The site of the Buddhist temple Man-bok-sa(萬福寺) is located at Wang-jeong-ri, Nam-weon-eup, Nam-weon-gun, North Cholla Province, and the remaining stone pagoda, stone Buddha, stone pedestal, stone flanking pillar, etc. there make it obvious that this was a site of a Buddhist temple. According to Dong-guk-yeo-ji-seung-ram (Survey of Famous Sceneries in Eastern Country), the temple was of a considerable size, at that. The stone pagoda and the stone Buddha are, thanks to the topographical changes in later days, buried about a meter in the ground today. An overhaul of the stone pagoda was undertaken at the end of December, 1968, but at the time of inspection of one of the most important parts, that is, the part of the storage of the sarira, no specialist or scholar of expert knowledge participated in it but merely some leaders of the district were in presence. According to these rural leaders, anyway, there was a round hole in the stone lid that had covered the space storing sarira, leaving nothing in it but a few scraps of ornaments that must have adorned the sarira. The writer of this paper surveyed the stone pagoda on June 13, 1969, dismembering the already reassembled pagoda once again, only to feel much contradiction in the statements of those who had been present at the time of the afore-said overhaul. This writer had to limit his survey to the shape of the storage of sarira, though. The storage space was prepared in a form of a square aperture at two levels, one being 2㎝ deep and 29㎝ long a side, and the other, 14㎝ deep and 23㎝ a side, in the centre of the upper surface of the first storey, of the pagoda. In the bottom of the storage space there was a drainage hole, also square, 3 or 3.5㎝ deep and 9㎝ a side. On top of the storage space, a square stone lid of 5㎝ in height and 29㎝ a side was rested, this stone lid rising 3㎝ high above the body of the pagoda’s first storey, and having been sealed tight with lime. The roof of the first storey over the stone lid was so carved on its reverse side as to fit this storage of sarira tight enough to make it sure that the storage devices would not stir or move at all. The remaining scraps found in the square aperture were of gold-copper, gold, silver, golden foil, precious stone, fragrant wood, etc. Another finding was that the foundation part of the pagoda formerly buried about 1.1 meters in the ground had been lifted up to the ground level. The foundation section was a single-storeyed construction, with the middle slab propped up by corner pillars on the base stone, and the uppermost stone of the foundation section rested on top of the middle stone, this uppermost stone having before been partly buried in the ground. As a whole this foundation section was not of an excellent workmanship. Lastly, each of the four sides of the three-storied bodies had a 28㎝ high niche of the shape of a cannon-shell carved in it.
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