Notes

KORYŎ CULTURE
The introduction of the civil exams in 958 did much to foster the spread
of Confucianism in Korea. Exam questions included some from the Analects
and the Classic of Filial Piety. Eventually scholars established twelve
private academies known as the Twelve Assemblies to spread Confucian
teaching as well as to educate the aristocratic youth. Some Confucian
scholars became famous in the early Koryŏ. Among them was the
eleventh-century teacher Ch’oe Ch’ung. Confucianism, with its stress
on order, hierarchy, and the importance of good government led by an
enlightened monarch, was appealing to the state and was promoted by it.
While Confucianism was important in shaping ideas of government
and morality, Koryŏ was very much a Buddhist kingdom in the sense that
Buddhist ceremonies and rituals were at the center of social and cultural
life. The state sought to utilize the power of the Buddha and bodhisattvas
(Buddhist saints) to protect it from invasions and natural calamities. There
was a close alliance between the kings and the Sangha (the community of
ordained monks and nuns). Most monks protected the kingdom through
prayers and rituals, but there were also warrior monks who fought for it.
Some of the most effective fighters against the Mongols in the thirteenth
century and against the Japanese in the sixteenth century were monks.
Accordingly, the court generously patronized Buddhist temples. Buddhist
holidays punctuated the year as times of national celebration. Well
supported by the state, a vigorous Buddhist intellectual life flourished.
Buddhist thought and practice was roughly divided into Kyo (Textual)
and Sŏn (Meditative) schools. Each school had a hierarchy of Buddhist
officials and its own set of examinations modeled on the state civil exams.
The highest ranks among Buddhist officials were Royal Preceptor and
National Preceptor. Both held enormous prestige. The kings and their
officials were careful not to let the temples and the Sangha become too
powerful, and regulated Buddhist affairs. Ostensibly their concern was to
protect the purity of the monastic community but it was also to exercise
some control over it. This was done in part by administering a system of
examinations and promotions.
Korean Buddhism was characterized by greater concern for unity than
was found in Chinese or Japanese Buddhism. When Buddhism arrived
in Korea from China, it was part of an established tradition divided into
many different doctrinal traditions and practices. The diversity of Buddhism
in China reflected both the richness and the diversity of Indian
and Central Asian Buddhism, and the diversity and vitality of Chinese
civilization. But Korea was a much smaller country, more homogeneous
and conscious of its comparable smallness and its vulnerability to invasion.
Partly for this reason, Koreans frequently sought unity in intellectual
thought. A tendency toward syncretism appeared as early as Silla with
Wŏnhyo. In the early half of the Koryŏ period the most important effort
at bringing the schools of Buddhism together was undertaken by Ŭich’ŏn
(1055–1101), fourth son of King Munjong, known posthumously as Master
Taegak. Ŭich’ŏn sought to compile as complete a set of Buddhist sacred
works as possible in order to create a vast library of all known Buddhist
wisdom. Against the wishes of his father he surreptitiously traveled
to Song China in 1085, where he collected more than 3,000 treatises and
commentaries. He dispatched agents to China, Japan, and Khitan Liao
to gather more Buddhist texts. He eventually had woodblocks carved
for 1,010 Buddhist texts that were intended to supplement the Tripitaka
Koreana (the complete Buddhist canon) that was also published. Unfortunately
this vast collection of texts, along with the first edition of the
Tripitaka Koreana, was destroyed in the 1231–1232 Mongol invasion. As he
gathered his great collection he also attempted to merge the Sŏn schools
of meditative Buddhism and the five Kyo textual or scholastic sects into
Ch’ŏnt’ae (Chinese: Tiantai; Japanese: Tendai). Ch’ŏnt’ae was not a new
Buddhist teaching. It was known in Silla times, and in 960 the monk
Ch’egwan went to China, where he became one of its masters. But it had
not been an independent sect before Ŭich’ŏn. Despite royal patronage
and the enormous respect he had acquired as a pious and learned man,
Ŭich’ŏn’s efforts to unify Korean Buddhism failed. Instead his activities
resulted in still another flourishing sect.14
Buddhist ecclesiastical organizations were wealthy. Temples owned
extensive holdings in land and slaves. Exempted from taxation, these
temples, which were also monasteries since monks and nuns lived yearround
in them, grew to become wealthy and play a major role in economic
life. Temples engaged in trade, wine making, and grain and money
lending. The problem of monasteries possessing a considerable amount
of land and many slaves, all exempt from taxes, came to worry state officials.
Later in the dynasty it would contribute to anti-Buddhist sentiment.
Aristocratic families used temples as a means of extending their power by
sending off sons to them. These were often younger sons not needed to
supervise the family estates. As monks they advised the officials, served
at court, and carried considerable influence. Kings and officials also complained
that too many peasants were taking up orders, thereby depriving
the state of military conscripts and productive farmers. To avoid some
of these abuses, the state promulgated laws restricting the number of
peasants who could become monks, barring children of monks who had
married before they had taken vows from sitting for the monk exams, and
prohibiting monks from staying overnight outside of the monasteries.15
Peasant families could only allow a son to be a monk if they had two,
ensuring that one would work the land and the families had enough able
bodies for corvée labor. For those peasants and commoners who became
monks, it was not an avenue for advancing in status, since the monastic
hierarchy reflected the society at large. Aristocrats dominated all the
higher positions, with the most important temples headed by monks
from the upper aristocracy. Slaves and members of outcaste groups were
prohibited from becoming monks.16
In addition to Buddhism, Koreans believed in the hidden spiritual
power of prominent features of nature such as rivers, rocks, and especially
mountains. From at least the thirteenth century the most sacred mountain
was Paektusan on the Korean-Manchurian border. Other mountains, such
as Chirisan in the southern part of the country, were also venerated. This
worship of nature was blended with geomantic ideas imported from
China. In the twelfth century the Chinese visitor Xu Jing, in his Illustrated
Record of an Embassy to Korea in the Xuanhe Reign Period (1124), stated of
the Koreans that “it is their habit to make excessive sacrifices to spirits.”17
Shamanism was also widely practiced. However, Koryŏ elites were often
critical of shamanism, accusing it of sponsoring vulgar and indecent rituals.
Thus while Buddhism ceased to be an elite religion and instead was
practiced by every sector of Korean society, a new religious boundary
emerged during Koryŏ between the elite and commoners. The common
people sought the solace of shamans as well as of Buddhist monks, while
day shamanism has been treated with disdain, and more recently as an
embarrassing part of their cultural heritage, by middle- and upper-class
Koreans, while it has continued to maintain a strong hold on many of the
less educated and poor.
The aristocracy read and memorized Chinese poetry and wrote verse
in Chinese, the literary language of the elite. Tang and Song poets were
immensely popular, and Koreans wrote poems in their style. Koryŏ
aristocrats sometimes left collections of their literary writings that often
included both prose essays and large numbers of poems. Noted writer
and scholar Yi Kyu-bo (1168–1241), for example, left 1,500 poems. Poems
in the vernacular were popular but were mostly sung or recited orally.
Derived from folk songs, they were often bawdy and satirical. Only a
few were written down after the invention of the phonetic alphabet in
the fifteenth century, and even some of these may have been edited to
conform to the more prudish taste of later times. Among the best known
are Ch’ŏngsan pyŏlgok (Song of Green Mountain) and Ssanghwa chŏm (The
Dumpling Shop).
As in Silla, Buddhism remained a major inspiration for art. A rich
tradition of Buddhist paintings in the form of wall paintings, hanging
scrolls, and illustrated manuscripts developed. Although few wall paintings
have survived, in recent years a number of Koryŏ-period Buddhist
scrolls and illustrated manuscripts have been discovered in Korea, in
Japan, and in Western collections. These paintings can be distinguished
from Chinese Buddhist art by the less extensive use of gold paste and
by a preference for duller shades of red and green than their Chinese
counterparts. The use of less bright colors would remain characteristic of
the aristocratic art tradition in Korea. These paintings are an important
source of information on the costumes of the time.18 Secular painting and
calligraphy in Chinese styles flourished. Among the most famous were
the twelfth-century painters Yi Yŏng and his son Yi Kwang’p’il. Famous
also were three Koryŏ calligraphers, Yu Sin (d. 1104), the monk T’anyŏn
(1070–1159), and Ch’oe U (d. 1249). They became known, along with the
Silla calligrapher Kim Saeng, as the “Four Worthies of Divine Calligraphy.”
Unfortunately, virtually all the secular paintings and calligraphy
of the Koryŏ have been lost. The Silla traditions in sculpture continued
in early Koryŏ. Later Koryŏ sculpture showed the influence of Lamaistic
Buddhism from the Mongol court. The high standards of metallurgical
craftsmanship continued with fine bronze and silverware. Koryŏ did not,
however, produce the great bronze bells of the Silla. Since buildings were
made of wood, it is not surprising that none survive from the early Koryŏ.
The oldest extant wooden temple buildings are the Pongjong in Andong
and the Hall of Eternal Life (Muryangsu-jŏn) at Pusŏk temple in Yŏngju,
both from the thirteenth century. The latter with its tapered columns,
three-tiered roof supports, dual roof edge, and its interior without a ceiling
provides a sense of both refinement and grandeur.19
Perhaps the greatest of the art forms of the period was ceramics. The
most famous of the ceramics of this period is a porcelaneous stoneware
with a fine bluish-green glaze known by the French term celadon. Koryŏ
celadon was developed early in the dynasty by potters who had imported
the technique from Song China. It was produced throughout the
Koryŏ period, although the quality declined from the thirteenth century.
The center of celadon production was in Chŏlla in the southwest part of
the peninsula. Korean potters derived a distinctive style by turning the
straight lines of Song pottery into curves and the cold blue of Song into a
soft greenish tone. In the twelfth century the style reached a peak of perfection
when potters developed a variety of innovative techniques such as
painting in brown and red under the glaze and in gold over the celadon
glaze. Today Koryŏ celadon is regarded as among the greatest ceramic
masterpieces ever created. It is highly prized by connoisseurs in Asia and
throughout the world. Korean potters also created innovative vessels in
the shapes of animals and vegetables, as well as white wares, black wares,
and unglazed stonewares.