Corea: The Hermit Nation

A careful study of the common names applied to the mountains, rivers, valleys, caves, and other natural features of the soil and landscape of any country will lay bare many of the primitive or hidden beliefs of a people. No words are more ancient than the aboriginal names given to the natural features of a country amid which the childhood of a nation has been spent. With changing customs, civilization, or religion, these names still hold their place, reflecting the ancient, and often modified, or even vanished, faith.

Even a casual examination of the mountain, river, and other local names of places in Corea will give one a tolerably clear outline of the beliefs once fully held by the ancient dwellers of this peninsula. Against the tenets and influences of Buddhism these doctrines have held their sway over the minds of the people and are still the most deeply-seated of their beliefs. The statements of ancient Chinese, and later of Japanese writers, of foreign castaways, and of the French missionaries all concur in showing us that Shamanism is the basis of the Corean’s, and especially the northern Corean’s, faith. In the first historic accounts of Fuyu, Kokorai, and the Sam-han, we find the worship of the spirits of heaven and earth, and of the invisible powers of the air, of nature, the guardian genii of hills and rivers, of the soil and grain, of caves, and even of the tiger. They worshipped especially the morning-star, and offered sacrifice of oxen to heaven. From such scanty notices of early Corea, especially of the northern parts, we may form some idea of the cultus of the people before Buddhism was introduced. From the reports of recent witnesses, Dutch, Japanese, and French, and the evidence of language, we incline to the belief that the fibres of Corean superstition and the actual religion of the people of to-day have not radically changed during twenty centuries, in spite of Buddhism. The worship of the spirits of heaven and earth, of mountains and rivers and caves, of the [327]morning star, is still reflected in the names of these natural objects and still continues, in due form, as of old, along with the sacrifices of sheep and oxen.

The god of the hills is, perhaps, the most popular deity. The people make it a point to go out and worship him at least once a year, making their pious trip a picnic, and, as of old, mixing their eating and drinking with their religion. Thus they combine piety and pleasure, very much as Americans unite sea-bathing and sanctification, croquet and camp-meeting holiness, by the ocean or in groves. On mountain tops, which pilgrims climb to make a visit for religious merit, may often be seen a pile of stones called siong-wang-tang, dedicated to the god of the mountain. The pilgrims carry a pebble from the foot of the mountain to the top. These pilgrims are among those held in reputation for piety.

The other popular gods are very numerous. The mok-sin, the genii of the trees, the god of rain and of the harvest, are all propitiated, but the robust Corean, blessed with a good appetite, especially honors Cho-an-nim, the tutelary genius of the kitchen. To a Corean, the air is far from being empty. It is thickly inhabited with spirits and invisible creatures. Some of these figments of imagination, and the additional powers for good and evil, which the Corean attributes to animals of flesh and blood, are treated of in a former chapter on Mythical Zoölogy. Even the breezes are the breath of spirits, and “a devil’s wind” is a tempest raised by a demon intent on mischief. When a person falls dead suddenly, heart-disease is not thought of; he has been struck by a devil’s arrow. There are not wanting sorcerers who seek to obtain supernatural force by magic, which they use against their enemies or for hire, direct the spirits to wreak malignity against the enemy of him who fees them. These sorcerers are social outcasts, and reckoned the lowest of humanity.

The unlucky days are three in each month, the figure of ill-omen being five. They are the fifth, fifteenth, and twenty-fifth. On all extraordinary occasions there are sacrifices, ceremonies, and prayers, accompanied with tumultuous celebration by the populace. The chief sacrifices are to heaven, earth, and to the King or Emperor of Heaven1 (Shang Ti of the Chinese). [328]

The various superstitions concerning the direction of evil, the auspicious or the ill-omened lay of the land, the site for the building of a house, or the erection of a tomb, will be well understood by those who know the meaning of the Chinese term, Fung Shuy, or the Corean Pung-siu. This system of superstition has not only its millions of believers, but also its priests or professors, who live by their expertness and magnify their calling. The native vocabulary relating to these pretenders and all their works is very profuse. Among the common sights in Corea are little mounds raised on eligible, propitious places, in which a pole is planted, from which little bells or cymbals are hung. These jingled by the breeze are supposed to propitiate the good spirits and to ward off the noxious influences of the demons. The same idea is expressed in the festoons of wind-bells strung on their pagodas and temples. Pung-siu means literally “wind and water,” but in a broad sense is a rude cyclopædia of ideas relating to nature, and bears nearly the same relation to natural philosophy as astrology does to astronomy. Its ideas color every-day speech, besides having a rich terminology for the advanced student of its mysteries.

Upon this system, and perhaps nearly coeval in origin with it, is the cult of ancestral worship which has existed in Chinese Asia from unrecorded time. Confucius found it in his day and made it the basis of his teachings, as it had already been of the religious and ancient documents of which he was the editor.

The Corean cult of ancestor-worship seems to present no features which are radically distinct from the Chinese. Public celebrations are offered at stated times to ancestors, and in every well-to-do house will be found the gilt and black tablets inscribed with the names of the departed. Before these tablets the smoke of incense and sacrifice arises daily. In the temple also are rooms for the preservation of duplicates of the tablets in the private houses for greater safety. Like the iron atoms in his blood, the belief in ancestral piety and worship is wrought into the Corean’s soul. The Christian missionaries meet with no greater obstacle to their tenets and progress than this practice. It is the source, even among their most genuine converts, of more scandals, lapses, and renunciations, than are brought about by all other causes.

Confucianism, or the Chinese system of ethics, is, briefly stated, [329]an expansion of the root idea of filial piety. It is duty based on relation. Given the five great relations, all the manifold duties of life follow. The five relations are that of king and subject (prince and minister), of parent and child, of husband and wife, of the elder brother and the younger brother, and between friends. The cardinal virtues inculcated, or “The Five Constituents of Worth,” or constant virtues displayed, according to the teachings of Confucius, by the perfect man are: 1, Benevolence; 2, Uprightness of Mind; 3, Propriety of Demeanor; 4, Knowledge or Enlightenment; 5, Good Faith; or, Affection, Justice, Deference, Wisdom, Confidence.

With the ethics of the Chinese came their philosophy, which is based on the dual system of the universe, and of which in Corean, yum-yang (positive and negative, active and passive, or male and female) is the expression. All things in heaven, earth, and man are the result of the interaction of the yum (male or active principle) and the yang (female or passive principle). Even the metals and minerals in the earth are believed to be produced through the yum-yang, and to grow like plants or animals.

The Confucian ethics, suiting well a state of feudalism, and being ever acceptable to the possessors of authority, found congenial soil in the peninsula, as they had already taken root in Kokorai. They nourished the spirit of filial piety and personal loyalty, of feud and of blood-revenge, by forbidding a man to live under the same heaven with the murderer of his father or master. Notwithstanding the doctrines and loftier morals of Buddha, the Chinese ethics and ancestor-worship, especially in the northern part of the peninsula, underlaid the outward adherence of the people to the religion of the Enlightened One. As the average Christian, in spite of the spirit of Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount, is very apt to base his behavior and legal procedure on the code of Justinian, so the Corean, though he may believe in Fo (Buddha), practises after the rules of Kong-ja (Confucius).

Official sacrifices are regulated by the government and are offered up publicly at the national festivals. Something of the regulated subordination in vogue among the Chinese prevails in Chō-sen when ancestors are honored. High officials may sacrifice to three ancestors, the gentry only to father and grandfather, and the common people to father only. In every province, capital, and city ranked as Tai-mu-kan, there are buildings containing statues [330]of Confucius and his thirty-two disciples, which are maintained at the public expense.

Confucianism overspreads the whole peninsula, but during the prevalence of Buddhism, from the fourth to the fourteenth century, was probably fully studied and practised only by the learned classes. Under the present dynasty, or from the fifteenth century, the religion of China has been both the official and popular cult of Chō-sen, long ago reaching the point of bigotry, intolerance, and persecution. Taoism seems to be little studied.

In Corean mouths Buddha becomes Pul, and his “way” or doctrine Pul-to or Pul-chie. Introduced into Hiaksai in the fourth, and into Shinra in the sixth century, the new faith from India made thorough conquest of the southern half of the peninsula, but has only partially leavened the northern portion, where the grosser heathenism prevails. The palmy days of Corean Buddhism were during the era of Korai (from 905–1392, A.D.). The missionary work had been accomplished, the reigning dynasty were professors and defenders of the faith, and for these four centuries it was the religion of the state. The few surviving monuments of this era of splendor are the grand pagodas, monasteries, and temples that are found, especially in the southern provinces. The profusion of legal and ecclesiastical terms in the language which relate to lands set apart to provide revenues for the temples, and to their boundaries and rents, and the privileges of monks and priests, are more probably the relics of a past time, being only verbal shells and husks of what were once fruit and kernel.

Until the fifteenth or sixteenth century the Japanese Buddhists looked to the “Treasure-land of the West,” as they termed Chō-sen, for spiritual and even pecuniary aid in their ecclesiastical enterprises. The special features of many renowned Japanese temples, libraries, collections of books, images, altar furniture, etc., are of Corean origin. This is especially noticeable in the old seats of the faith in Kiōto. Images in gold, gilt wood, bronze, and some fire-resisting material—perhaps platinum—are known and duly certified by genuine documents in temples in other cities. In a building at Kamakura is a copy of the Buddhist canon in a revolving library, said to have been obtained by Sanétomo from Corea in the thirteenth century. Among the amusing passages in the letters from Ashikaga in Kamakura, two hundred years later, is the hint given to the king of Corea that a contribution in aid of the repair of certain Japanese temples would be acceptable. [331]

The site and general surroundings of Corean Buddhist temples and monasteries greatly resemble those of China and Japan. They are often situated on hills, rising ground, and even high mountains, and walled round by lofty and venerable trees which seem to inspire awe and veneration in the worshipper, besides acting as extinguishers to sparks drifted from neighboring fires. An imposing gateway is usually built at some distance before the temple, with massive curved roof of tiles, and flanked by a wall of masonry which, in its upper part, consists of plaster tiled at the top. On the frieze of the portal, the name of the temple is inscribed in large Chinese characters. Sanskrit letters or monograms are occasionally seen. Under a roofed shed in front hangs the drum on which the bonze beats the hours for prayer, or of the clock. On the other side stands the coffer for the cash of the faithful, or a well for the manual ablutions of pious worshippers. Boards, on which are written the names of those who have contributed money to the temple, are suspended near by, and the thatched houses of the neophytes and bonzes are close at hand.

The idols seen in a Corean temple are the same as those found throughout Buddhist Asia. The chief is that of Shaka Muni, or Buddha, the founder of the religion. In their sculpture and artistic treatment of this, the central figure of their pantheon, the image-carvers of the different countries do not greatly vary, adhering strictly to their traditions. The sage in Nirvana sits on his knees with the soles of his feet turned upward to the face. His hands touch, thumb to thumb, and finger to finger. The folds of the robes, the round bead-like caste mark of his forehead, the snails on his crown—which tradition says came out to shelter his head from the rays of the sun—and the lop or pierced ears, are substantially the same as those seen on idols from India, Siam, and Thibet. The eye is only slightly oblique, and the ear-lobes are made but slightly bulbous, to satisfy the tastes of worshippers in Chinese Asia. The throne, consisting of the fully opened calyx of a lotus flower—the symbol of eternity—with the petals around the base and seed-holes open, is the same.

In the representation of local deities the artist asserts his patriotism and displays his own taste. In the various countries overrun by Buddhism, the indigenous heroes, sages, and gods have been renamed and accepted by the Buddhists as avatars or incarnations of Buddha to these countries before the advent of the teachers of “the true religion.” There are also saints and [332]subordinate magnates in the Buddhist gallery of worshipped worthies, with whose effigies the artist does not scruple to take certain liberties. One can easily recognize an idol of Chinese, Corean, Siamese, or Japanese manufacture, though all bear the same name. The god of war in Chō-sen holds the double-bladed sword, with its tasselled cord, and wears the Chino-Corean armor and helmet. In the aureole round the head are three fiery revolving thunder-clouds. On the battle-flags captured by the American forces in 1871 were painted or embroidered the protecting deities of those who fought under them. One of these, whether representing a Buddha, as seems most probable, or, as is possible, some local hero—perhaps Dan Kun or Ki Tsze—deified, rides on one of the curious little ponies, stunted and piebald, of Ham-kiung, with which, even in ancient times, one could ride under a fruit tree. Evidently it would have been safer for Absalom in Corea than in woody Palestine.

The tutelary god on the stunted piebald horse is dressed in the peculiar winged head-dress and frilled collar which travellers on Ham-kiung soil noticed fifteen centuries ago. His armor is in scales, or wrought in the “wave-pattern” characteristic of Corean art. His shoes and saddle are of the Chinese type. He rides among the conventional clouds, which in the native technique, are different from those of either China or Japan. Evidently the Buddha and saints of Shaka Muni are portrayed by the native artist according to the strict canons of orthodoxy, while in dealing with indigenous deities, artistic licence and local color have free play. Most of the artists and sculptors of temple work are priests or monks. The principal idols are of brass, bronze, or gilded wood, the inferior sorts are of stone. The priests dress just like the Japanese bonzes. They attend the sick or dying, but have little to do with the burial of the dead, owing to the prevalence of the Pung-sui superstition, to which a Corean in life and in death is a bond-slave. This all-powerful disease of the intellect is the great corrupter of Corean Buddhism, many of its grossest ideas being grafted into, or flourishing as parasites on a once pure faith.

In its development Corean Buddhism has frequently been a potent influence in national affairs, and the power of the bonzes has at times been so great as to practically control the court and nullify decrees of the king. With the Fuyu race—that is in Chō-sen and Nihon—the history of Buddhism has a decidedly military [333]cast. During the first centuries of its sway in the peninsula the ablest intellects were fed and the ablest men were developed by it, so that it was the most potent factor in Corea’s civilization. Over and over again have the political and social revolutions been led by Buddhist priests, who have proved agitators and warriors as well as recluses and students. Possessing themselves of learning, they have made their presence at court a necessity. Here they have acted as scribes, law-givers, counsellors, and secretaries. Often they have been the conservers of patriotism. The shaven-pated priest has ever been a standard character in the glimpses of Corean history which we are allowed to catch.

Not always has this influence been exerted for good, for once possessed of influence at court, they have not scrupled to use it for the purpose of aggrandizing their sects. Tradition tells of high nobles won from the pleasures of the palace to the seclusion of the cloisters, and even of Corean queens renouncing the bed of their royal spouses to accept the vows of the nuns. As in Japan, the frequent wars have developed the formation of a clerical militia, not only able to garrison and defend their fortified monasteries but even to change the fortune of war by the valor of their exploits and the power of their commissariat. There seems to be three distinct classes or grades of bonzes. The student monks devote themselves to learning, to study, and to the composition of books and the Buddhist ritual, the tai-sa being the abbot. The jung are mendicant and travelling bonzes, who solicit alms and contributions for the erection and maintenance of the temples and monastic establishments. The military bonzes (siung kun) act as garrisons, and make, keep in order, and are trained to use, weapons. Many of their monasteries are built on the summit or slopes of high mountains, to which access is to be gained only with the greatest difficulty up the most rocky and narrow passages. Into these fastnesses royal and noble professors of the faith have fled in time of persecution, or pious kings have retired after abdication. In time of war they serve to shelter refugees. It was in attacking one of these strongholds, on Kang-wa Island, in 1866, that the French marines were repulsed with such fearful loss.

Many temples throughout the country have been erected by the old kings of Korai or by noblemen as memorials of events, or as proofs of their devotion. The building of one of these at great expense and the endowment of others from government [334]funds, sometimes happens, even during the present dynasty, as was the case in 1865, when the regent was influenced by the bonzes. He rebuilt the temple in an unparalleled style of magnificence, and made immense presents to other temples out of the public treasury. It has been by means of these royal bounties, and the unremitting collection of small sums from the people, that the bonzes have amassed the vast property now held by them in ecclesiastical edifices, lands, and revenues. Some of these mountain monasteries are large and stately, with a wealth of old books, manuscripts, liturgical furniture, and perhaps even yet of money and land. The great monastery of Tong-to-sa, between Kiung-sang and Chulla, is noted for its library, in which will be found the entire sacred canon. The probabilities of American or European scholars finding rare treasures in the form of Sanskrit MSS. in this unsearched field are good, since the country is now opened to men of learning from Christendom. As a rule, the company of monks does not number over ten, twenty, or thirty, respectively, in the three grades of temples. Hamel tells us that they live well and are jolly fellows, though his opinion was somewhat biased, since he remarks that “as for religion, the Coreans have scarcely any.… They know nothing of preaching or mysteries, and, therefore, have no disputes about religion.” There were swarms of monastics who were not held in much respect. He describes the festivals as noisy, and the people’s behavior at them as boisterous. Incense sticks, or “joss” perfumery, seemed very much in vogue. He bears witness to their enjoyment in natural scenery, and the delightful situation of the famous temples.

Even at the present day, Buddhist priests are made high officers of the government, governors of provinces, and military advisers. Like as in Japan, Buddhism inculcates great kindness to animals—the logical result of the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and all who kill are under its ban. Though beef, pork, and mutton are greedily eaten by the people, the trade of the butcher is considered the most degraded of all occupations, and the butchers and leather dressers form a caste below the level of humanity, like the Etas in Japan. They are beneath the slaves. They must live in villages apart from the rest of the people, and are debarred from receiving water, food, fire, or shelter at the hands of the people. The creation of this class of Corean pariahs and the exclusion of these people from the pale of recognized society [335]is the direct result of the teachings of the bonzes. Like the Chinese, and unlike the Japanese bonze, the devotees will often mutilate themselves in the frenzy of their orgies, in order to gain a character for holiness or in fulfilment of a vow. One of these bonzes, appointed by the magistrate to dispute publicly with a Christian, had lost four fingers for the sake of manufacturing a reputation. The ceremony of pul-tatta, or “receiving the fire,” is undergone upon taking the vows of the priesthood. A moxa or cone of burning tinder is laid upon the man’s arm, after the hair has been shaved off. The tiny mass is then lighted, and slowly burns into the flesh, leaving a painful sore, the scar of which remains as a mark of holiness. This serves as initiation, but if vows are broken, the torture is repeated on each occasion. In this manner, ecclesiastical discipline is maintained.

In the nunneries are two kinds of female devotees, those who shave the head and those who keep their locks. The po-sal does not part with her hair, and her vows are less rigid. Hamel mentions two convents in Seoul, one of which was for maidens of gentle birth, and the other for women of a lower social grade.

Excepting in its military phases, the type of Corean Buddhism approaches that of China rather than of Japan. In both these countries its history is that of decay, rather than of improvement, and it would be difficult indeed for Shaka Muni to recognize the faith which he founded, in the forms which it has assumed in Chō-sen and Nippon; nor did it ever succeed in making the thorough missionary conquest of the former, which it secured in the latter, country. The priority of the Confucian teachings and the thorough indoctrination of the people in them, the nearness of China, the close copying of Chinese manners, customs, and materialistic spirit, the frequency of Chinese conquests, and perhaps the presence of an indigenous religion even more strongly marked than that of Shintō in Japan, were probably the potent reasons why Buddhism never secured so strong a hold on the Corean intellect or affections as upon the Japanese. Nevertheless, since Buddhism has always been largely professed, and especially if Confucianism be considered simply an ethical system and not a religion proper, Corea may be classed among Buddhist countries. Among the surprises of history is the fact that, in 1876, the Shin, or Reformed sect of Japanese Buddhists, sent their missionaries to Corea to preach and convert. Among their conquests was a young native of ability, who came to Kiōto, in 1878, to study the [336]reformed Buddhism, and who later returned to preach among his own people. In 1880 five more young Coreans entered the Shin theological school in Kiōto, and a new and splendid Shin temple, dedicated to Amida Buddha, has been built at Gensan. Evidently this vigorous sect is resolutely endeavoring, not only to recoup the losses which Christianity has made in its ranks in Japan, but is determined to forestall the exertions of Christian missionaries in the peninsula.

So thoroughly saturated is the Corean mind with Chinese philosophy (p. 329) that when of necessity a national emblem or flag must be made, the symbol expressive of the male and female, or active and passive principles dominating the universe, was selected. Though Corea excels in the variety of her bunting and the wealth of symbolism upon her flags and streamers, yet the national flag, as now floated from her ships, custom-houses, and Legations in the United States and Europe, has an oblong field, in the centre of which are the two comma-shaped symbols, red and black, of the two universal principles. In each of the four corners of the flag is one of the Pak-wa or eight diagrams, consisting of straight and broken lines, which Fu-hi, the reputed founder of Chinese civilization, read upon the scroll on the back of the dragon-horse which rose out of the Yellow River, and on the basis of which he invented the Chinese system of writing. In these diagrams the learned men in Chinese Asia behold the elements of all metaphysical knowledge, and the clue to all the secrets of nature, and upon them a voluminous literature, containing divers systems of divination and metaphysical exegesis, has been written. The eight diagrams may be expanded to sixty-four combinations; or, are reducible to four, and these again to their two primaries. The continuous straight line, symbol of the yum principle, corresponds to light, heaven, masculinity, etc. The broken line symbolizes the yang principle, corresponding to darkness, earth, femininity, etc. These two lines signify the dual principle at rest, but when curved or comma-shaped, betoken the ceaseless process of revolution in which the various elements or properties of nature indicated by the diagrams mutually extinguish or give birth to one another, thus producing the phenomena of existence.

Professor Terrien de Lacouperie sees in the Pak-wa a link between Babylonia and China, a very ancient system of phonetics or syllabary explaining the pronunciation of the old Babylonian characters and their Chinese derivatives. It is not likely that Morse derived the idea of his magneto-electric telegraphic alphabet from the Chinese diagrams. Possibly the Corean literati who suggested the design for a national flag intended to show, in the brightly colored and actively revolving germs of life set prominently in the centre, and contrasted with the inert and immovable straight lines in the background of the corners, the progressive Corea of the present and future as contrasted with Corea of the past and her hermit-like existence. Significantly, and with unconscious irony of the Virginia advertisers, the new Corean flag was first published to the Western world at large on the covers of cigarette packages. For centuries the energies of Coreans have been wasted in tobacco smoke, and the era of national decay is almost synchronous with the introduction of tobacco.

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