新羅玉笛 考證

A historical research on the Jade Flute of Silla Dynasty

This essay is to demonstrate historically some facts relating to ‘the jade flute(玉笛)’ of ‘Silla(新羅)’ in many old Korean poems. ‘Manpasikjeok(萬波息笛)’ and ‘jade flute’ which were made in Silla Dynasty are sometimes regarded as the same thing, but we can check two things are different from each other looking through old documents. The original ‘jade flute’ were made in jade imitating the shape of natural bamboo. It was 57.58cm long. It must have been brought from ‘Gaya(伽倻)’. It can be conjectured that it had six finger hole and a mouth hole. It was damaged by fire in 1552. The theory that Japanese damaged it in Japanese Invasion of Korea in 1592 can be misunderstood. It was restored with iron almost perfectly after Japanese Invasion of Korea. There has been mysterious legend that only a man can play the jade flute and only after the old player die, the new jade flute player can show up. The legend may be made by the structure of the jade flute which the only proficient mater from his childhood can play. There is a strange story that the jade flute doesn t make any sound when it passes ‘Jo-Ryeong(鳥嶺)’. How -ever it was manipulated by some special reason.