Corea: The Hermit Nation

by William Elliot Griffis

CHAPTER XXXI.

MOURNING AND BURIAL.

The fashion of mourning, the proper place and time to shed tears and express grief according to regulations, are rigidly prescribed in an official treatise or “Guide to Mourners,” published by the government. The corpse must be placed in a coffin of very thick wood, and preserved during many months in a special room prepared and ornamented for this purpose. It is proper to weep only in this death-chamber, but this must be done three or four times daily. Before entering it, the mourner must don a special weed, which consists of a gray cotton frock coat, torn, patched, and as much soiled as possible. The girdle must be of twisted straw and silk, made into a rope of the thickness of the wrist. Another cord, the thickness of the thumb, is wound round the head, which is covered with dirty linen, each of the rope’s ends falling upon the cheek. A special kind of sandals is worn, and a big knotty stick completes the costume of woe. In the prescribed weeds the mourner enters the death-chamber in the morning on rising, and before each meal. He carries a little table filled with food, which he places upon a tray at the side of the coffin. The person who is master of the mourners presides at the ceremonies. Prostrate, and struck by the stick, he utters dolorous groans, sounding “ai-kō” if for a parent. For other relatives he groans out “oi, oi.” According to the noise and length of the groans and weeping, so will the good opinion of the public be. The lamentations over, the mourner retires, doffs the mourning robes, and eats his food. At the new and the full moon, all the relatives are invited and expected to assist at the ceremonies. These practices continue more or less even after burial, and at intervals during several years. Often a noble will go out to weep and kneel at the tomb, passing a day, and even a night, in this position. In some instances, mourners have built a little house [[278]]before the grave, and watched there for years, thus winning a high reputation for filial piety.

Among the poor, who have not the means to provide a death-chamber and expensive mourning, the coffin is kept outside their houses covered with mats until the time of sepulture.

Though cremation, or “burying in the fire,” is known in Chō-sen, the most usual form of disposing of the dead is by inhumation. Children are wrapped up in the clothes and bedding in which they die, and are thus buried. As unmarried persons are reckoned as children, their shroud and burial are the same. With the married and adult, the process is more costly, and the ceremonial more detailed and prolonged. This, which is described very fully in Ross’ “Corea,” and with which Hamel’s curt notes agree, consists of minute ceremonial and mourning among the living and the washing, combing, nail-paring, robing, and laying out in state of the dead, with calling of the spirits, and with screens, lights, and offerings, according to Confucian ritual. In many interesting features, the most ancient rites of China have survived in the peninsula after they have become obsolete in the former country. The very old tombs opened, and the painted coffins, coated with many layers of silicious paint, dug up near Shanghai recently, are much like those of the Coreans.

The coffin, which fits the body, is made air-tight with wax, resin, or varnish, and is borne on a bier to the grave by men who make this their regular business. Often there are two coffins, one inside the other. Sons follow the body of their father on foot, relatives ride in palanquins or on horseback. Prominent at the head of the procession is the red standard containing the titles and honors of the deceased. This banner, or sa-jen, has two points on it to frighten away the spirits, and at the funeral of a high officer, a man wears a hideous mask for the same purpose. When there are no titles, only the name of the deceased is inscribed upon the banner.

The selection of a proper site for a tomb is a matter of profound solicitude, time, and money; for the geomancers must be consulted with a fee. The pung-sui superstition requires for the comfort of both living and dead that the right site should be chosen. Judging from the number of times the word “mountain” enters into terms relating to burial, most interments are on the hillsides. If these are not done properly, trouble will [[279]]arise, and the bones must then be dug up, collected, and reburied, often at heavy expense. Thousands of professional cheats and self-duped people live by working upon the feelings of the bereaved through this superstition.

The tombs of the poor consist only of the grave and a low mound of earth. These mounds, subjected to the forces of nature, and often trampled upon by cattle, disappear after the lapse of a few years, and oblivion settles over the spot.

With the richer class monuments are of stone, sometimes neat or even imposing, sometimes grotesque. Some, as the pi-popi, are shaped like a house or miniature temple; or, two stones, cut in the form of a ram and a horse respectively, are placed before the sepulchre. The man-tu, “gazing headstone,” consists of two monoliths or columns of masonry, flanking the tomb on either side, so that the soul of the dead, changed into a bird, may repose peacefully. In the graveyards are many tombs paved with granite slabs around the temple model, but for the most part a Corean cemetery is filled with little obelisks, or tall, square columns, either pointed at the top or surmounted with the effigy of a human head, or a rudely sculptured stone image, which strangely reminds a foreigner of “patience on a monument, smiling at grief.” This apparition of a human head rising above the tall grass of the burial-ground may be the original of Japanese pictures of the ghosts and spirits which seem to rise dark and windblown out of the wet grass. Often the carving in Corean grave-yards is so rude as to be almost indistinguishable.

Mourning is of many degrees and lengths, and is betokened by dress, abstinence from food and business, visits to the tomb, offerings, tablets, and many visible indications, detailed even to absurdity. Pure, or nearly pure white is the mourning color, as a contrast to red, the color of rejoicing. Even the rivets of the fan, the strings on the shoes, and the carrying of a staff in addition to the mourning-hat, betoken the uniform of woe.