Poetry
Kyunyo-jon: The Life, Times and Songs of a Tenth-Century Korean Monk
균여전
Hyeok Ryeon-jeong · 1075
Synopsis
The life of a Buddhist monk of the kingdom of Koryo, who died in 973, written by a scholar who judged the existing biography incomplete. Ten chapters follow his birth and childhood, his entry into religion and his studies, an anecdote about his sister, his efforts to unite the Hwaeom school, his commentaries, accounts of marvels and a quarrel with a rival. The book above all copies out the eleven songs that the monk had composed in the Korean language on the vows of the bodhisattva Samantabhadra, with their translation into Chinese verse.
Context
The scholar Hyeok Ryeon-jeong composed this book in 1074 and 1075, at the request of a monk, because the life written before him by Kang Yu-hyeon seemed to him incomplete. Its hero lived from 923 to 973 and headed the Gwibeopsa, a monastery in Kaesong. The work never circulated on its own: it is attached to a commentary in the supplementary carving of the Koryo Buddhist canon, and was only made widely available from 1946. Its eleven songs are among the twenty-five hyangga that have come down to us, the other fourteen coming from the Samguk yusa; Choe Haeng-gwi's Chinese transposition helps in reading the hyangchal notation.
Who it is for
A monk's biography in ten chapters, read above all for the poems it preserves; translated into English in 1993, not into French.
Prizes and reception
Ranked by the Korean institute in charge of translations among the major documents of Koryo; the English version is annotated.
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