고려 불교금석문의 특성과 정리방향

Abstract

The epitaph(墓誌銘) culture, though getting prevalent in the fifth century China and introduced to Korea with no delay, came to the ripening stage in the Koryo Dynasty. The culture was thought to be introduced around the mid-10th to 11th century by some Chinese expatriates who took some active part in the Koryo-dynasty court Just at that time, Koryo was to create and widely reform regulations about the funeral and burial ceremonies, and the epitaph culture in Koryo came to expand greatly amid these ideological and social atmosphere. Another important feature of the Koryo epitaph culture is that Buddhist and Taoist ideas as well as that of Confucianism flowed into it . The Koryo-period epitaphs were built largely by the court officials and their families, inclusive of royal families and monks, but the local gentry class(鄕吏 階層) did not join the culture. In this sense the epitaph is safely argued to belong exclusively to the culture of the capital area and of the ruling aristocratic officials. Inscribed in the epitaphs were the details of personal career like facts about birth and death, marriage and family relations, titles of office taken; therefore, the epitaph records hold the historical value as important as written materials, such as Koryo-sa (高麗史, The History of Koryo Dynasty), and the compilers of the latter often quoted the former as basic source data. In this sense, the Koryo-Dynasty epitaphs demand more attention, and more study as well.