≪이족창세사≫와 제주도 창세서사시의 비교 연구

Abstract

20 ethnic groups in Southwestern part of China, one of the most significant areas in terms of transmitting founding myths, have handed down their own founding myths. Among them, Yi ethnic group draws more attention since it is densely populated and has transmitted regionally diverse founding myths. This paper aims to find both universal and specific features of Korea's founding myths by comparing Yi's founding myth recorded at Wienyanghyeon, Winnanseong, China and one from Jeju island. Firstly, by examining the structure and content of ≪I-jokchangsesa≫, this paper sets four comparison points with founding myths in Jeju island: beginning of the World, origin of mankind, adjustment of the number of moons and suns, and origin of culture. By doing this, Jeju's one is apparently shorter than one of ≪I-jokchangsesa≫, descriptive mainly about founding procedures but still there are some aspects to be able to compare in general. ‘beginning of the World’: by contrasting several points (1) to create the World from chaos, 2) to separate the heaven and earth, 3) to adjust the number of moons and suns, although we cannot clearly find feasible points to match up, a kind of general comparison between other founding myth of Yi tribe and mainland Korea's ones generates clear points. In ‘origin of mankind’, while Yi's ≪I-jokchangsesa≫shows highly developed attributes by depicting procedural evolvement, Korea's myths show that mainland myths called <Changsega> better reflect the evolutionary aspects rather than ones from the island do. 'Flood inundation' which does not appear in Jeju's myths, functions as one of attributes of founding myths since tales on chastising bad people in <Cheonjuwangbonpuri> defeated the bad people and arrange the New World. In addition, ‘origin of culture’ can be linked with the <fifteen saints> scene of Jeju founding myths which is epic description of divine existences. Meanwhile, some excluded attributes of the Jeju founding myths(e.g. separation between the heavenly father and mother earth, seeking a father, competition to occupy the human world), reflect perspectives of human-being which observe the realm of the divine, while ≪I-jokchangsesa≫ one do reverse way of observing. In other words, when it comes to the World view in the two kinds of founding myth, we can see distinctive aspects of understanding.