It is encouraging to see that primary historical sources have been considered once again to be of utmost significance for the study of ancient history of Korea in recent years. Among the ancient historical documents, the most often and widely utilized...
It is encouraging to see that primary historical sources have been considered once again to be of utmost significance for the study of ancient history of Korea in recent years. Among the ancient historical documents, the most often and widely utilized case in the study of ancient history of Korea is the so-called "Shilla Village Documents". This paper aims to review previous studies of these important documents and to discuss the current disputed issues in their research.
Full-scale study of the Shilla Village Documents did not begin in earnest until the 1950s. and it was in the 1990s that we were able to witness the development of serious scholarly discussion of these documents. However, the differences in the interpretation of these documents appear to have widened, rather than narrowed, with an increasing number of studies. This situation suggests that it is an urgent necessity for the concerned scholars to reflect upon their methodologies and to try hard to search for new approaches.
Some of the most disputed issues in the research of the Shilla Village Documents can be summarized as follows: (1) the proper appellation of the documents, (2) the deciphering of some of the disputed characters, (3) the dating of the documents, (4) the nature of the documents, (5) the consisting elements of gongyeon 孔烟, (6) the organization criteria of the nine-tiered household system, (7) the function of gyeyeon 計烟, (8) the meaning of the land records, (9) other issues such as the exact location of the village, the relation between the commandery-county system and the Village Documents, the interpretation of the records of horses and cattle, and so on.
In this paper, three suggestions are made in order to find a way to construct new methodologies for the study of these documents. First, for most of the studies which are conducted from the comparative historical perspectives, it is necessary to explain explicitly how and why such a comparative research is conducted and what is being compared. In this process, it is essential to carry out a more substantial discussion of the internal conditions of the Shilla Kingdom. Second, it is necessary to review the methodologies of economic historical researches, which are carried out with very few reference to the related studies of other research areas. It is essential to understand the economic factors in relation to the period in question, the society itself, and the diverse human populations at the time. Third, as seen in the interpretation of disputed characters of the documents and the confusion of various terminologies, it is urgent to draw a consensus on the most basic and important facts of the documents.