Читать книгу The History of Korea - Homer B. Hulbert - Страница 16

Table of Contents

Quelpart … origin of T’am-na … new alliances … advances in Sil-la … but not in Păk-je nor Ko-gu-ryŭ … temporary peace. … Buddhism in Sil-la … remnants of barbarism … influence of Chinese literature … important reforms. … Ko-gu-ryŭ’s foreign relations … conquest of Dagelet Island … posthumous titles … colors in official grades. … Wei displeased … the “miracle” of Yi Cha-don … end of Ka-rak. … Sil-la rejects Chinese calendar … confusion in China. … Păk-je attempts reform … history of Sil-la … two alliances. … Păk-je and Ko-gu-ryŭ envoys to China … advance of Buddhism in Sil-la … music in Sil-la … war between Păk-je and Sil-la … retrogression in Sil-la because of Buddhism. … Ko-gu-ryŭ and the Sui Emperor … the Ondali.

Tradition says that in the dawn of history when the island of Che-ju (Quelpart) was covered only with a tangled forest three sages arose from a crevice in the ground. This spot is shown to this day by the people of Che-ju. These three men were Ko-ŭlla, Yang-ŭlla and Pu-ŭlla. As they stood upon the shore they saw three stout chests floating in from the south-east. Drawing them to land and opening them the three wise men discovered that each chest contained a calf, a colt, a dog,a dog, a pig and a woman, together with sundry seeds, such as beans, wheat, barley, millet and rice. By the three families thus organised the island was populated. During the early days of Sil-la a certain court astrologer announced that the “Friend Star” was visible in the south and that a distinguished visitor would soon arrive. Soon after this three men came by boat from Quelpart, landing at the harbor of T’am-jin, now Kang-jin. They came straight to the court of Sil-la where they were hospitably entertained. One of the visitors was Ko-hu, one was Ko-ch’ŭng, but theKo-hu, one was Ko-ch’ŭng, but the name of the third is lost. The king called the first Sŭng-ju or “Lord of the Star,” the second Wang-ja or “King’s Son” and the third To-nă or “The One who has Come.” He named their country T’am from the name of the port where they landed, and na, which seems to have meant “Kingdom”, for we find that the last syllable of Sil-la is this same na changed by euphonic laws to la. It is the root of the present Korean word na-ra or “kingdom.” So the kingdom was called T’am-na. The authorities are at a loss to tell the date or even the reign during which these events transpired. In the year 477 the little kingdom of T’am-na sent an envoy to the court of Păk-je with gifts. This is the first really authentic mention of the place. If tradition is of any value it must be confessed that the story of the peopling of Quelpart points toward a southern origin.

In 479 the aged king of Ko-gu-ryŭ, Kö-ryŭn, now in the sixty-eighth year of his reign, sought and obtained recognition from Emperor Ko-je (Kao-ti) the founder of the Ch’i dynasty in China. That this occurred in the very first year after the founding of that dynasty shows how sedulously Ko-gu-ryŭ was cultivating the good-will of the Chinese. Păk-je was not far behind, for she swore allegiance to the same Emperor only two years later.

During all these years it is to Sil-la that we must look for any signs of internal improvement, any of those innovations which are the mile-stones of progress. We saw above how she introduced the use of the cart and so raised a great burden from the shoulders of the people. The wheel is the great burden bearer of history. And now we find her introducing further reforms. The first was the horse relay system called the yong-ma. It did not bear so directly upon the condition of the people but it afforded an opportunity for the rapid transmission of official information and thus indirectly had an important bearing upon the welfarewelfare of the masses. In the next place, she organised a general market where at stated intervals merchants from the various districts could meet and exchange commodities. These are things that we look upon as matters of course and we do not realise their importance till we imagine ourselves deprived of the comforts that spring from the possibility of rapid communication and exchange of commodities. That Ko-gu-ryŭ had not made similar advances in the line of industrial reform is shown by the fact that when the Emperor of the Wei dynasty sent to grant investiture to Na-un the twenty-first king of Ko-gu-ryŭ in 499 he presented him with suits of clothes, flags, a crown and a cart. This shows that carts were not as yet in common use in Ko-gu-ryŭ. As for Păk-je, disaster was following upon disaster. At one time a thousand people were swept away in a flood. Then famine carried away three thousand. A few years later ten thousand people passed over into Sil-la to save themselves from starvation.

The sixth century dawned upon a comparatively peaceful Korea; for the time being the dogs of war were held in leash and feuds seem to have been laid on the shelf. The three kingdoms employed their time in different but characteristic ways. The king of Păk-je built an enormous pleasure-house and adorned it with all manner of curious flowers and animals. To the expostulations of his ministers he turned a deaf ear. A few years later he was murdered by one of his courtiers. In truth, peace was nearly as bad for Păk-je as war.

In Sil-la Buddhism had been introduced during the reign of Nul-ji, 417–458. A monk named Muk Ho-ja had been well received and was lodged in the palace. But, at the first, Buddhism did not find congenial soil in Sil-la. Tradition gives the following account of the first set-back which it suffered there. In 502 while the king was idling an hour away in a favorite summer-house outside the city, a raven appeared bearing in its beak a letter. It laid the missive at the king’s feet and flew away. The superscription said “If the king opens and reads this note two people will die; if he does not open it one will die”. He determined not to open it, but one of his attendants said, “The one referred to is Your Majesty and therefore you should open it even though two lives are sacrificed”. He broke the seal and read the strange words “Let the king take his trustiest bow, hasten to the palace and shoot an arrow through the zither case”. The king obeyed the mandate, hastened back to the palace by a private gate, entered the queen’s apartments unannounced and shot an arrow through a zither case that stood against the wall. The arrow pierced the zither case and the High Priest who was hidden behind it. The latter had taken advantage of the king’s absence to attack his honor. He was strangled together with the guilty queen.

With all her attempts at progress some evidences of the grossest barbarity still lingered in Sil-la. It was not, so the records tell us, until the year 503 that Sil-la discontinued the horrible custom of burying people alive when a king’s body was interred. It had been customary to bury five boys and five girls alive on such occasions, but in 503 the king published a decree forbidding the continuance of the custom. The very barbarity of the custom renders its abolition the more striking and places the name of king Chi-jeung, the twenty-second of his line, among the names of Korea’s benefactors. At the same time the custom of plowing with oxen was introduced, an innovation that had a most far-reaching effect upon society. It was in the beginning of the sixth century that Sil-la began to show evidences of the influence of Chinese literature and thought. In 504 she adopted the Chinese word Wang as the title of her kings in place of the pure Korean words I-sa-geum or Ma-rip-kan. She also changed the name of the kingdom from Kye-rim to Sil-la. We have been speaking of this kingdom under the name Sil-la but as a matter of fact it was not so designated until the year 504 A.D. Before that time it had been variously styled Sŭ-ya-bŭl, Sa-ro, and Kye-rim. The word Sil-la is said to have been composed of the Chinese words Sin and ra, which when united become Sil-la according to Korean laws of euphony. It is more than probable that it was merely an adaptation of Chinese characters to pure Korean words, for the last syllable la or na is the same as that used in other words, centuries before that time, in southern Korea. The na of T’am-na is the same character. To the word Sil-la was added the word Kuk or “kingdom” which put her in line with the other vassals of China. The Confucian code must have been making headway too, for in the following year the custom was adopted of assuming a mourning garb for three years upon the death of a parent. It was at this time that the influence of China upon Korea began to bear its legitimate fruit. Chinese religion, literature, government and art were beginning to mould the thought and life of the Korean people. Many Chinese words had been introduced into Korea before this time but the use of the Chinese character had not been general.

In the mean time Ko-gu-ryŭ had been paying attention not so much to internal reforms as to external alliances. She sent to the Wei Emperor begging him to remit the revenue in gold and jade, as they were obtained, the one in Pu-yŭ, which she claimed the Mal-gal savages had seized, and the other in Sŭp-na which she averred the wicked Păk-je had feloniously taken. But she added “Of course all that Ko-gu-ryŭ has is yours”. The Emperor good-naturedly remitted the revenue but urged his vassal to continue the good work of subduing the wild tribes of the peninsula. It is said that in a single year Ko-gu-ryŭ sent three separate embassies to the Wei court. At the same time she was coquetting, sub rosa, with the new Liang power which had arisen in 502. In this Păk-je of course followed suite. We thus see that the three kingdoms spent their time in different ways; Sil-la in internal improvement, Păk-je in self-gratification and Ko-gu-ryŭ in strengthening her foreign relations.

In the year 512 the kingdom of U-san was added to the crown of Sil-la. This was the little island of Dagelet, off the eastern coast of Korea, about opposite the prefecture of Kang-neung. How Sil-la happened to branch out in a policy of conquest we are not told, but having decided to do so she did it very neatly. The expedition was led by Gen. Yi Sa-bu. He ordered the construction of several lions with gaping mouths and enormous fangs. They were carved from wood. He placed one of these in the prow of each of the boats and when the little flotilla approached the shores of the island the natives were called upon to lay down their arms and surrender, or the lions would be set loose among them and would tear them to pieces. This, it is averred, brought the trembling islanders to their knees at once and Sil-la won a bloodless victory. This is among the most cherished traditions of the Korean people.

With the accession of Wŭn-jong to the throne of Sil-la in 514 the Chinese custom of conferring a posthumous title upon a deceased king was introduced for the first time into Korea. Long before this the custom had prevailed in Ko-gu-ryŭ of naming a dead king after the place in which he was buried but to the very last the Ko-gu-ryŭ kings did not receive posthumous honorific titles. Păk-je however followed Sil-la’s example ten years later.

King Pŭp-heung of Sil-la in 520 reorganised the official list and indicated the different grades of rank by different colors. The grades called t’a-do, kak-kan and ta-a-son wore lavenderlavender. Those called a-son and keup-son, wore red, and carried the ivory memo tablets that are common today. The ta-na-ma and the na-ma wore blue. The ta-sa and sun-jo-ji wore hats of silk, shaped like the broad-brimmed, round crowned hats of the chair-coolie of the present day. The pa-jin-son and the ta-a-son wore red silk hats. The sang-dang, chuk-wi and ta-sa wore red hat strings. The kaleidoscopic colors of a royal Korean procession of today indicate what a prominent role the love of color plays in the oriental temperament.

The Wei power in China was not pleased with the friendship that was springing up between Ko-gu-ryŭ and the Liang court. This came to a climax when she stoppedstopped a Liang envoy who was on his way to Ko-gu-ryŭ to confer investiture upon the king. It may be that Ko-gu-ryŭ realised that the Wei dynasty was waning to its close and that it was well to cultivate the good-will of the young and rising Liang power; but if so the forecast was false for the Liang power outlived the Wei only twenty-four years.

The year 524 gave Sil-la Buddhism a new lease of life. Its most celebrated representative was a monk named Muk Ho-ja who lived about the middle of the fifth century. Coming from Ko-gu-ryŭ he had settled at the town of Il-sŭng-gun where a Sil-la citizen had made him a cave dwelling. The king of Sil-la received a gift of incense from China, but did not know how to use it till this monk Muk Ho-ja showed him how. He told the king to burn it and ask anything of the spirits, and they would grant it. The king’s daughter was very ill at the time and the king burned the incense and asked that his daughter be healed. The story says that she immediately arose from her bed a well woman. This of course gave Buddhism a long start. Since that time, as we have seen, Buddhism had suffered a severe drawback in the person of the wicked monk who was discovered in the act of abusing his sacerdotal function. It had recovered from that shock however and had again assumed large proportions in the state of Sil-la. The king had come so completely under the influence of the monks that now in 524 the courtiers feared that their power would be seriously threatened. They therefore used every means to induce the king to moderate his views. The king gave his reluctant assent to the execution of the high priest, Yi Cha-don. Tradition says that when he was brought to execution he exclaimed “When you slay me, my blood will flow not red like blood but white as milk and then you will know that Buddhism is true.” And so it proved, for when his head was severed from the trunk his blood flowed white like milk. None could gainsay this evidence and from that day Buddhism advanced with rapid steps. The following year the king made a law against the killing of animals.

The kingdom of Ka-rak had existed side by side with Sil-la on terms of mutual friendship for four hundred and eighty-two years, but in 527 her king, Kim Ku-hyŭng, gave up his sovereign power and merged his kingdom into that of Sil-la. He was however retained at the head of the Ka-rak state under appointment by the king of Sil-la. It does not appear from the scanty records that this was other than a peaceful change. Ka-rak had long seen the growing power of Sil-la and doubtless recognised that more was to be gained by becoming part of that kingdom than by standing aloof and running the chance of becoming disputed territory between the rival powers of the peninsula. She had been founded in 41 A.D. and now she came to an end in 527, so her lease of life seems to have been four hundred and eighty-six years rather than four hundred and eighty-two as the records state. As the dates of her beginning and end are both taken from the records the discrepancy must be laid at the door of the recorder.