古記 소재 불교설화의 성격과 의미

Abstract

Although 'Gogi' is one of the best literature that describes ancient history, it's highly controversial what it really is. It's not reasonable to regard it just as a common noun that denotes an ancient record. The recent prevailing view is that it should be viewed as a single book that was written by a particular person. Unlike traditional historical books, this is a historical book that is based on tales, especially stories of national foundation of various countries since Kojoson and a variety of Buddhist tales. There have been diverse discussions on the myths of national foundation that is based on Gogi, but that's not the case for Buddhist tales that are based on it. The purpose of this study was to examine the scope, content-related characteristics and formation of Buddhist tales based on Gogi and their influence on posterity. It's found in this study that 19 kinds of literature contained 29 Buddhist tales that were based on Gogi. The content of these tales was diverse. Some described the introduction of Buddhism or the history of the construction of Buddhist temples, and others described mysterious religious experiences. Ideologically, the tales suggest that this land had long been Buddha land or Jeonsebuljicheo that meant land where Buddha stayed in the past. Thus, the tales represented the pride of our country as one of Buddhist countries. When the Buddhist tales that were based on Gogi are taken into account, it could be said that tales based on Buddhist scriptures were created earlier than any other kind of native tales since the introduction of Buddhism, and one of the characteristics of the Buddhist tales is that they were Shilla-oriented. The findings on the characteristics of the Buddhist tales with the subject matter of Gogi in terms of content and form lends credibility to the view of scholars of the past that Gogi would be a book written by an anonymous Buddhist priest in early Koryeo dynasty. The Buddhist stories that were based on Gogi are of significance not only as Buddhist tales but in other regards. They show the circumstances of early Koryeo dynasty related to the history of narrative literature, and they are further expected to give a core clue on the early history of narrative literature about which it's not easy to grasp due to shortage of materials.