| The
Divine Bell of King Seongdeok, National Treasure No. 29 of
South Korea
It
was the year 737 of our era, in the Silla Kingdom of the Land
of the Morning Calm, when King Gyeongdeok commissioned
the grand project of casting a divine bell for the soul of
his deceased father, King Seongdeok. However, he could not
see the bell completed during his lifetime.
It
was King Gyeongdeok's successor, King Hyegong, who finally
concluded the bell's manufacture, in the 7th year of his reign,
34 years after its start, in 771 A.D.
Its
casting was plagued with failures and given its specified
proportions it needed huge amounts of bronze. So much that
it was required to ask for donations throughout the reign.
Government officials and Buddhist monks were dispatched to
garner collections.
The Legend
The
most widely spread version of the legend surrounding this
marvel, tells the story of one Buddhist monk visiting a poor
farmer woman, who when asked for a donation said laughing,
"I only have a daughter to give, if you want her, take
her". The monk retired empty handed and saddened by her
poverty and disposition.
Meanwhile,
casting after casting continued to fail despite the efforts
of the best artisans of the land. Desperate, the King summoned
a magician to solve the problem once and for all.
The
seer declared "The bell requires the sacrifice of a young
girl for its completion."
No parents could be found to offer their daughters
for such a purpose.
Suddenly
the monk recalled the country woman who had sarcastically
offered her daughter. He informed the king of the incident,
and the king ordered the ill-fated little girl to be brought
to him. The child was thrown alive into the hot molten bronze
in the furnace from where the bell emerged - a perfect creation.
The
bell's sound reverberated around the land, but though its
sound was both rich and sweet, the people felt sad when hearing
it. Someone in the crowd said, "It sounds like emille
(which is the Silla word for 'mother'),
emille ... emille ..." From that time on, people called
the bell the "Emille" Bell.
What
is remarkable and most astonishing is how the Silla people
could cast such a large bell in such a precise way without
any modern tools, using the lost wax process brought from
ancient India. The bell measures 10 feet or 3.3m in height
and 6.9 feet or 2.27m in lip diameter, was cast with 18.9
tons of molten bronze and there are no blowholes, which metallurgy
and foundry scientists have declared mysterious, to this date.
Recent research on the Emille
Bell has yielded the fact that the bell had been designed
in such a way as to be heard evenly from all directions and
its reverberations linger for some three minutes, a longer
linger time than any other bells of the world.
Researchers
have tried numerous times to replicate the bell with modern
casting methods and the casting technique remains a subject
of further studies.
Even
if one does not believe that the sound of a Korean temple
bell can soothe a savage beast ... even if one does
not give credit to the poignant legends that surround
them ... one can scarcely remain impervious to the graceful
lines and the haunting tones of the old bronze bells
of Korea, and specially to those from Emille*
Those graceful contour lines inspired Markins design
of the casing for the Q3 Emille Ball Head. Its performance
is certainly a reminder of perfection.
|
|
*Sources
and references:
Encyclopedia Britanica - History of Korea
Yonhap News World Services, Korea
Gyeongju National Museum, Korea
LG News Korea, April 23, 2006 |
