Transactions of the korea branch of the royal asiatic society volume XXXVIII

TRANSACTIONS OF THE KOREA BRANCH OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY

VOLUME XXXVIII
Supplied gratis to all members of the Society Korea Branch, Royal Asiatic Society

P O Box Central 255

Seoul, Korea
October 1961


CONTENTS
The Flower Boys of Silla (Hwarang) Notes on the sources

by Richard Rutt 1

Some Notes on the Songgyun’Gwan

by Kim Chongguk and Kim Chinman 69

The Han-San-Wei-I Principle in Far Eastern Societies by David Chung 95

Tables of the Mccune-Reischauer System for the Romanization of Korean 121

List of officers for 1961 129









THE FLOWER BOYS OF SILLA (HWARANG)

Notes on the sources

By Father Richard Rutt

(盧 大 榮 神 父)
[page 1]

PREFACE
So far as I can discover only three books have been devoted to the study of hwarang. The earliest, and in many ways the most interesting and attractive, was Volume 4 of the Zakko (雜攷) of the Japanese amateur scholar resident of Korea, Ayukai Fusanomosuke (鮎貝房之進). Subtitled Karogo (花郞攷), it was published in Seoul in 1932. It includes practically all the references to Korean sources which are needed for a complete study of the subject.

Mishina Shoei (三品彰英) published his Shiragi Kara no Kenkyu (新羅花郞の研究), after previously publishing a number of articles on the subject, in Tokyo in 1943. This is a larger work than Ayukai’s and attempts a more systematic presentation of the subject. Otherwise its chief contribution is the vast amount of comparative anthropological material which Mishina adduces.

The third work is in Korean, the Hwarangdo Yŏn’gu (花郞道研究) of Yi Sŏn’gŭn (李瑄根) published in Seoul in 1949. This work is of quite a different character, more in the nature of an essay on the spirit of hwarang as it appealed at the time of publication to Korea’s burgeoning nationalism. Much of the book is frankly speculative about the legacy of hwarang ideals in later centuries.

I have not been able to give the attention that is needed to the post-Silla references to hwarang. There is more than enough material here for another paper. But I do not believe, from what I have read in it, that it will in any way alter our opinions about the hwarang of the Golden Age.

R.R.

Seoul September 1961

[page 2]

THE FLOWER BOYS OF SILLA (花郞)
I. Introductory
The hwarang ideal has become a favourite symbol of modern Korea. It has been used as the name of a Youth Corps, it has been used in the name of the Army Officers Training School, as the name of a high military decoration and as the brand name of the cigarettes issued for the armed forces; it is the name of a bar in the Bando Hotel, and has been used as a professional name by a popular musician. It has a ring of romance and chivalry, a tone of national pride, in the two Chinese characters with which it is written a blend of masculinity and grace that makes it very suitable for all these purposes.

The usual translation offered for hwarang is “Flower of Youth” and the usual description of what the historical hwarang were is given as “an order of knighthood (or something similar) in the Silla dynasty.” Unfortunately the translation does violence to normal grammar of Chinese phrases and the description represents an idea that has grown up during the last thirty years. This paper is concerned with investigating something of what the truth about the hwarang really was.

The confusion of thinking about hwarang in Korea could scarcely be better illustrated than by the references to the subject in the Unesco Korean Survey.^l) Hwarang are mentioned in nine places. There is a variety of interpretations placed on the word, and in several cases statements are made which have little or no relation to any historical evidence we have with regard to hwarang. Always the institution of hwarang is presented in an idealized and noble light.
1) Seoul 1960.
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A typical instance of the current Korean interpretation of hwarang may be quoted from the entry under this word in Tong-a’s New Encyclopedia. (The translation is my own.)

Hwarang. Leader of a military band of the Silla era. Chosen from the young sons of the nobility by popular election. Belonged in hundreds or thousands to the hwarang bands. Origin not clear, but presumably from the young mens’ bands of the Han tribes. Sadaham who raised an army for the suppression of Kara in 562 is the beginning of hwarang history. Basic ideal was complete loyalty to the nation, righteouness and bravery. Frequently visiting mountain beauty spots they were also called kukson. Their activity was also called p’ungnyu or p’ungwolto. The five hwarang command-ments were: serve the king with loyalty, serve parents with piety, be faithful to friends, never retreat in battle, preserve life when possible.
This is by no means unfair as a summary of what most Koreans think of hwarang. Hence it comes as rather a surprise to find in Arthur Waley’s translation of the Chinese Book of Songs one of the rare English references to hwarang.

Waley is annotating his own translation of the archaic Chinese poem;

山有扶蘇 山有橋松

陽有荷華 隰有游龍

不見子都 不見子充

乃見狂且 乃見狡童³⁾

He translates the last two characters of the stanzas as “madman” and “mad boy” respectively, so that the song is that of a girl who seeks for her ideal, called Tzŭ-tu (子都) or Tzŭ-ch’ung (子充), but in fact can see only “a mad boy.”
2) 새 백과사전, Seoul 1959.

3) Shih-ching, I. vii. x. (詩. 風. 鄭 10)

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Waley comments :

The ‘madmen’ were young men dressed up in black jackets and red skirts who ‘searched in the houses and drove out pestilences.’ (Cf. Commentary on Tso Chuan chronicle; Duke Min, second year. For the medley garb of these ‘wild men,’ see Kuo Yu, the story of Prince Shen-sheng of Chin.) In order to do this they must have been armed, for disease demons are attacked with weapons, just like any other enemy. It is therefore not surprising that the Chou Li (Chapter 54) lists them among the various categories of armed men...... Closely analogous were the famous “Flower Boys” of Korea, who reached their zenith in the sixth century A.D....... This is presumably the song with which the people in the house greeted the exorcists.⁴⁾
Although Waley speaks only of an analogy, his reference to hwarang is stimulating enough to prompt one to a further investigation of his material. The immediate result is rather disappointing. Of his three references to Chinese sources two are fairly obviously discovered in that wellknown and popular dictionary, the Tzu-hai (辭海). There under k’uanp-fu (狂夫), and not under the adjacent k’uang-chu (狂且, the phrase in the poem under discussion), will be found the reference to the Tso Chuan. The dictionary identifies k’uang-fu with fang-shang-shih. The Tzu-hai entry under fang-hsiang-shih (方相氏) gives the reference to the Chou Li,⁵⁾ where the fang-hsiang-shih is described as a shaman or exorcist who wore bearskins and a mask with four golden eyes, as well as the red and black clothes. The reference to the Kuo Yu⁶⁾ telling the tale of Prince Shen-sheng (申生) is in fact a doublet of the passage given from the Chu Hsi editions of the Tso Chuan,⁷⁾ and is therefore not an
4) A. Waley, The Book of Songs (London, 1937) p. 222.

5) 厢夏官, 方相氏

6) 國語 卷七 晋語ᅳ 獻公十七年

7) 左傳 閔公 二年 附錄

[page 5]

additional reference at all. It does not describe the motley clothes either.

It is not my present purpose to evaluate Mr Waley’s interpretation of the Chinese Book of Songs, though I think that solely by the evidence adduced in these notes he has not made a very strong case for his interpretation on this point It is interesting that he has drawn attention to some points of similarity between hwarang and ancient Chinese exorcists. Perhaps he was unaware of the place of the bear in primitive Korean myth, or he might have been tempted to link the hwarang with Tan’gun (檀君). Also it must be noted that all his texts date from at least the 3rd or 4th century B.C. and purport to describe institutions of three or more centuries earlier. Thus his Chinese shamans must be at least nine centuries, and probably more, earlier than our Korean hwarang as known to history. There is no reason why they should not be, as he says, “analogous”, but we have not much to justify the comparison.

In some ways much more fascinating is the attention he also draws⁸⁾ to an analogy with a Rumanian institution, which he developed at some length in the Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society.⁹⁾ The Rumanians are the Calusari dancers, who appeared in London at the International Folk Dance Festival of 1935 and created something of a sensation by their religious attitude as well as by their technique.

The description of the Calusari is given by Professor Vuia, who accompanied them. He points out the strong slavic element in their dances and myth, and lists among the names of their dances such interesting words as Călusul, Floricica, and even Floricica Călusului. These would mean respectively “little horse”, “little flower” and “flower of the little horse”. They represent the fairies of
8) Op. cit., ibid.

9) Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, London, 1935, P. 107

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the waters, woods and hills. They carry wooden sticks representing swords. They are supposed to have power to heal. They have a tabu concerning water. They sometimes used a hobbyhorse, and formerly used flowers in their dancing. Though they are all male, they have a tradition that female impersonation was once a part of their performance. Nowadays (that is in 1935) their chief connection is with the departed and they have been baptized into the church as a Whitsuntide observance.

Mr Waley supplies a note: “An Ancient Korean Parallel to the Călusari”, in which he relies entirely on an article by Mishina Akiyoshi (三品彰英) ¹⁾ in Rekishi to Chiri (歷史 と 地理) 1930. At this point it will be enough to note that he points to parallels with the hwarang in that the hwarang have a foundation myth about two women, one of whom drowned the other in a stream; that dancing was one of their chief pursuits; that one of their titles was kuksŏn, which Waley translates as “national fairy”; and that they have some military connections.

It is tempting to draw all these things together and posit a common origin in Central Asia for the hwarang and the călusari, but the necessary material is lacking, and Mr Waley can do more than point out the parallel. In itself it is interesting.

But our purpose is to see what can be discovered about the hwarang themselves from the evidence available. It is slight. Indeed it must be admitted that it is only in the last two generations that Koreans themselves have become much aware of the hwarang and have elevated them to a position of symbolic importance in the national culture. The traditional treatment of the evidence has usually been very confucian in tone and
1)The name is given thus by Waley. In the Korean Studies Guide (University of California Press, 1954) it is given as “Mishina Akihide”. But in the colophon to his own definitive book on hwarang (see below, page 10, note 8) the furigana reading is given as “Mishina Shoei.”
[page7]

therefore to some extent misleading. But before treating of the texts we should pay some attention to the work of lexicographers and get some of the terms clear.

II. Vocabulary
a. Hwarang (花郎)
First of all there is the word hwarang (花郞) itself. The translation “flower boy” is probably the best, because it begs fewest questions as to the real meaning of the word, is literal and does no violence to either Chinese or Korean grammar. (The translation “flower of youth” is certainly grammatically, and possibly semantically, false).

Professor Yang Chudong (梁柱東)²⁾ has declared that the original form of the word was simply the first half of it, the hwa (花). He does not explain why this title should have been used, nor why in later times the usual form of the title hwarang suffixed to a proper name should have been -rang (郞) and not hwa. He regards the character as having the same value in old Korean as it had in Chinese. He does not discuss the possibility that it may have been a way of writing some native Korean syllable.

Professor Yang’s argument is long and highly technical. It will be sufficient here to outline his conclusions. He believes hwa (花) was the original title, that the forms hwarang (both 花郞 and 花娘, the second character intended to distinguish the sexes, though there is confusion, for instance, in the Samguk Yusa accounts) and hwado (花徒) are essentially the same and represent a form pronounced hwanae, a collective noun comparable to the modern honorific (though steadily declining) classifier -nae (내). Wonhwa (原花 or 源花) can be reversed to form hwawon (花原 or 花源), and is equivalent to the pronunciation hwaan (화안) and cognate with hwahan (written as 花主) and hwap’an (花判) which are titles of ranks.
2) Koga Yŏn’gu(古歌研究) 2nd edition, Seoul 1960, pp. 372 ff.
[page8]

It seems impossible to go further than Dr Yang in discussing the original meaning of hwarang at present.

However the modern dictionaries are not yet done with the word. We find that they give the variant form hwarangi (화랑이) with or without the Chinese characters used in writing it, to mean a brilliantly dressed singer and dancer, similar to the kwangdae (광대). The emphasis is on the pretty clothes and the dancing. There is a variant form hwaraengi, and also hwaryangi (화랭이, 화량이) but these are regular local deviations.

In colloquial usage there is also hwallyangi (or one of the above forms) or even hwanyangnom (화냥놈) meaning a playboy and a lazy goodfornothing, and also the word hwaryangnyon (화량년), or something within the range of expected variations, meaning a slut or prostitute. I have met Koreans who say that it may refer to a male prostitute, but it is more normally used as given, with a pseudo-Chinese reading (花娘女), by Gale in his Korean-English Dictionary, and is the same as can be heard in the expression hwaryangjil (화량질) meaning illicit liaison, and the colloquial description of the lily-of-the-valley flower, hwanyangnydnui sokkot karangi (화량년의 속것 가랑이) or “courtesan’s petticoats showing.” This meaning can be traced back as far as the Kyerim Yusa (鷄林類事), a Chinese wordlist believed to date from the 11th century.

Lastly there is the meaning of shaman or shaman’s husband. This occurs in the forms hwarang, hwarangi, hwaraengi in various cases. The earliest recorded instance of it is in the Hunmong Chahoe (訓蒙字會), a list of Chinese characters for teaching to children, compiled with notes and an introduction by Ch’oe Sejin (崔世珍) in 1527, though Mr Nam Kwang-u³⁾ also notes its appearance
3) Nam Kwang-u (南資祐); Koŏ Sajŏn(古語辭典), Seoul 1960.
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in Chibong Yusŏl (芝峰類說) a collection of notes and stories published in 1614. In Hunmong Chahoe and Wae-o Yuhae (倭語類解) an eighteenth century Japanese grammar by Son Sunmyŏng (孫舜明), it is given as the meaning of the Chinese character 覡, pronounced kyŏk (격), meaning a male shaman.

Murayama Chijun (村山智順) in his survey of Korean shamanism⁴⁾ lists hwarang (romanised as pharang) as a word for a male mudang. Interestingly enough he also lists kwangdae as a male shaman title. Among the areas in which he notes the word as being in use at the time of his collection of materials are Chinch’ŏn (鎭川),Yŏngch’ ŏn (永川), P’ohang (浦項), Masan (馬山), and Hadong (河東), with an interesting variation of hwanam (花男)in Hwanghae Province.⁵⁾ This gives a fairly even distribution for the word across central and southeastern Korea. It is doubtful whether Murayama’s investigations were at this point exhaustive enough to be conclusive, and the word was probably in use elsewhere as well, but the area indicated is precisely the area that is the legatee of Silla culture, and there is no reason to believe that the word hwarang for a shaman is of separate origin from the name of the historical hwarang.

This point is, however, brought out clearly in Akamatsu and Akiba’s work on Korean shamanism,⁶⁾ where they point out that hwarang is also used to describe a female shaman’s husband, especially when he plays, sings, or dances to accompany his wife. Suggesting that hwarang meaning shaman’s husband is commonest in the provinces of Chungch’ŏng, North Kyŏngsang and Kangwŏn, they go on to say that it is used to mean a male shaman in South Kyŏngsang and the Chŏllas. This is in

4) Murayama Chijun (村山智順), Chosen no Fugeki (朝鮮の巫覡). Keijo. Chosen Sotokufu, 1932, page 22.

5) Op. cit., pp. 26 ff.

6) Akamatsu and Akiba (赤松智城, 秋葉隆) Chosen Fuzoku no Kenkyu (朝鲜巫俗の研究) Keijo 1938. Vol II, pages 31-2.
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sharp distinction to the quite different words used in more northerly parts of Korea where the tradition of Silla is weakest or non-existent.

So we have the word hwarang remaining common Korean usage until the twentieth century, but in more or less unsavoury connections — sorcery, laziness, laxity, and the life of the mountebank.
b. Kuksŏn (國仙)
A word that also appears in the modern dictionaries is kuksŏn (國仙). They give it the same meaning as hwarang in its historical sense. It is a word with religious overtones that cannot be missed, ana it is very hard to translate it satisfactorily into English. The basic meaning of sŏn is that of a fairy or an immortal, someone who has achieved great longevity, hence a hermit-sage, or a deified person. The character as written suggests a mountain man; and it is closely connected with taoist concepts.

As applied to the hwarang it first appears in the Samguk Yusa (三國遺事),7) and is connected with other uses such as sŏllang (仙郞) and sŏndo (仙徒). Sometimes the character even stands alone as in sasŏn (四仙). But in the Samguk yusa it is placed in conjunction with the story of the Maitreya Buddha, who there appears as a sŏnhwa (仙花).

Mishina Shoei, in his definitive work on hwarang⁸⁾ gives a long but inconclusive discussion of the significance of this name.⁹⁾ He suggests that the beautiful clothes of the flower boys may have suggested the title of fairy, and he notes that much of their activity was connected with mountains. He draws attention to the
7) See below page 15.

8) Mishina Shoei (三品彰英), Chosen Kodai Kenkyu Dai ichi-bu: Shiragi Karo no Kenkyu (朝鲜古代研究第ᅳ部新羅花郞の研究) Tokyo 1943. This is the standard work on the subject of hwarang, and I have made much use of it. Referred to hereafter as SKK.

9) SKK pages 246 ff.
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fact that the term kuksŏn is not used in the Samguk Sagi but only in the Samguk Yusa and subsequent writings. He concludes that it was a title which came into use later.

Professor Yang, however, draws attention in a note¹⁾ to the use of the same character sŏn (イ山) in the name of one of the official ranks of Koguryŏ, the hŭbŭi sŏnin²⁾ (皂衣仙人), the “fragrant-clothed men” ᅳ though the first character is sometimes read as cho (皁) meaning “black” instead of “fragrant.” He concludes that sŏn represents the native Korean san meaning “a man” as in the modern words sanai (사나이) or sŏnbae (선배), so that the characters kuksŏn really represent the Korean word pŭlsăn, meaning, presumably, “a singing man.”

Waley³⁾ translated the phrase as “national fairy,” believing that it was analogous to the primatial buddhist title kuksa and represented the highest rank of hwarang, but in this he was, possibly, mistaken.

Nevertheless it seems that for English translation it is hard to better the word “fairy,” remembering that fairies in the Orient are mystic beings that have little in common with the gauzy wraiths of romantic ballet or “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. There seems to have been good cause for the choice of sŏn (仙) meaning “fairy” rather than sŏn (先) meaning “elder” in writing kuksŏn for hwarang, whereas the latter character was used as an alternative in the case of the Koguryŏ rank mentioned above. The translation “singing man” would be no less misleading if it carried no comment to explain it.
c. P’ungnyu(風流), p’ungwŏl(風月)
Pungnyu (風流) and p’ungwŏlto (風月道): are two phrases that are constantly used in connection with the activities of the hwarang. They are also hard to translate
1) Op. cit. p. 528

2) Samguk Sagi (三國史記 卷四十 職官下外 also 卷十五 太祖 and 次大王)

3) Op cit., cf above page 5, note 9.
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and do not make good sense if taken according to the normal values of the Chinese characters used. They certainly seem to mean the same thing. In modern usage, Chinese and Korean, they have come to have a wanton and erotic connotation, and also to mean “elegant” or “poetic.” In contemporary Korean, p’ungnyugaek (風流客) means a poet who delights in the beauties of nature and scenery. He is expected to delight also in the pleasures of the cup, after the example of the best poets of T’ang. P’ungwŏlto means, literally, “the way of the wind and the moon,” and suggests poetic romanticism. Whatever we may be able to discover about the possible Korean words for which these Chinese characters are made to do phonetic duty, it seems hard to believe that the characters were chosen entirely without reference to their semantic content. The real meaning may be other than what the Chinese suggests, as in the cases of hwarang and kuksŏn, but the meaning of the Chinese characters will suggest an overtone to the original Korean sense.

We cannot, however, overlook the fact that in Korea the word p’ungnyu (風流) has a meaning that the Japanese furyu and Chinese feng-liu, written with the same characters, do not have. This is the sense of “music”, due to the use of the characters as an transcription of the old Korean word for singing,⁵⁾ pul (불) cognate with the modern verb puruda (부르다 to sing).

Later texts refer to hwarang sometimes simply as p’ungwŏlchu (風月主). P’ungwŏl is also a way of writing the same word pul and thus has the same meaning as p’ungnyu. Both undoubtedly derive from the hwarang practice of singing and dancing in the mountains.⁶⁾ That the word has in later days been associated with dolce

4) An old method of writing Korean words with Chinese characters.

5) Cf.Yi T’ak (李鐸) Kugohak Non’go (國語學論攷) Seoul 1958, page 84f .

6) Cf. SKK page 255 f. for a detailed examination of this matter. For the philological argument see Yang Chudong, op. cit. p.528.
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far niente, and poetizing in beauty spots and connected with wine and lovemaking is not surprising. The case is somewhat parallel to the history of the word hwarang itself. In rendering it into English it is certainly most attractive to render it as “wind and moonlight music,” and though this may be a shade too romantic, it is probably not too far from suggesting the excitement which attended the hwarang meetings.