中原高句麗碑의 建立 年代

The Year of Jungwon Koguryo Monument Built

The view that the period when ‘Koryo’, the name of a country, was used for Koguryo is from 423 to 435 and the concrete chance of using that name is King Jangsoo’s transferring the capital to Pyeongyang in 427 is accepted in this article. According to this view, the date of Jungwon Koguryo Monument should be after reign of King Jangsoo. In this situation, according to the fact that ‘Great King of Koryo’ and ‘Grandfather King’ are not written as a posthumous epithet, they both lived in the period of a same king. The date of events which are recorded in the epitaph and the date of erecting the monument should be during the reign of one king after all. This can also be confirmed by the fact that the royal order of ‘Great King of Koryo’ are described as ‘Gyo’ while those of ‘Grandfather King’ are described as ‘Ryeong’. The person who has the right to the throne is recorded as the ‘Prince Imperial’ in Jungwon Koguryo Monument while it is recorded as the ‘Crown Prince’ in King Guanggaeto Monument. By this we can see ‘Prince Imperial’ in Jungwon Koguryo Monument had been used after King Jangsoo in Koguryo. So the actual date of ‘23rd December Gapin’ also should be 449 or 480 as existing discussion. The view that presuming the date of ‘23rd December Gapin’ as 480, however, highlighted the fact that ‘Shinyu Year’, the sexagenary cycle, is written on the left side of the epitaph. Nowadays, nevertheless, most researchers agree that ‘Shinyu Year’ cannot be deciphered in the epitaph. Accordingly, the events described on Jungwon Koguryo Monument seem to happened in 449(King Jangsoo 37) Such conclusion can be proved when it is considered with the tradition of chronological era used in Koguryo. That is, King Jangsoo used Yeonsoo(the first year : 451), Yeonga(the first year : 473), Yeonggang(the first year : 483) continuously since his mid-reign. On the contrary, no chronological era was used for Hou bronze vessel from the Great Tomb of Hou which is made in King Jangsoo’s early-reign(King Jangsoo 3 : 415). It seems no chronological era was used for Jungwon Koguryo Monument, too. Jungwon Koguryo Monument, therefore, is estimated to be founded before 451, King Jangsoo’s mid-reign. Under this conclusion, it seems the Beginning of Jungwon Koguryo Monument is not far from ‘23rd December Gapin’ in 449. In this case, what attract our attention with no doubt is the article of King Nulji 34 in 『Samguksagi』. Commender of fortress in Hasella murdered Koguryo’s frontier commender in chief in July 450, and Jungwon Koguryo Monument appear to be erected during solving the murder. Koguryo seems to need to stress its superior status over Silla by registering the meeting with the king of Silla as epigraph at that time. This concluded to the Beginning of Jungwon Koguryo Monument.