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Reconsideration of Place Names in the Ancient Period Section of “Silla-bongi” in Samguk-Sagi

  • Journal of Humanities
  • 2014, (54), pp.159-187
  • Publisher : Institute for Humanities
  • Research Area : Humanities > Other Humanities
  • Received : June 19, 2014
  • Accepted : August 4, 2014

Moonseok Kang 1

1한국학중앙연구원

Candidate

ABSTRACT

There have been discussions about place names in the ancientperiod section articles of “Silla-bongi (新羅本紀, Records of Silla)” inSamguk-Sagi (三國史記, History of the Three Kingdoms). Thosestudies on place names in the book argued that later facts were dealtwith retroactively. The studies proceeded as follows. At first, thedebaters selected a place name in “Silla-bongi” as a certain placename on the basis of various pre-modern period geography books. And then they argued that a writer of “Silla-bongi” recordedretroactively later accidents happening in a certain place. But there aresome repetitions of the same place names in various regions in theancient period section articles of “Silla-bongi.” These show that thedebates’ arguments are not academically proven but are mereinferences. Repetitions of the same place names in various regions were alsoshown in the epigraphs of the ancient Silla period. Even though thoserepeated names in the epigraphs are mostly the native words and tendto be highly conservative, the repetitions of the same place names inancient Silla region lasted for a long time. There are some cases thatSilla and Baekje share the same place names. The reasons for repetitions of the same place names within the same country oramong countries are attributed to the fact that they had been made inconsideration of the topographical aspects. In this case, those names ofregions were written in the native words in the original texts of“Silla-bongi” and “Baekje-bongi” but were presumed to have beentranslated into Chinese after the announcement of the measures tochange the names of regions into classical Chinese letters in the 16thyear during the reign of King Gyeongdeok, the 35th monarch of Silla.

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