고려시대 官人層의 임종 장소와 그 변화상에 대한 고찰

Abstract

As a result of the analysis of tomb inscriptions from the Goryeo Dynasty, the death places of Goryeo bureaucrats' families can be largely classified into two: their houses, and temples. Breaking it down by era, there were 111 members of Goryeo bureaucrat families buried before the Musin Jeongbeon (a coup d'etat by soldiers), of which 55 had their death places specified: 36 had died at their house, and 19 at the temple. On the other hand, among the 47 people who had died under the soldiers' reign and whose death places could be identified, only 2 bureaucrat family members had met their death at the temple. After King Chungyeol, all 41 bureaucrat family members with specified death places had died in their own home. The reason for this change was as follows: when the Musin Jeongbeon coup broke out, many temples in Gaegyeong - the capital of Goryeo - suffered huge damages. Even after the Jeongbeon, temples and monks maintained serious conflicts with the governing soldiers. Therefore, temples were no longer an appropriate place to seek health treatment or peaceful death. For this reason, the number of Goryeo bureaucrat family members who chose to die at the temple drastically decreased after the Musin Jeongbeon, and the tendency to avoid dying at the temple remained prevalent among bureaucrats' families long after the Jeongbeon. Furthermore, as Confucian ideologies were emphasized and their funeral rituals grew, the idea that death should not be met at the temple seems to have been rationalized and strengthened. Therefore, although bureaucrat family members were devoted Buddhists, it became generally accepted among them that death should be met in a secular place rather than at the temple. This change seems to have had an influence on Goryeo bureaucrat families' perspective on life and death in the long run.