고려시대 묘지명 제작과 ‘알리고 싶은 열망’

Abstract

People in Koryo age made the epitaph and buried it in a tomb together with a dead body, following the Chinese custom of making the epitaph and burial. What people in Koryo age paid attention to with interest was rather to record and praise the lifetime achievements of the dead while this was also for the purpose of let people know the person lying buried in a tomb when the tomb was damaged later. This seems to have worked as one of methods to settle the ‘aspiration to inform’ that people in Koryo age had. Although the epitaph was to be put in a tomb with the dead, the contents were not buried together, so the contents became known to many people by being read. In addition, the production of epitaph was carried out in the process of funeral ceremony attracting the public attention, so the descendants who produced the epitaph could inform their deeds of filial piety. Like this, the production of epitaph involves the ‘aspiration to inform’on both sides of the dead and the living to inform the achievements of the dead and also inform the attitude of the living. In the production of epitaph in Koryo age, there seems to have been involved the realistic purpose of the living to be appointed as public officials or get the opportunities of promotion by informing the achievements of ancestors and also informing the deeds of filial piety of descendants. Why the culture of epitaph in Koryo age was concentrated on the bureaucracy in central government and their families is supposed to be due to this reason. Although the epitaph is produced for the dead, the living is the subject of production. From the standpoint of the dead, the production of epitaph was to enable the dead to have the consideration to achieve the immortality in terms of the Confucian so that the achievements of the dead might be transmitted continuously through lifetime records, but from the standpoint of the living, it was also a means to satisfy the realistic desires of themselves through recognition of deeds of filial piety not to spare the consideration for ancestors. Like this, in the production of epitaph in Koryo age, there was hidden a desire in which the standpoints of the dead and the living as well as the life and death of people in Koryo age got intertwined.