Early Chosŏn eulogies

要旨

According to the Confucian canon, rites and music are the two indispensable means by which a virtuous ruler administers his state. Rites teach the people a patterned sense of community, of order and degree, while music cultivates their moral virtue and regulates their feelings. Rulers of Korean kingdoms, as in China, emphasized both rites and music, mainly for their didactic function. It is no wonder, then, that the Chosŏn dynasty, which rejected Buddhism and Daoism as subversive of public morality and adopted Confucianism as its official political philosophy, should reexamine the ritual and official music of the previous kingdom. New texts, called akchang , were composed for music that was already in use in the ancestral temple and court ceremonies. The aims of composing akchang were twofold: to justify the revolution and emphasize the legitimacy of the new dynasty; and to praise the virtues and merits of its founder. As might be expected, the authors were all meritorious subjects who had assisted in the revolution and framed and executed the policy of the new government. Their eulogies remained a literature of the privileged class, and most of the forms they used for their composition disappeared soon after the end of the fifteenth century. The first compositions of this kind, the “Mong kŭmch'ŏk” (“Dream of the Golden Ruler”) and “Su porok” (“Upon Receiving the Precious Prophecy”), were presented to the throne by Chŏng Tojŏn (d. 1398) on 2 September 1393.

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