Disclosed is a crystalline hard coating layer having no cracks, which exhibits both high hardness and excellent wear resistance at the same time. A method for forming the hard coating layer is also disclosed. A crystalline hard coating layer (3) coating a substrate (2) is formed by a PVD method, and contains Si and C as essential components, while containing an element M (which is one or more elements selected from among group 3A elements, group 4A elements, group 5A elements, group 6A elements, B, Al and Ru) and N as optional components. The crystalline hard coating layer (3) has the following composition: SixC1-x-y-zNyMz (where 0.4≦x≦0.6, 0≦y≦0.1, and 0≦z≦0.2).