Corea: The Hermit Nation

by William Elliot Griffis

LEGENDS AND FOLK-LORE.

It is not difficult to appreciate or understand the history of people whose psychology is our own. We seem to look through white light in gazing at their past as told in the words of a language that grew in the same mental sunlight with our own. In eating fruit that grows on familiar intellectual soil, we may sometimes recognize a slightly strange flavor, but the pulp is good food which our mental stomach does not reject, but readily assimilates. Truth, like the moon, usually presents one side only, but the mass of mankind do not think of this, even if they know it. They go on blissfully imagining they have seen all sides, even the full orb.

With the history of the Aryan nations we are familiar, and think it is clear to us. We insist that we know we can understand what they did and that their thoughts need no translation to us.

A visitor at the American Centennial, or any exposition of the industry of all nations, sees before him for comparative study the art, symbols of religion, architecture, implements of domestic life, and all the outward expressions of inward ideas. They are the clothed or concrete soul of man under the varied civilizations of this planet. Standing before the exhibits of India—the home of the Aryan nations—the man of Western Christendom, as his mind’s eye surveys the vastness of difference between him and the Hindoo, is yet able to bridge the gulf. The researches into language, art, myths, folk-lore, show him that the infancy of the two races was the same, and that modern differences are impertinent accidents. At bottom the Aryan and the Hindoo are brothers.

No such reconciliation of ideas is yet demonstrable between the Mongolian and the Aryan. Before the art, symbols, ideas, literature, language, and physical presence of the man of Cathay, no bridging of the gulf seems yet possible. He appears to be a man of another planet. Language gives as yet little clue to a common origin; art and symbol seem at the other pole, and in [[308]]psychology the difference at present seems total and irreconcilable.

Hence, to attempt to write the history of a Turanian people by simply narrating bald facts in an occidental language, seems to be but putting another white skeleton in the museum of nations. Even the attempt, by a purely destructive method of criticism, to manufacture a body, or corpse, rather, of history, by hacking away all legend and tradition to get out what the critic is pleased to call “history,” seems at once unnatural and false. It is like attempting to correlate the genius of Shakspeare with ounces of beef and cheese, or to measure the market value of poetry by avoirdupois. A history of an Asiatic people ought to be as much a history of mind, of psychology, as of facts or dynasties. Hence, in writing of a new and almost unknown people like the Coreans, we think it as important to tell what they believe to have happened, as to attempt to state what we think actually did happen. To understand a people we must know their thoughts, as well as their physical environment.

According to Corean tradition, the origin of their country and people is thus outlined:

Of old the land had neither prince nor chiefs. A Divine Being descended from heaven and took up his abode at the foot of a sandal-wood tree on the Ever-White Mountains. The people of the land became his subjects, made him their sovereign and called him Dan Kun (the Sandal Prince), and his realm Chō-sen (Morning Calm). This took place in the time of Tang Ti Yao (2356 B.C.). His first residence was at Ping-an. Later he transferred it to Pe-yo, where his descendants remained till the eighth year of the emperor Wu Ting of the Chang dynasty (1317 B.C.), when they were established in Mount Asstak. His descendants reigned in Chō-sen more than one thousand years, but nothing more is known of them after the period covered by their reign. Then followed the occupation of the country by the Chinese noble Ki Tsze.

The mythical origin and founding of Shinra is thus told in the local legends of the place. After the invasion of Chō-sen, by the Chinese emperor, many of the original inhabitants fled and scattered over the east coast. They made settlements on the mountains, in the valleys, and along the sea-shore, some of which in time grew to be cities and large towns. One day the attention of the head man of one of the villages was attracted by the neighing of horses toward a mountain. He went in the direction of the [[309]]sounds, but instead of a horse he found an egg of extraordinary size, shaped like a gourd. Carefully breaking it open, he discovered a beautiful rosy boy-baby inside. The old man’s heart was touched by the sight, and he took the child to his home and adopted it as his own. The boy grew up beloved of all who saw or knew him. When but thirteen years old, the elders of the six principal towns gathered together and chose him as their lord and master. They gave him a name signifying “Coming Out of the West,” and to the country a name meaning “Born of the Gourd-egg.” The new king took to wife a fair maiden who was reputed to be the offspring of a well-dragon. They reigned for sixty years, when their daughter succeeded to the throne.

In the fifth year of her reign she married a youth who had come from afar, whose origin was as wonderful as that of her own parents. His mother the queen had been delivered of an egg. Her husband, not enjoying such a form of offspring, threw the egg away, but the queen recovering it, carefully wrapped it in a silk napkin, and with many other treasures put it in a box and set it adrift on the sea. After many days the box was washed ashore on a distant coast. The fishermen who picked it up in their nets thought nothing of it, and threw it into the sea again. It drifted into one of the harbors of Shinra. An old woman finding it, opened the lid and found a lovely boy with a smile on his face. Carefully nourishing him, he grew up to be a man of strength, nine feet high. He excelled all other youths in bodily vigor and accomplishments. When the old woman first picked up the waif, there were a number of crows standing around the shore, and the crone gave him a name referring to the presence of these birds—“Opened in Presence of the Crows.” Excelling in the knowledge of geomancy, he found a good place for a residence and built on it. Hearing of his renown, the queen of Shinra married him to her daughter.