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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