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Worin Cheon-gangjigok

A set of Korean hymns on the life of the Buddha, composed for King Sejong's court and printed in early movable Hangul type.

These hymns celebrate and retell episodes from the Buddha's life for a Korean audience.

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Scanned page of an old Korean woodblock-printed book in vertical columns of Hangul and Chinese characters, with the title 月印千江之曲 and 上 visible at the top right, plus a seal mark near the bottom.
Worin Cheon-gangjigok (月印千江之曲), early Hangul movable-type print.

About this source

What it is

The Worin Cheon-gangjigok is a collection of Korean-language hymns about the life of the Buddha, printed using early Hangul movable type not long after the script's invention.

Why it matters

Like the related Seokbosangjeol, this text shows the Korean court using the new Hangul alphabet to spread Buddhist teachings in verse form, making the Buddha's story and praise of him accessible to speakers of Korean rather than only scholars who read Chinese. It is an important source for the early history of Korean printing and language.

Look closer

  • Why might someone choose to tell the Buddha's life through hymns rather than plain prose?
  • What does the survival of old printed pages like this tell us about how texts were preserved?
  • What can't you learn about the historical Buddha from a religious hymn written many centuries after he lived?

This book is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Buddha on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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