Śarīra Reliquary

On the campus of the Chungyang Middle School in Seodong-ri in Chunyang-myeon of Bonghwa County in North Gyeongsang Province stand two three-story stone pagodas that date from approximately the ninth century. When the pagodas were taken apart for repair in 1962, a śarīra reliquary was found in a small, square hole in the middle of the upper portion of the first-floor of the main body in the Eastern Pagoda. A talc śarīra jar, believed to date from when the pagoda was constructed, and ninety-nine miniature clay pagodas surrounding the jar were found. Inside the talc śarīra jar was a green-glass śarīra bottle.
The clay pagodas were stamped out from models and painted with white chalk. On the bottom are cone-shaped holes through which the Dhāraṇī Sūtra was placed inside. The holes were then closed with wooden plugs. Most of the Sūtras have disintegrated.
The inclusion of the ninety-nine miniature pagodas along with the Śarīra reliquary seems to have been inspired by a passage in the Great Dhāraṇī Sūtra of Immaculate and Pure Light, which states that ninety-nine or seventy-seven miniature pagodas shall be made and that a dhāraṇī should be placed inside each, an act akin to building 9.9 billion pagodas. The pagodas prepared in this way are called “Immaculate and Pure Pagodas” and were popular from the eighth to the tenth centuries.