Silla Buddhism and the "Hwarang segi" Manuscripts

This article assesses the authenticity of the recently publicized Hwarang segi manuscripts by comparing the information they contains relating to the hwarang and Silla Buddhists and Buddhism to the information found in the traditional Chinese Buddhist materials and the Korean literary materials dating to the mid-Koryŏ period. The evidence suggests that the manuscripts are not "authentic" or "genuine," but are probably an in-progress historical fiction dating to the colonial period, because they concoct problematic genealogies for known figures, because they promote Buddhist identities for sixth-century figures that are anachronistic, and because they deploy specialized terminology inconsistently.