Abstract
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The Hwarang segi manuscripts, made public in 1989 and 1995, were purportedly discovered and copied by Bak Chang-hwa who was working in Japan for the Japanese government between 1933 and 1945. Korean scholars are deeply divided on the issue of authenticity because the manuscripts are fundamentally different than the later Goryeo period sources that are presumed to have used Kim Dae-mun's (fl. 704) Hwarang segi as a source. The manuscripts provide genealogies for historical figures that contradict traditional sources. This study addresses two terms and titles deployed in the text that are anachronistic: pungwolju (lord of hwarang training/customs) and jeongtong (orthodox transmission). Pungwolju is not attested to in other documents until the mid-Joseon period, and jeongtong and its associated terms were not used outside of the context of political legitimation until the early ninth century at earliest. Also, since Bak never publicized his putative discovery of the Hwarang segi during his lifetime, the evidence best suggests that the manuscripts represent drafts of an unfinished Sino-Korean fiction written by Bak during the colonial period.
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| Keywords:
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Hwarang segi, Bak Chang-hwa, Kim Dae-mun, pungnyu, pungwoldo, pungwolju, jeongtong, Korean literature, 1910-1945, Sino-Korean literature
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| About the author(s)
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Richard D. McBride II is a post-doctoral fellow in Korean Studies and Buddhist Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. His recent publications include "Is There Really 'Esoteric' Buddhism?" (Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies vol. 27, no. 2, 2004) and "The Vision-Quest Motif in Narrative Literature on the Buddhist Traditions of Silla" (Korean Studies 27, 2003). His first book Domesticating the Dharma: Buddhist Cults and the Hwaom Synthesis in Silla Korea is currently under review at the University of Hawai'i Press. E-mail: rmcbride@artsci.wustl.edu.
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