韓國의 金石과 書藝

The Epigraph and Caligraphic Art of Korea

Brilliant heritages of the ancient culture of Korea are found in many areas, but foremost among them is the art of caligraphy. With the flow of serveral thousand years, almost all of its real relics have disappeared, and remaining to the present day are quite many epigraphs on monuments, tombstones, bells, and so on. Accordingly, this study attempts to look into the history of caligraphic art on the basis of the epigraphs. Along with the relics of Chinese origin, there are a small number of epigraphs belonging to the era of the Three Kingdoms, the writing style of which corresponds to that of Li’shu(隷書) (the square plain style of Chinese writing) of the Han(漢) Dynasty and Lu-Chao(六朝) (the Six Dynasties) in China. Some of the many relics of the period of Silla’s(新羅) unification of the Three Kingdoms have styles of writing imitated from those of the great caligraphers in the early period of the T’ang Dynasty of China, while others have original styles such as the style created by Kim Seng(金生), the renowned caligrapher. The styles of writing in the early period of the Koryŏ (高麗) era are predominantly like those of T’ang but are more embellished than those of Silla. In the middle period of the era, Tan’yŏn(坦然) the Buddhist monk, developed a style of his own, which is a mixture of Wang Hsi-chih’s(王羲之) style and Hsieh-ching-t’i(寫經體) (the unique style used after Lu-chao and Tang in copying sutras), thus innovating the art of caligraphy in Koryŏ. Unlike Silla, which imitated T’ang’s styles of writing, Koryo was not influenced by Sung(宋) of China, because the level of Koryo’s caligraphic art was higher than that attained by the Sung Dynasty caligraphers. Only in the late period of Koryŏ, the influence of Chao Mung-fu(趙孟頫) of the Yüan(元) Dynasty of China was felt, inevitably for political reasons.