Cremation and Funeral Urn

This relic is a funeral urn, and was designed to hold the ashes of a dead person after cremation. Silla accepted Buddhism as its national religion, so Buddhist cremation rites were widely adopted. In most cases, the ashes were placed in urns after cremation and buried underground.

A single funeral urn with a lid was generally used, but some of them comprised both an inner and an outer urn. The outer urn was usually highly decorated with beautiful patterns and had a knob on the lid, whilst the inner urn was rather simple and did not have a handle. Stamped patterns on the outer urn were very fashionable in Silla.

Funeral customs can be significant indicators to understand the changing culture of a nation, as they are very conservative and change very slowly. Therefore, funeral urns excavated in Silla area demonstrate that Buddhism exerted a strong influence on Silla people's lifestyle.