So far we have been concentrating on the lyrical aspects of hyangga. However, hyangga were also used as a component of religious services and as incantations. We shall now view some of the incantatory aspects of hyangga in connection with their affinities with earlier forms of incantation.
1) Tosol-ga (Song of the Fourth Heaven)
The oldest example of the shamanistic ritual song we have is the brief incantation called the Guiji-ga (Tortoise Song) which is ascribed to the first cenury A.D.:
Tortoise, tortoise, show your head.
If not we shall roast and eat you.
The hyangga closest in form to this song is the Tosol-ga of the priest Weolmyeong, about which the following is written in the Samgukyusa:
“On the first day of April in the 19th year of the reign of King Gyeong Deok, (760 A.D.) two suns appeared in the sky and did not disappear until ten days later. The king summoned priests to his presence and asked them how the omened calamity might be avoided. The priests told Gyeong Deok that if a predestined priest were to recite the prayer sanhwa kongdeok (Gaining virtue by scattering flowers) then it could be avoided. Therefore the king ordered an altar to be erected at the Choweonjeon and himself proceeded to the Cheongyang-nu (Spring pavilion) to wait for the promised priest. Just then, the priest Weolmyeong was passing the palace on the southern road. The king ordered him into his presence and bade him to consecrate the altar and offer a prayer before it. Weolmyeong told the king that because he was a gukseon devotee he was not versed in Sanskrit and could only offer a hyangga by way of a prayer. The king replied that since Weolmyeong was the designated one this did not matter so Weolmyeong offered up the Tosol-ga:
Today I will sing the Sanhwa-ga,
You the scattered flowers, to whom I sing,
All with pure heart carry out his commands
And faithfully attend the Maitreya.
The Tosol-ga was clearly a ceremonial incantation; Kim Dong-uk’s exhaustive research strongly suggests that it is a genuine Buddhist song, but while its content is Buddhistic it is in the form of a shamanistic incantation of a sort that lies in a direct line down from the Guiji-ga. The invocation in lines 1 and 2 of the song is to the flowers themselves, which are imbued with a magical property—they are intermediaries. This invocation is then followed in the last two lines by a change to the imperative mood, representing a resolution to the invocation.
This incantatory mood is strengthened by the absence of musical or rhythmic properties from the song, giving it the character of an exigent demand upon the incantatory object. It is not just analogous to exorcist-type songs but in its form preserves an older stratum of magic incantation that could lend itself to Maitreya-worship, and indeed had a complex range of associations.
Of course, when we say that the Tosol-ga was in the line of descent from the Guiji-ga, it is with the qualification that the Tosol-ga is not ostensibly objective as the Guiji-ga is. What we mean by “objective” is that the song arises in a transcendental, universal domain and the identity of its creator is not thought worthy of preservation. By contrast, a “subjective” form is where the song has its origin in the being of its creator and is transmitted in his name. Tosol-ga is of the latter type.
Compared with other hyangga that are identified in the Samgukyusa with Buddhist devotion—Praying to the Gwaneum of 1,000 Hands and Song to a Dead Sister—a form of devotion that represents a fusion of hwarang (ostensible shamanist) and Buddhist elements is more strongly present in the Tosol-ga. The other two are very much ruled by their Buddhist elements and the note of exigency is absent. Instead, a strong feeling of reverence pervades them and becomes fused with lyrical expression. The Tosol-ga, on the other hand, arose from a specific, temporal desire to banish the omen whereas the other two are simple depictions of an emotional state. Such differences amount to a fundamental cleavage within the category of hyangga.
2) Cheo-yong-ga (Song of Cheo-yong)
Some people maintain that there is no evidence to support the claims made for the Cheoyong-ga as a mudang song. Not only is there no imperative mode but neither is there present the subjective element that one associates with mudang songs. Certainly, the song is no more than a simple narrative of an incident and this has led some to maintain that it is only through its later associations with the exorcistic Cheoyong - dance and the Koryeo Period Song of Cheoyong that it came to acquire its mudang affiliation.
This notwithstanding, the story Cheo-yong as related in the Samgukyusa is clearly a kind of spirit legend. It is the story of a master of magic (Cheo-yong) who possessed the power to drive out the demon of sickness with his song and its accompanying dance, and as a result of this manifest power he became an exorcistic totem whose image was placed on the front doors of houses to prevent the demon from entering. He was a healer but in a much wider sense he is presented as a master of magic power, a power explained by his paternity, for he was the son of a dragon.
With its accompanying dance, Cheo-yong’s song is represented as the direct means by which the spirit of sickness is banished and it is in this context that we need to examine it closely. The accompanying story goes together with the song and its purpose is to show how effective the incantation against the spirit was. Its efficacy naturally increases interest in how it arose and what the authority of the successful practitioner was. Thus we have a narrative re-enactment of how a widely-practised spell came into being with the song itself as the centre-piece. Thus the song is clearly an incantation. The problem for scholars in this was that the accompanying story did not seem to imply that there was an incantation involved and so they overlooked this aspect. There are, in fact, three ways in which this aspect emerges.
The first aspect lies in the fact that the narrative identifies the origin of the disease in question, smallpox, with anger of the demon of sickness. The legs that Cheo-yong sees on his return are not literal legs but stand for the disease itself. Cheo-yong identifies the disease and the strong suggestion is that he sought counteraction by incantation, thus strongly suggesting the practice of magic.
The second aspect is that in his observation of the legs he is observing not just the cause of the disease but its actual transmission. He thus directs attention to the carrier as the focus of his incantation.
The third aspect is the way in which the situation described—his wife possessed by sickness—is the reverse of the situation he seeks to bring about. This type of popular magic is not very common but there is the example of rain ceremonies during which people light fires on top of hills and call upon the rain to quench it. The fire is a symbol of the earth and all their possessions on it being consumed by the drought. Another practice during rain ceremonies that illustrates this type of “reverse psychology” is the practice during extended droughts of having women relieve themselves in the hills where the local earth spirit was believed to reside. This defiling of sacred ground was done to induce the spirit to send rain to purify it once more. Thus, in a similar vein, Cheoyong invokes the spectre of smallpox as a means of banishing it.
The above three aspects of the Cheoyong-ga all suggest its incantatory nature. It is not exhortatory but its ulterior design is the same as the exhortatory incantations — the banishment of an evil spirit. The figure of Cheoyong thus emerges as a folk-hero overcoming a common foe through the power of his magic.
3) Seodong-yo (Mattung, the Potato Boy)
The relevant passage from the Samgukyusa reads as follows:
“Hearing of the unparalleled beauty of Seon-hwa, third daughter of King Jin Pyeong of Silla (579-632), Mattung shaved his head and came to the Silla capital with a sack of potatoes. He befriended children in the streets by giving them the potatoes and sang them a song which they in turn sang in the streets.
The Princess Seon-hwa Stole away and married.
She embraced her lord Mattung
And stole away into the night.
The song became well-known and people came to know his name and believe that the song was true.”
This song was a device of Mattung. It was the central part of a plan to win the princess as his bride and its content is an extremely simple, unembroidered depiction of a single action—Seon-hwa’s elopement. It represents what Mattung hoped would happen and is incantatory in its prefiguration as well as in the extreme concentration of will on achieving the desired effect. Its words represent a magnification of personal desire, an entwining of personal desire with reality until the latter becomes the former. Such incantations take us back to the very dawn of poetry.
The Guiji-ga uses the metaphor of a tortoise in its summoning forth of a tribal deity but the Seodong-yo is a direct incantation. Both seek transformations—the Guiji-ga seeks the presence of their deity, the Seodong-yo seeks the transformation of Seon-hwa the princess to Seon-hwa the wife.
As the accompanying story tells it, people believed that the story was true and it came true. In such a way did the incantation prove its own efficacy.
Translated by
Adrian F.Buzo