RELIGION.
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 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 Heaven
[12] (Shang Ti of the Chinese).
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, 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 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.
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 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 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 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 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 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.