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The Ancestral Rite Succession by Daughter and Adoption of the Uiryeong Nam Lineage in the 16th and 17th Centuries: Focusing on Panyun Namgong Seongye and Uiryeong Namssi Jokbo

Ki-seok Kwon 1

1서울대학교 규장각한국학연구원

Accredited

ABSTRACT

At the end of the 17th century, the Uiryeong Nam lineage compiled Panyun Namgong Seongye(判尹南公先系), the biography of Nam Chigeun(南致勤), who made a big contribution in the battles of the 16th century, and Uiryeong Namssi Jokbo(宜寧南氏族譜), the first published genealogy of the whole lineage. Nam Chigeun had children of a concubine, but his wife had no son, so her only daughter succeeded the ancestral rite for him. PNS contains a genealogical chart consisting of descendants of Nam Chigeun’s daughter. This is a list of descendants of the daughter who inherited the ancestral rite, that is hard to find similar examples in Korean history. Nam Chigeun was born in a prestigious family and made a great effort to defeat Japanese invasion and domestic revolt. But because he killed so many people as commander, people said it was natural that he had no descendants. He himself thought that he had no descendants. He had his wife’s only daughter, not his concubine’s children or nephews, succeed the ancestral rite. But he was not pleased with his daughter’s succession because of his internal acceptance of Neo-Confucian kinship consciousness. The children of Nam Chigeun’s concubine are not listed in PNS, but among those born one century after him, there were a considerable number of children of concubines or adopted sons. According to UNJ, early cases of adoption according to Confucian rules were introduced from the first half of the 16th century, and children of concubines born at similar times were also listed. Although he had chosen the ancestral rite system succeeded by the daughter and her descendants, he felt sorry for the choice. He was experiencing a transition period in which different institutions and ideas coexisted.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.