Tomb bricks excavated from the Tombs of Korean Kings, inscribed with Chinese characters
Tomb bricks excavated from the Royal Tombs of Korea
A mausoleum made of Chinese tomb bricks was unearthed
Overseas network on January 27 quoted Yonhap News Agency reported that the Korea National Buyeo Institute of Cultural Relics said on the same day that the tomb bricks excavated last year (2021) near the Tomb of Wuning In Gongju, Chungcheongnam-do, were confirmed to have been made by ancient Chinese craftsmen. The Tomb of Wuning was built during the Baekje period and has a history of about 1500 years.
According to the institute, the relevant bricks are located at the entrance of the mausoleum, with a lotus pattern and seven Chinese characters engraved on the side - "this is the Jianye people also". Jianye is the ancient name of Nanjing. The institute emphasizes that this means that brick craftsmen come from China.
Lee Byung-ho, a professor at Gongju University of Education in South Korea, said that the discovery of "Jianye" on the tomb bricks shows that Baekje and China had exchanges at that time. Judging from the font, it may be Chinese inscribed. However, it is difficult to conclude whether the builders participated in the construction of masonry or the construction of the entire stone tomb.
extend:
See the cultural exchanges between China and Korea during the Baekje period through the Tomb of the Wuning King
Yao Liu (Gansu Provincial Museum, Lanzhou 730000, Gansu, China)
Originally published in Cultural Relics Appraisal and Appreciation, No. 16, 2019
Abstract: The discovery of the Wuning Tomb in Baekje, South Korea, was very helpful in exploring the relationship and cultural exchanges between China and South Korea at that time. The article first introduces the basic overview and background knowledge of the Wuning Tomb, then comprehensively studies the Chinese cultural elements in the Wuning Tomb through the tomb shape system and the excavated tomb beasts, and finally combines the historical documents to explain the relationship and cultural exchange between the Six Dynasties of China and Baekje, and analyzes its origins and similarities and differences.
Keywords: Baekje; Wuning Tomb; Sino-Korean cultural exchange
1 Baekje Dynasty
Baekje (18-660 BC) is located in the southwest of the Korean Peninsula, originating from the Buyeo people, one of the ancient peoples in northeast China, and the Chinese history books call the kings of the dynasties "Buyeo", referred to as "Yu", and the Book of Liang records that the king of Wuning is "Yulong". The Baekje Dynasty went through three capital moves, and its development stages were divided by the name of the capital city, which can be divided into the Seoul period (18-475 BC), the Xiongjin period (475-538), and the Siqiu era (538-660 years). In 475, King Changshou of Goguryeo attacked the baekje capital of Seoul, and King Wenzhou of Baekje was forced to abandon the Han River basin and move the capital to Xiongjin (present-day Gongju, Korea) in the Jinjiang River Basin. During the Xiongjin period, Baekje passed down five generations, and the king of Wuning was the fourth generation of baekje kings. After King Wuning ascended the throne, he maintained the monarchy and vigorously developed the agricultural economy in the internal strife, and actively sent envoys to the Southern Dynasty to learn from and absorb the culture of the Southern Dynasty, allyed with Silla against Goguryeo, and many measures restored baekje's national strength, and its unique local ethnic culture began to flourish.[2]
2 Tomb of King Wuning
King Wuning was the twenty-fifth king of the Baekje period of Korea, born in 462 AD, ascended the throne in 501, and died in 523 AD, with the nickname "Wuning". In 525, he was buried in Sungsan-ri, about 1 km northwest of Gongju-eup, Chungcheongnam-do, South Korea. The Tomb of King Wuning is a large brick single-chamber tomb with a yongdao in a north-south direction, and is a joint tomb of King Wuning and Princess Wang. There are many kinds of burials in the tomb, including various ornaments, porcelain, wooden utensils, etc., which are excavated with both Baekje cultural characteristics and strong Southern Dynasty cultural colors. Its discovery provides extremely rich historical materials for people to study the political, cultural and material exchanges between Baekje and the Southern Dynasty of China in the 3rd and 6th centuries.
2.1 Site selection of the royal tomb
The Wuning Tombs are located in the Songshanli ancient tomb group in a hilly area about 1 km northwest of Gongzhou City, outside the northwest corner of the former Baekje capital city of Xiongjin, similar to the location of the imperial tombs during the Eastern Jin Dynasty. At the same time, the Jilong ShanLing Area and Zhongshan Mausoleum Area of the Eastern Jin Dynasty Emperor's Mausoleum on the mainland were located about 1 kilometer away in the northwest corner and northeast corner of the capital, respectively; the Zhongshan Ling District of the Southern Dynasty Liu Song Dynasty was also located in the outskirts of the capital; and many princes of the Qi Liang Dynasty were buried in the suburbs of the capital.
In recent years, archaeological excavations have proved that, influenced by the concept of feng shui, "most of the tombs of the Six Dynasties are located near the capital, facing the mountain, or at the foot of the mountain, or on the mountainside, with their backs to the hills and facing the plains" [4]. Feng Shui Xiang Tomb Technique originated in the Han Dynasty, and was more prevalent during the Six Dynasties period, and the rulers were particularly superstitious about feng shui, believing that the tomb site was related to the rise and fall of the family and the rise and fall of the dynasty.[5] In addition, the tombs in the ancient tombs of many Song Mountains, including the Tomb of the King of Wuning, are buried by many ethnic groups, with the main tomb as the center, and the cemetery is arranged in accordance with the estrangement and proximity of the blood relationship with the tomb owner, and the elder and young are respected and humbled. This burial method, like the Six Dynasties Mausoleum, reflects the feudal patriarchal relationship since the Eastern Han Dynasty, indicating that the Baekje royal family in the Xiongjin period largely complied with and absorbed the etiquette and culture of the Southern Dynasty.
2.2 Tomb form system
According to archaeological investigations, the masonry methods of tombs in the Eastern Jin and Southern Dynasties in the Jiankang area (the name of the Six Dynasties of Nanjing) are the most common, and a few use four shun and one ding, five shun and one ding. The shape system is a single-room ticket top brick tomb with a "convex" shape in the shape of a Yongdao, and the Yongdao has one or two stone doors. After the late Eastern Jin Dynasty, coffin beds became popular, with stone altars in front of the coffin beds and sarcophagus seats at the bottom and generally not connected to the back wall. The outer arcs of the side and back walls of the burial chamber, the later the era, the greater the arc. During the period of change in the Western Jin Dynasty and the Eastern Jin Dynasty, straight-edged false windows and lantern niches began to prevail.
The Tomb of Wuning consists of a sealing earth wall, a retaining wall, a Yongdao and a burial chamber. The Xuan Palace is built with stone bricks, a door ticket is attached to the outside of the Yongdao Gate, the door ticket is rebuilt with the four shun and one ding method, the outer gate is rebuilt with three layers of side vertical brick rings, and a layer of sealing door wall is embedded between the inner and outer door tickets, the lower part is masonry with the three shun and one ding method, and the upper part is built with smooth bricks. Retaining walls were built on the upper and flanks of the tickets, made of smooth bricks (Fig. 1). These tombs are similar to the tomb systems of the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Southern Dynasty of the contemporaneous continents, but their shape characteristics are contrary to the era: the Yongdao of the Royal Tomb is facing the middle area of the front of the tomb, and the Yongdao is only equipped with a wooden door; the coffin bed is built at the back of the tomb, there is no sarcophagus seat and is connected to the back wall; the side wall and the back wall of the tomb are basically upright and there are 5 straight-edged false windows, and the peach-shaped lamp niche is placed on it. Similar to the large and medium-sized tombs of the late Eastern Jin Dynasty and the early Middle and Early Liu Song Dynasties, it has a certain degree of delay compared with the Southern Dynasty tombs in healthy areas of the same period, "this delay may be related to the different craft traditions of the bricklayers and tomb builders in this tomb".[6]
2.3 Tomb hierarchy
The tomb is a north-south brick chamber tomb, which is composed of a tomb passage, a corridor and a burial chamber from south to north. The cemetery is sloped and 9.3 meters long. The yongdao and the burial chamber are made of brick roofs, the yongdao is 2.9 meters long, 1.04 meters wide and 1.45 meters high; the burial chamber is 4.2 meters long and 2.72 meters wide, and the height of the burial chamber is 2.93 meters from the coffin bed. There are two small niches on the east and west walls, and a small niche on the north wall. There is a brick drainage ditch at the bottom of the tomb, and on the tomb is a circular mound with a diameter of about 20 meters. There are two kinds of tomb bricks, rectangular and wedge-shaped, the Yongdao built-in epitaph on both sides, and behind the epitaph stands a stone town tomb beast. The specifications of this tomb are similar to many large and medium-sized tombs of the Southern Dynasty, and the method of burial by the ethnic group is also popular in the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Southern Dynasty family. According to the Book of Liang, Zhuyi, and Baekje, in December of the second year of Liang's reign (521), the King of Wuning was enfeoffed by Emperor Wu of Liang as "envoy, governor of Baekje, general of Ningdong, and king of Baekje". According to the official system of the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Southern Dynasty, the status of the King of Baekje Wuning was comparable to that of the high-ranking nobles of the Southern Dynasty, and his tomb form, in addition to borrowing the tombs of the princes of the Southern Dynasty to a certain extent, was basically the same as the official positions granted by the Southern Dynasty, and should fully comply with the hierarchy of the Southern Dynasty (Table 1).
2.4 Town tomb beasts
The town tomb beast excavated from the Wuning Tomb resembles a pig (Fig. 2), 47.3 cm long and 30 cm wide, with a short mouth and nose, a rounded hip, thick limbs, 4 horizontal manes on the back, curled wings on both sides of the body from the front chest to the front legs, and reliefs from the hind abdomen to the hind buttocks. Curly trim with an open hole in the forehead and a dendritic iron horn. From the perspective of morphology, this town tomb beast was excavated from the tomb and has many similarities with the town tomb beasts of the Southern Dynasty Liang and the Western Wei and Northern Zhou Dynasties[7]. Japanese scholar Yoshimura Tsukiko believes that the tomb beast of Wuning Wangling Town is made by imitating the tomb beast of the Southern Dynasty Town, and belongs to the popular one-horned town tomb beast lineage since the Eastern Han Dynasty [8]. The tomb beasts of Wuning Wangling Town are pig-shaped, similar to the pig-shaped or crocodile-shaped town tomb beasts of the Southern Dynasty; the tomb beasts of Wuning Wangling Town have broken legs when they are excavated, while the tomb beasts of the Southern Dynasty town that have been excavated are all broken in the hind legs; the abdominal pattern of the tomb beasts of Wuning Wangling Town is similar to the stone beast pattern of the Southern Dynasty Imperial Tomb Shinto. The above all shows the inseparable similarities between the Tomb Beast of Wuning Wangling Town and the Tomb Beast of the Southern Dynasty.
The Tomb Beasts of the Southern Dynasty Town are divided into two categories: above ground and underground. The above-ground town tomb beasts can be traced back to the Han Dynasty, when thick burials were prevalent, and ancestral halls were built outside the tomb mound, with stone beasts and inscriptions. By the time of the Wei and Jin dynasties, it was explicitly forbidden to build ancestral halls, stone beasts and inscriptions on the ground, and underground town tomb beasts and epitaphs appeared. In the Southern Dynasty, imitating the Han Dynasty in front of the imperial tombs and princes' tombs, they were equipped with unrealistic town tomb beasts such as qilin and evil spirits, and all of them were in a four-legged walking shape. The four-legged walking town tomb beast originated in the Gansu region during the Western Han Dynasty and later spread to Xi'an and Luoyang. From the Western Jin Dynasty to the Eastern Jin Dynasty to the Southern Dynasty, from the original non-realistic animals to pig-shaped, crocodile-shaped and other four-legged walking town tomb beasts, and appeared multi-horned. Above-ground town tomb beasts are generally placed at the entrance of the Shinto shrine in front of the imperial tomb and the tomb of the prince, with a drooping jaw, wings, a horned head, and a wide mouth. After the Southern Dynasty and Song Dynasty, the above-ground town tomb beasts were all configured in pairs, and the town tomb beasts before the imperial tomb had horns, and the town tomb beasts in front of the prince's tomb had no horns. The Wuning Wangling Town Tomb Beast has a unicorn, so it is set according to the imperial tomb system, which is different from the general tomb tomb beast.
The number of underground town tomb beasts unearthed is relatively small, divided into two materials, pottery and stone, all of which are four-legged walking postures, with serious damage to the stone and relatively intact pottery preservation. From the perspective of shape, the shape has rhinoceros and crocodile shape. The rhinoceros head has a single horn, four manes on the back, and a sarcoma ornament on the spine; the crocodile is decorated with dorsal fins from head to tail. The tomb beast of Wuning Wangling Town was excavated underground, inheriting the tomb system and customs and traditions of the Han people in the north of the mainland, and belonged to the lineage of the underground town tomb beast of the Southern Dynasty, originating from the four-legged walking town tomb beast in the northwest region of the Western Han Dynasty.
Table 1 Specifications of the tombs of the emperors of the Six Dynasties
Note: The question marks in the table indicate that you are not sure if this person is the person
Figure 1 Wuning Tomb Gate Ticket, Retaining Wall
Figure 2 Tomb beast excavated from the Wuning King's Mausoleum
Figure 3 Road map of maritime exchanges between the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Haidong states
3 Cultural exchanges between China and Korea during the Baekje period
At the end of the Han Dynasty and the beginning of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, a large number of Central Plains people moved south, chinese culture continued to be carried forward from the Yellow River Basin to the Yangtze River Basin, and the culture of the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Southern Dynasty came into being, and its broad and profound and colorful characteristics attracted the East Asian countries of the same era. At that time, the diplomatic relations and cultural exchanges between Baekje and the Southern Dynasty of China had reached their peak, and the close cultural exchanges and personnel exchanges promoted the continuous sublimation of the cultural closeness between the two sides, and the relations between the two sides continued to develop steadily. Baekje actively introduced the advanced astronomical calendar, literature, scriptures, Buddhism, painting, calligraphy, shipbuilding, textile technology, etc. of the Southern Dynasty, and vigorously promoted the development of Baekje's social politics, economy, culture and life.
Baekje culture also played an intermediary role in connecting the cultures of the Southern Dynasty and the Cultures of the East Asian Countries, absorbing the classics, cultures, and objects of the Southern Dynasties into the current dynasty, and then transmitting them to the East Asian countries. The Book of Song, the Book of Liang, the Book of Wei, the Book of Zhou, the History of the South, the History of the North, the Book of Sui, the Old Book of Tang, the New Book of Tang, as well as the General Classics, the Tang HuiJiao, the Taiping Imperial Records, and the YuanGui of the Book of The Imperial Household have many records of Baekje's history, culture, art, and society, and are extensive and rich in content. The "History of the South" records: "During the Wei Dynasty, the east of Korea belonged to Ma Han and Chen Han, and Shi Tong China. The History of the North also records that Baekje "founded its state in the belt side".[9]
In the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Southern Dynasty, Buddhism developed unprecedentedly prosperous, and the History of the Three Kingdoms, Baekje Honji II, reads: "In September of the first year of the reign of King Qiuliu, the Hu monk Morata Nanda came from the Jin Dynasty, and Wang Yingzhi paid homage to the palace, and Buddhism began here. Since then, Buddhism has spread widely in Baekje and has become the state religion. The Book of Sui, vol. 81, "Biography of Baekje", reads: "(Baekje) performed the Song Dynasty Yuanjia Calendar, with Jianyin Yue as the first year; the wedding ceremony was slightly the same as that of Hua. ”[10]
During the reign of King Wuning, Baekje and the Southern Dynasty had frequent exchanges for two reasons: First, Baekje to the Southern Dynasty could pass by sea, and the sea traffic at that time was quite developed, and it was relatively smooth from Baekje to the Southern Dynasty via the mouth of the Yangtze River or the Mouth of the Qiantang River (Figure 3); second, the domestic situation in Baekje at that time was uneasy, and it was greatly threatened by the southern invasion of Goguryeo, in order to maintain its own security, Baekje repeatedly sent the Southern Dynasty of China to seek alliance against Goguryeo, and although the Southern Dynasty could not provide military assistance to Baekje, it could contain Goguryeo and the Northern Dynasty through the exchanges between the two. Therefore, the frequent exchange of the two is to take what they need. The advanced culture imported from the Southern Dynasty became the political need of Baekje's rulers, and it was also a symbol of the rank and wealth of the Baekje royal family. The Baekje royal family relied on powerful forces and advanced cultures from the Southern Dynasty to protect the stability of the royal power and the legitimacy of its rule.
Through the study of the Chinese elements of the Wuning Tomb, it is found that the Wuning Tomb, from the architectural form to the burial items in the tomb, all highlight the cultural color of the Southern Dynasty at that time, reflecting the important influence of the Southern Dynasty culture on Baekje. Baekje introduced advanced culture, technology, political, ceremonial systems and social customs from the Southern Dynasty, which vigorously promoted the development of Baekje's social, political, economic and cultural life. A large number of advanced cultures imported into the Southern Dynasty prompted the rapid development of Baekje's Contemporary East Asian countries, promoted its further integration into the Northeast Asian Han cultural circle, and became an important bridge for the Southern Dynasty culture in East Asia.
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【About author】Liu Yao (1981—), female, master's degree, librarian of culture and museum, main research direction: cultural relics and museology.