고려시대 전염병과 치병의례

Abstract

Natural disasters such as droughts, floods, and epidemics beyond contemporaries' control caused enormous damage at that time. As the result, according to taking place many social problems, the authorities had to look for how to solve politically the problems. Especially, in a case of a mysterious epidemic, supposing the number of victims associated with it was occurred in succession, there would be very a high possibility of getting into a panic state with the fear of epidemic. Therefore, in case that an epidemic broke out in a town of the country of the day, the government authorities, first of all, would need to cure the infected people, and the next, do something special to stabilize the mind of people. For this, it was an Event faking countermeasure that was presented by government authorities; it was the diverse Rites for curing a disease such as Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shamanism, Taoism. This paper was examined the Rites connected with Shamanism and Taoism. The former was to get assistance from entity(shaman) capable of exorcising malignant sprits(冤魂) and specters(厲鬼) regarded as a source of disaster, the latter was Taoists' shamanistic remedies for agelessness or to perform religious services to Taoist gods. Through these rites, if the epidemic vanished, it would be better, but even if not, it was that government showed them trying its best to take away a disaster. After all, the government's conduct like this was the way to keep political mechanism established by him sharing the suffering with the people. That Shamanism and Taoism, regarded as only superstition or mysticism, could be accepted wisely from a royal household to common people for curing a disease in those days was the why human's basis needs would like to seek the way as many as possible in case of emergency to gather all social capabilities and interests. Hence, the remedy systems related to Shamanism and Taoism was kept long lasting in the surroundings where Service of curative care couldn't cure everything and be universalized to everyone.