Gim Gyo-gak (김교각, 金喬覺, 696-794), or Jin Qiaojue in Mandarin, also known as his buddhist name Jijang(地藏), was a

Korean Buddhist Korean Buddhism is distinguished from other forms of Buddhism by its attempt to resolve what its early practitioners saw as inconsistencies within the Mahayana Buddhist traditions that they received from foreign countries. To address this, th ...

monk believed to be the manifestation of Ksitigarbha at Mount Jiuhua, one of the four sacred mountains of

Chinese Buddhism Chinese Buddhism or Han Buddhism ( zh, s=汉传佛教, t=漢傳佛教, p=Hànchuán Fójiào) is a Chinese form of Mahayana Buddhism which has shaped Chinese culture in a wide variety of areas including art, politics, literature, philosophy, ...

, located in

Anhui Anhui , (; formerly romanized as Anhwei) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the East China region. Its provincial capital and largest city is Hefei. The province is located across the basins of the Yangtze Riv ...

province, China. Gim Gyo-gak was a

Silla Silla or Shilla (57 BCE – 935 CE) ( , Old Korean: Syera, Old Japanese: Siraki2) was a Korean kingdom located on the southern and central parts of the Korean Peninsula. Silla, along with Baekje and Goguryeo, formed the Three Kingdoms o ...

prince, who became interested in

Buddhism Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

when visiting

Tang China The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdom ...

at the age of 24. Upon returning to

, he decided to become a monk. In 719, he returned to China to cultivate himself at Mount Jiuhua. He died in 794 in Mount Jiuhua, at the age of 99. The monks there believed that Ksitigarbha was reincarnated in him. Mount Jiuhua thereafter became the sacred site of Ksitigarbha.Show China
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References

Mount Jiuhua Tang dynasty Buddhist monks Silla people Korean Buddhist monks Korean emigrants to China 696 births 794 deaths Kṣitigarbha {{Buddhism-bio-stub