Tiles of Four Heavenly Deities

In India, the Four Heavenly Deities were originally the native gods of the four directions, but when Buddhism was founded, they became the guardians of Buddhist sutras and sattvas from the four directions of Mt. Sumeru. At the time when Silla unified the Three Kingdoms, the four deities were widely regarded as the guardians of the laws and the state. Broken pieces of these brick tiles, embossed with the Four Heavenly Deities, were retrieved from two stupa sites at the site of Sacheonwangsa Temple during the Japanese colonial period. They have since been restored to reveal the lower half of a balanced, well-proportioned body clad in meticulously detailed armor. The detail of the armor and the pained expressions of the evil spirits being trampled by the muscular legs of the Four Heavenly Deities are a model of realistic sculpture from the early Unified Silla Period.