漢代의 死後世界觀 (Ideas of the Afterlife in the Han period)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 중국고중세사학회
· 수록지 정보 : 중국고중세사연구 / 38호 / 119 ~ 176페이지
· 저자명 : 이성구

초록

First of all, this study purposes to identify some contradictory or problematic concepts in the Han period views of the afterlife by reviewing history of researches on related subject. Secondly, I affirmed evidences of such contradictory and extemporaneous ideas on the afterlife by analyzing the funerary texts. And finally, I tried to identify the attempts to reconciliate these contradictory ideas concerning the afterlife by resorting to the religious authority in Taipingjing. The following is the summary of the study.
The controversy on Chinese view of human soul started from hun and po souls dualism described by Yu Yingshi(余英時) came to be concluded that the boundaries between hun and po soul became blurred or these two were reunited in tombs in the Han dynasty. Still, there wasn‘t any definite answer why the Paradise of the Immortals were displayed in the tombs of the Han period. Such controversial and dualistic ideas of the afterlife of Han people can also be found in various cases. For example, the funeral texts with the inventory lists were excavated along with pictorials of the ascension to the paradise of the immortals. Furthermore, such phrase as “ascends to Blue Heaven, descends to Yellow Spring” in the ‘Maidiquan(買地券),’ the land-purchase contract or ‘Xuning jian(序寧簡)’ can also be presented as another evidences.
As shown above, in the Han period it seems that people in general believed the souls of the dead head for Yellow Spring in the afterlife journey. Nevertheless, Paradise also appeared constantly as the destination of the dead and sometimes, even Yellow Spring and Paradise were altogether described as the common destination. One possible answer for this dualistic attitude may be that the fear about Yellow Spring combined with the prayer for a happiness of the dead in other world resulted in highlighting bright Paradise as the realms beyond death. No decorative ceremonial items describing Yellow Spring has been excavated from the Han tombs up to now is another powerful evidence to prove Han people‘s propensity to evade Yellow Spring.
The luxurious burial to decorate the tombs exquisitely had become widespread in the Han period. But more fundamental reason for this is the tradition to identify the spirit of the dead with the demon. This tendency became prevalent from the Warring States Period. This attitude to equate the spirit of ancestor with the evil one, interrelated with the decline of the worship of ancestral god, gave rise to the tradition of luxurious burial. People believed that by luxurious burial, they could imprison the spirit of ancestors in tombs and protect future generations from harms it might afflict. Ultimately, the practices of descendants to decorate tombs elaborately to be shown like splendid Paradise or happy mansion were to protect themselves from disasters such as the spread of diseases which might occur with the reincarnation of the dead in this world rather than simply to cherish happiness for the dead.
With the absence of one unitary religious authority based on systematic doctrine, a number of shamanistic thinkings and customs led to the demonization of the spirits of the dead and the subsequent tradition of luxurious burying practice to cope with it. As a result, the inside of the tomb began to take on a more chaotic aspect with a mixture of plural views of afterlife, fictive respects toward the dead and the ghosts subordinated to the dead, etc. Similar aspects are clearly identified in funeral texts, too.
In the early years of the Han period, ‘Gaodishu(告地書),’ documents addressed to the underworld authorities, arrogated a rank to itself and by doing so, asserted in many cases as if it had had legal privilege of exemption from taxation and corvee. ‘Gaodishu’ observed the forms of official documents while the contents of which was nothing more than a fiction. It could be inferred from these contexts that Han people shared implicit awareness that they regarded the underworld as a separate area irrelevant to this world. Furthermore, this kind of subconscious awareness might be a prerequisite for sending such documents to the underground world. Certainly, on one hand, the purpose to prepare these documents was to pray for the repose of the dead as well as to imprison the threatening ones in the underworld never to return to this world by resorting to the power of official documents. On the other hand, they were not afraid of retaliation of heavenly gods nor of the spirits of the underworld enough to make such fictive documents. So it was another powerful evidence for us to confirm that there was no unitary religious authority at that time.
Compared to ‘Gaodishu’ that reflected a simple view of afterlife, the appearance of the Messenger of Heavenly Emperor(天帝使者) in ‘Zhenmuwen(鎭墓文),’ the tomb-quelling texts in the later Han dynasty was an epoch-making event. The Messenger of Heavenly Emperor gave the command to the underworld god and the officials as the agent of Heavenly Emperor. This means that the underworld, that existed as a separate region irrelevant to the Heavenly one in ‘Gaodishu’ came to be subjected to the Heavenly Emperor at the time when ‘Zhenmuwen’ were written. By making suppression of the spirit of the dead a matter of the highest priority, ‘Zhenmuwen’ tried to solve the problem of threatening of the spirit of the dead that had worried Han people. Another characteristic of ‘Zhenmuwen’ was the idea of the punitive service in it. As described in it, the lead-man suffered the punitive service on behalf of the dead. This newly developed sense of sin is required to note in terms of the sense of the inheritance of sins in Taipingjing. As already explained, ‘Zhenmuwen’ clearly shows the change in views of afterlife accompanying the development of primitive Taoism.
As for the theory of the inheritance of sins, one of the core ideas in Taipingjing, there has been two conflicting claims; one is that it was a transformation of the Buddhist idea of retributive justice in China. The other is that it was an inheritance of the ancestral and familial consciousness existed prior to the introduction of Buddhism. Anyway, regardless of influence of Buddhism, ‘chengfu’(承負), the inheritance of sins, solved troublesome matters concerning the afterlife that had afflicted people in the Han period for a long time in a drive. The possibilities that their status and ranks in this world might or might not be changed in the afterlife engendered in their mind anxieties as well as anticipations and consequently encouraged them to indulge in luxurious burial practices or fabricating fake identities. Including ‘chengfu’, as Taipingjing emphasized causality that afterlife is the inevitable consequence of this life, such anxieties ceased to influence people. Such a shift in attitude concerning afterlife is worth noting since the theory of the inheritance of sins or the idea of causality described in Taipingjing can be understood as a result of reflection and its consequential attempt to find a new perspective in the Han period. Also, the opposition against luxurious burial practices in Taipingjing should be understood basically as an extension of such attempt.
Though there has been a controversy about whether ‘difu(地府)’, the underground authorities or Yellow Spring meant Netherland, ‘difu’ was proposed as the solution to the traditional controversial views on afterlife. This is certain if we review changes in ideas about afterlife in the Han dynasty. Firstly, the belief that the spirit of the dead that committed sins in this life are subjected to trials with gruesome tortures in the court of underground authorities reflected a dramatic change of view. Since gods of the underworld always acted as protectors for the dead in the excavated records of the Han dynasty as well as in funeral texts. Secondly, Taipingjing examined the spiritual accounts - the good deeds and the bad ones - of the dead in this life based on documents which Heavenly Departments collected and sentenced happiness or misery accordingly. In this way, it tried to relieve anxieties about the afterlife of the Han people and to find answers to their fictive or extemporaneous attitude toward afterlife.

영어초록

First of all, this study purposes to identify some contradictory or problematic concepts in the Han period views of the afterlife by reviewing history of researches on related subject. Secondly, I affirmed evidences of such contradictory and extemporaneous ideas on the afterlife by analyzing the funerary texts. And finally, I tried to identify the attempts to reconciliate these contradictory ideas concerning the afterlife by resorting to the religious authority in Taipingjing. The following is the summary of the study.
The controversy on Chinese view of human soul started from hun and po souls dualism described by Yu Yingshi(余英時) came to be concluded that the boundaries between hun and po soul became blurred or these two were reunited in tombs in the Han dynasty. Still, there wasn‘t any definite answer why the Paradise of the Immortals were displayed in the tombs of the Han period. Such controversial and dualistic ideas of the afterlife of Han people can also be found in various cases. For example, the funeral texts with the inventory lists were excavated along with pictorials of the ascension to the paradise of the immortals. Furthermore, such phrase as “ascends to Blue Heaven, descends to Yellow Spring” in the ‘Maidiquan(買地券),’ the land-purchase contract or ‘Xuning jian(序寧簡)’ can also be presented as another evidences.
As shown above, in the Han period it seems that people in general believed the souls of the dead head for Yellow Spring in the afterlife journey. Nevertheless, Paradise also appeared constantly as the destination of the dead and sometimes, even Yellow Spring and Paradise were altogether described as the common destination. One possible answer for this dualistic attitude may be that the fear about Yellow Spring combined with the prayer for a happiness of the dead in other world resulted in highlighting bright Paradise as the realms beyond death. No decorative ceremonial items describing Yellow Spring has been excavated from the Han tombs up to now is another powerful evidence to prove Han people‘s propensity to evade Yellow Spring.
The luxurious burial to decorate the tombs exquisitely had become widespread in the Han period. But more fundamental reason for this is the tradition to identify the spirit of the dead with the demon. This tendency became prevalent from the Warring States Period. This attitude to equate the spirit of ancestor with the evil one, interrelated with the decline of the worship of ancestral god, gave rise to the tradition of luxurious burial. People believed that by luxurious burial, they could imprison the spirit of ancestors in tombs and protect future generations from harms it might afflict. Ultimately, the practices of descendants to decorate tombs elaborately to be shown like splendid Paradise or happy mansion were to protect themselves from disasters such as the spread of diseases which might occur with the reincarnation of the dead in this world rather than simply to cherish happiness for the dead.
With the absence of one unitary religious authority based on systematic doctrine, a number of shamanistic thinkings and customs led to the demonization of the spirits of the dead and the subsequent tradition of luxurious burying practice to cope with it. As a result, the inside of the tomb began to take on a more chaotic aspect with a mixture of plural views of afterlife, fictive respects toward the dead and the ghosts subordinated to the dead, etc. Similar aspects are clearly identified in funeral texts, too.
In the early years of the Han period, ‘Gaodishu(告地書),’ documents addressed to the underworld authorities, arrogated a rank to itself and by doing so, asserted in many cases as if it had had legal privilege of exemption from taxation and corvee. ‘Gaodishu’ observed the forms of official documents while the contents of which was nothing more than a fiction. It could be inferred from these contexts that Han people shared implicit awareness that they regarded the underworld as a separate area irrelevant to this world. Furthermore, this kind of subconscious awareness might be a prerequisite for sending such documents to the underground world. Certainly, on one hand, the purpose to prepare these documents was to pray for the repose of the dead as well as to imprison the threatening ones in the underworld never to return to this world by resorting to the power of official documents. On the other hand, they were not afraid of retaliation of heavenly gods nor of the spirits of the underworld enough to make such fictive documents. So it was another powerful evidence for us to confirm that there was no unitary religious authority at that time.
Compared to ‘Gaodishu’ that reflected a simple view of afterlife, the appearance of the Messenger of Heavenly Emperor(天帝使者) in ‘Zhenmuwen(鎭墓文),’ the tomb-quelling texts in the later Han dynasty was an epoch-making event. The Messenger of Heavenly Emperor gave the command to the underworld god and the officials as the agent of Heavenly Emperor. This means that the underworld, that existed as a separate region irrelevant to the Heavenly one in ‘Gaodishu’ came to be subjected to the Heavenly Emperor at the time when ‘Zhenmuwen’ were written. By making suppression of the spirit of the dead a matter of the highest priority, ‘Zhenmuwen’ tried to solve the problem of threatening of the spirit of the dead that had worried Han people. Another characteristic of ‘Zhenmuwen’ was the idea of the punitive service in it. As described in it, the lead-man suffered the punitive service on behalf of the dead. This newly developed sense of sin is required to note in terms of the sense of the inheritance of sins in Taipingjing. As already explained, ‘Zhenmuwen’ clearly shows the change in views of afterlife accompanying the development of primitive Taoism.
As for the theory of the inheritance of sins, one of the core ideas in Taipingjing, there has been two conflicting claims; one is that it was a transformation of the Buddhist idea of retributive justice in China. The other is that it was an inheritance of the ancestral and familial consciousness existed prior to the introduction of Buddhism. Anyway, regardless of influence of Buddhism, ‘chengfu’(承負), the inheritance of sins, solved troublesome matters concerning the afterlife that had afflicted people in the Han period for a long time in a drive. The possibilities that their status and ranks in this world might or might not be changed in the afterlife engendered in their mind anxieties as well as anticipations and consequently encouraged them to indulge in luxurious burial practices or fabricating fake identities. Including ‘chengfu’, as Taipingjing emphasized causality that afterlife is the inevitable consequence of this life, such anxieties ceased to influence people. Such a shift in attitude concerning afterlife is worth noting since the theory of the inheritance of sins or the idea of causality described in Taipingjing can be understood as a result of reflection and its consequential attempt to find a new perspective in the Han period. Also, the opposition against luxurious burial practices in Taipingjing should be understood basically as an extension of such attempt.
Though there has been a controversy about whether ‘difu(地府)’, the underground authorities or Yellow Spring meant Netherland, ‘difu’ was proposed as the solution to the traditional controversial views on afterlife. This is certain if we review changes in ideas about afterlife in the Han dynasty. Firstly, the belief that the spirit of the dead that committed sins in this life are subjected to trials with gruesome tortures in the court of underground authorities reflected a dramatic change of view. Since gods of the underworld always acted as protectors for the dead in the excavated records of the Han dynasty as well as in funeral texts. Secondly, Taipingjing examined the spiritual accounts - the good deeds and the bad ones - of the dead in this life based on documents which Heavenly Departments collected and sentenced happiness or misery accordingly. In this way, it tried to relieve anxieties about the afterlife of the Han people and to find answers to their fictive or extemporaneous attitude toward afterlife.

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