in charge of the afterlife was a close, and rather frightening, copy of the human world of governance. This, in turn, would help develop and conceptualize the punishments doled out in the afterlife. So by this period, we see a complex subterranean world of the dead already taking shape.

As such, the ideas of the underworld (and its torments) met fertile ground in China for Buddhism. The ideas of karma and rebirth in Buddhism would meet an unfixed underworld of bureaucracy and torment.

It’s finally at the end of the Northern and Southern Dynasties (386-589) that we find rebirth in the afterlife. And in particular, we find individuals dealing with the returning of souls from the afterlife. By the start of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), we have a combined form of a Buddhist-Taoist underworld and afterlife that has become the norm.

It’s also around this time that we see the growing centrality and importance of the Ten Kings of the Underworld, the Siwang, as administrators over the dead, as well as the belief in Jijang-bosal as the primary savior of these spirits.

It’s to this tradition and this belief system in the Ten Kings that enters the Korean Peninsula by at least the end of the 10th century, if not earlier. “The Scripture on the Ten Kings” was being circulated in the northwest regions of China by the 10th century and the practices associated with them were being practiced in Korea by the royal members by the end of the 10th or early 11th centuries. And while evidence indicating a belief in the Ten Kings was fully in place by the royal court during the Goryeo Dynasty (918-1392), no firm archaeological evidence survives from this time period. That’s why the Tripitaka Koreana from 1246 at Haein Temple in Hapcheon, South Gyeongsang Province, is so important.

The Haein Temple edition of “The Scripture on the Ten Kings” added to the Tripitaka Koreana is a distinctly Korean piece of work different from other historic Chinese texts. In this Haein Temple edition, the underworld is overpopulated with officials in the afterlife. These officials include, rather obviously, the Ten Kings of the Underworld, as well as asura kings, various kings of great empires, heavenly dragons, spirit kings, an extensive list of demon-kings, magistrates, generals, the Boys of Good and Evil, as well as Daoming, messengers and various other officials of the underworld.

So with so many spirits abound during this time of the year, it’s good to know who is about and who rules over them. And to better understand this, it’s important to know the origins of the Ten Kings, their evolution and their eventual maturation in Korean society. The evolution of the Ten Kings from China to Korea gives us an insight into the changes that took place in Korean Buddhism and Korean culture as a whole.

Dale Quarrington has visited over 500 temples throughout the Korean Peninsula and published three books on Korean Buddhism. He runs the website, Dale's Korean Temple Adventures.