The Chungsŏng-ni Stele of P’ohang: Text of a Judgment by King Chijŭng
The Chungsŏng-ni stele, an inscribed Silla monument discovered in P‘ohang in May of 2009, has been unveiled to academic circles and the general public.
The Kyŏngju branch of the National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage removed this stele to Kyŏngju immediately after its discovery in order to analyze it in detail, and started to allow public access from September 2, 2009, and held an academic symposium in the Dream Center located in the Kyŏngju Pomun Resort to shed light on the value of the stele on September 3rd.
This symposium provided briefings on the details of the discovery, as well as on the history and archeology of the Hŭnghae region in P‘ohang, where the stele was found. The briefings were followed by individual presentations and related discussion on the stele’s value to studies of Silla epigraphy (Sŏn Sŏkyŏl 선석열, Pusan National Univ.), linguistic analysis of the epitaph (Kwŏn Inhan 권인한, Sungkyunkwan Univ.), the contents of the inscription and the chronology of the stele’s construction (Yi Ut’ae 이우태, Univ. of Seoul), and the calligraphic style of the inscription and linguistic life of Early Silla (Ko Kwangŭi 고광의, Northeast Asian History Foundation).
Parts of some characters had cracked off, while the deciphering of certain others sparked debate. Except for these characters, the overall state of preservation of the inscription is quite good. However, neither the speakers nor the discussants could provide a confident answer regarding how the inscription should be interpreted.
Professor Yi Ut’ae, one of speakers, expressed his difficulty in interpretation by saying that as soon as he had decided on one meaning of a given passages he would suddenly turn and decide on another meaning.
Even though there is debate over the interpretation of the inscription, all participants seem to be in agreement that the contents of inscription represent a legal judgment concerning a certain legal affair in which the Silla royal court took part.
In addition, there was much interest expressed over the issues about the exact age of the stele and the precise nature of the legal action it describes.
In terms of the age of stele, it was agreed that it had built in 501 during the reign of King Chijŭng or earlier, since the contents of the inscription were similar to those of the Naengsu-ri stele of Yŏngil, which was discovered nearby in some twenty years ago and was estimated to have been constructed in 503 (the fourth year of the reign of King Chijŭng). It was assumed that the sexagenary date, sin-sa 辛巳, at the very beginning of the first line, indicates the year 501, during or slightly before the reign of King Chijŭng.
In connection with this, some of the participants suggested that the sin-sa year is the year 501 (the second year of King Chijŭng) and that characters appearing after the middle of the first line could possibly represent the name of King Chijŭng.
For example, Dr. Sŏn Sŏkyŏl and Prof. Yi Ut’ae suggested the possibility that the characters in the first line reading chŏllo 折盧 in the term □折盧 (where □ is an unreadable character) can be read as cognates of ch’ŏllo seen in the name Chich‘ŏllo 智哲老, taero in the name Chidaero 智大路, or toro in the name Chidoro 智度路, all of which are known variants of the personal name of King Chijŭng.
Prof. Lee Sungsi was certain that the unreadable first character in □折盧 is chi 只 and that Chijŏllo 只折盧 is one of the names of King Chijŭng.
Prof. Lee added that the character kung 宮 is quite likely to have the same meaning with miyake (often written as 宮), a term that appears frequently in early Japan, so that 宮 can be viewed as stipend land (sigŭp食邑; land endowed by royal family as a special reward) of the True-Bone (chin’gol) aristocrats based in Kyŏngju.
Prof. Yi Ut’ae also pointed that the Chungsŏng-ni stele shows only two middle-ranking (aganji 阿干支 rank) officials reaching a legal judgment (kyo 敎), whereas seven high-ranking officials, including some of kalmunwang rank, appear in the text on the Naengsu-ri stele. He added that the Chungsŏng-ni stele represents the text of a judgment for a trial conducted by independent members of the high court, while the Naengsu-ri stele represents a judgment from a court ruling by all members of the high court.
original news story (Seoul—Yonhap News) reported by Kim Taeshik (taeshik@yna.co.kr)
3 September 2009.
A newspaper article (in Korean) is here.