Etymology, History, and Mythology in the Work of Christopher Beckwith
Thesis
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the
Graduate School of The Ohio State University
By
Frederick Charles Bowman
Graduate Program in East Asian Langauges and Literatures
The Ohio State University
2011
Thesis Committee:
J. Marshall Unger, Advisor
Charles J. Quinn, Jr.
Copyright 2011
By
Frederick Charles Bowman
Abstract
This thesis concerns the work of Christopher Beckwith, particularly Koguryo: The
Language of Japan’s Continental Relatives and Empires of the Silk Road: A History of
Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present. Its argument is that in these two
books Beckwith’s principal goal is to present what he refers to as the Central Eurasian
Cultural Complex and to provide it with as many members as possible. To this end, it is
argued, he makes use of onomastic material relating to the ancient Korean kingdom
Koguryŏ from the Samguk sagi, Japanese etymology, and North Iranian ethnic names to
create an etymological underpinning between Japan and Koguryŏ, Koguryŏ and the
Scythians, and hence of both with the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex.
Ultimately, it is asserted, Beckwith’s goal is mythopoeic, having as its end the
creation of a consistent Central Eurasian mythology, which he calls the First Story, and
its opposition to the characteristics of what he calls the Littoral System and its offspring
Modernism, which is in Beckwith’s view responsible for the calamities of the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries. A rejection of modernism and rediscovery of our Central
Eurasian cultural heritage as expressed in the First Story is proposed as a remedy for our
current situation; establishing the broad scope of the First story and the Central Eurasian
Cultural Complex is necessary to make this a compelling case, and this establishment is
the aim that drives Beckwith’s use of Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Indo-European
materials.
ii
Vita
May 2003……………………………………..St. John’s Jesuit High School
2007…………………………………………..H.A.B. Xavier University
2009 to present……………………………….MA Student, Department of East
Asian Languages and Literatures,
The Ohio State University
iii
Table of Contents
Abstract………………………………………………………………………………ii
Vita………………………………………………………………………………….iii
Introduction; Puyŏ and Koguryŏ According to Byington……………………………1
Part 1: Koguryŏ, Japan, and the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex……………….7
Part 2: Making sense of the Koguryŏ Foundation Myth……………………………26
Part 3: What does this all mean?................................................................................31
References…………………………………………………………………………..36
iv
Introduction; Puyŏ and Koguryŏ according to Byington
The subject of this thesis is the Koguryŏ state of Three Kingdoms Korea,
documented in Chinese historical sources from the first century BCE, the Puyŏ state, an
earlier polity in what is now Manchuria that came into contact with the northeastern state
of Yan in the early third century BCE, and how materials related to them, especially the
former, are treated in two books by Christopher Beckwith. These books are Koguryo:
The Language of Japan's Continental Relatives (2004, second edition 2007) and Empires
of the Silk Road (2009). It will be shown that Beckwith, contrary to his statement at the
beginning of Empires of the Silk Road that his aim is "to write a realistic, objective view
of the history of Central Eurasia and Central Eurasians," has made otherwise directed use
of material relating to Koguryŏ in his presentation, the aim of which is to increase the
number of adherents to what he refers to as the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex
(CECC). This is especially apparent in the realm of etymology, in which Beckwith
makes use of an unexplained, seemingly selective Middle Chinese reconstruction referred
to as "Archaic Northeastern Middle Chinese" to justify his readings of certain Chinese
characters used in the Puyŏ and Koguryŏ foundation myths. These readings are made to
resemble words that are taken to have a particular significance within the Central
Eurasian Cultural Complex.
Ultimately, it will be demonstrated that Beckwith's aim is in essence mythopoeic.
Beckwith (2009: xxiii, xxiv) states that his intention is to discredit the received opinion
that Central Eurasian peoples such as the Scythians or the Mongols were and are simply
1
"barbarians," which in itself is of course quite unobjectionable. However, there is a
second aim concomitant to this first. Namely, this is the establishment of the Central
Eurasian Cultural Complex and the opposition of this to the peripheral or Littoral
cultures, particularly those of Western Europe, from which emerges what Beckwith calls
Modernism, which in addition to the devastation of the peoples of Central Eurasia by
colonial powers has given rise to the rejection of all rationality, the degradation of art,
and indeed all the ills of modern life. These two entities are seen as combating forces in
world history, and in marshaling the forces of the CECC against the Littoral powers,
particularities of the history and languages of CECC peoples are frequently overlooked,
though this may on the other hand be due to the very broad perspective that Beckwith
(2009: viii) states is necessary for his project. Though not in keeping with a realistic,
objective history of Central Eurasia and Central Eurasians, Beckwith's opposition of
these two warring forces bears a certain similarity to the myths he records in the Prologue
to Empires of the Silk Road in which, ultimately, "the unjust overlords who suppressed
the righteous people and stole their wealth were finally overthrown, and the men who did
the deed were national heroes" (11).
This thesis consists of three parts. The first part, containing the core of the thesis,
is an assessment of Beckwith's use of etymology and linguistic reconstruction - Japanese,
Chinese, and Indo-European sources are all made use of- in Koguryo and Empires of the
Silk Road. The second part continues the first, shedding some critical light on Beckwith's
presentation by considering Byington's analysis of what the Koguryŏ foundation myth
was meant to do and how the Puyŏ and Koguryŏ foundation myths, which Beckwith
takes as comprising a unity, are in fact distinct. The third part concludes the thesis,
2
considering Beckwith's aims in making the use he does of his data, whether it concerns
Koguryŏ, Japan, or the steppes of Central Eurasia.
Before proceeding to Beckwith's work, however, it may be beneficial to briefly
introduce Puyŏ, Koguryŏ, and Three Kingdoms Korea to readers unfamiliar with the
subject. This is not by any means meant to serve as a comprehensive account, but rather
as a short introductory sketch and orientation. Owing to a relative paucity of English
sources on the subject and to my own deficiency in reading Chinese and Korean, in
which the bulk of the relevant scholarship is written, I am particularly indebted to the
work of Mark Edward Byington, especially his 2003 dissertation A History of the Puyŏ
State, its History, and its Legacy and the two Early Korea volumes issued by the Early
Korea Project at Harvard University with Byington as head editor (Volume 1:
Reconsidering Early Korean History Through Archaeology, 2008; Volume 2: The
Samhan Period in Korean History, 2009).
The history of early Korea is a knotty and sometimes contentious subject. An
initial difficulty is presented by the nature of the surviving source material, which is quite
patchy and has not infrequently been compiled from earlier works centuries after the
events it describes (Byington 2003: 1). Further obviating factors include nationalistic
influences on scholars in China and North Korea; Chinese scholarship may claim Puyŏ as
an ethnically Chinese state as it lay within the borders of present-day Jilin province
(Kang 2008: 23), while North Korean scholars have taken the southernmost settlements
of Koguryŏ near present-day Pyongyang to be temporally anterior to that state's more
northerly holdings. These southern foundations of Koguryo, labeled the Taedong River
Culture, are held to be the cradle not only of Korean but also of human civilization (Kang
3
2008: 24). To facilitate the reader's comprehension of the following pages I have put
together a brief sketch of the prominent states of early Korea, making particular use of
the work of Mark Edward Byington.1
Puyŏ 夫餘 :
This was not a Korean state, but its legacy exerted sufficient
influence over subsequent states on the Korean peninsula to merit its treatment in
conjunction with them. Puyŏ's origins, according to Byington, are to be found in the
Xituanshan archaeological culture of present-day Jilin province, attested from around the
11th century BCE (Byington 2003: 108), whose people came in contact with the northern
Chinese state of Yan in the early 3rd century BCE as a result of Yan's eastward
expansion into Manchuria and the Korean peninsula (98). Signs of this contact include
iron implements of Chinese making and new pottery types (98, 108, 182).
Byington contends that this contact with late Warring-States and, later, Han China
with its superior technology and more stratified social organization initiated a process of
state formation in which the agricultural surplus resultant from newly-introduced iron
implemenst, new modes of social organization, and increased economic prosperity
resultant from trade combined to form the centralized state of Puyŏ from the people or
peoples who made up the Xituanshan culture (182). Of the Puyŏ people themselves,
unfortunately, comparatively little is known: who exactly they were, what language they
spoke, and so on may forever be lost to history. No historical record written by the Puyŏ
people concerning themselves has survived, if ever there were any (9). The only record
1 A satisfactory impression of the historical and archaelogical complexities involved in the study of early
Korea cannot here be given, as beyond the scope of the present work and the present capacities of its
author. Readers interested in a thorough treatment of this complicated subject may consult Barnes 1999
and Gardiner 1969 in addition to Byington 2003, 2008, and 2009.
4
now extant that includes a description of the Puyŏ people and their customs is the Weizhi,
a third-century Chinese history.
From its humble beginnings, the Puyŏ state rose to a position of prominence in
Northeast Asia, entering into an alliance with the Eastern Han dynasty in the first century
BCE (6). Relations between Puyŏ and China continued to be amicable, one king even
being given a jade suit in which to be buried, which in China was only permitted of
nobles and the emperor (6). Puyŏ's existence, however, was something of a precarious
one, and it was dependent on Chinese commanderies established in the Liaodong region
against hostile neighbors, such as the Xianbei and, later, Koguryŏ (7). By the late third
century the Xianbei had wrested control of Liaodong from the Chinese commanderies,
leaving Puyŏ vulnerable.
Two Xianbei attacks, one in 285 and the other in 346,
effectively destroyed the state (7), though its territories were soon after occupied by
Koguryŏ, of which it served as a tributary before being assimilated in 410.
Though little is known of the Puyŏ people themselves, it is clear that they were
quite influential and were considered quite important by later states formed in their
sphere of influence. The Koguryŏ foundation myth, for example, is largely an adaptation
of the Puyŏ foundation myth, and the kings of Koguryo claimed descent from refugees
from Puyŏ. Byington sees this as a way of a new state bolstering its claims to political
legitimacy by claiming antecedents of antiquity and accomplishment, a phenomenon not
without parallel in East Asia (496). This point, that the Koguryŏ foundation myth is
adapted from the Puyo myth to serve Koguryo's own political needs, is of particular
importance. This subject will receive further attention in my treatment of Beckwith's
analysis of the Koguryŏ foundation myth in Part 2.
5
Three Kingdoms Korea: The three kingdoms in question are Koguryŏ, in the north
of the peninsula and into Manchuria, Silla in the southeast, and Paekche in the southwest.
A further polity known as Kaya existed between Paekche and Silla; its identity is
disputed. We are more fortunate in terms of historical records with the Three Kingdoms
than we are with Puyŏ, but not by too wide a margin: there are two prominent histories of
Three Kingdoms Korea, the Samguk sagi 三國史記 (1145), an imperially sanctioned
history, and the Samguk yusa三國遺事, privately compiled in ca. 1285 (Byington 2003:
1).
However, these are "selective compilation(s) of disparate materials that served
various functions in assorted contexts over a very long period of time" (1); furthermore,
though they describe the Three Kingdoms (1st c. BCE-668 CE) and Unified Silla (668935) periods of Korean history, they are both products of the Koryŏ Dynasty (918-1312),
and so their reliability as records of Koguryŏ, Silla, and Paekche may be compromised.
6
Part 1. Koguryŏ, Japan, and the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex
This section will treat Beckwith's use of etymology and will contend that the aim
underlying his method is to enlarge the scope of his Central Eurasian Cultural Complex.
As a convenient point of departure I have chosen two Japanese words, whose alleged
connections with Koguryo words are to be found in Beckwith 2007 Both have been
discussed in Unger 2009.2
a. Old Japanese topo-: topo-ru topo-su, topo-si
These three are transparently root-formant strings: by adding the formants ru
(endoactive) su (exoactive) and si (stative) to the root topo- we get “to close a distance; to
pass by,” “to cause to pass by/through” and “being a distance away; far.” However,
Beckwith (2006, 138) connects topo-ru with Koguryŏan tawŋ, “mountain pass,” with the
affixation of a verbal formant suffix pi to yield tawŋ-pi, which he has as parallel to an
Old Japanese tewŋpi. Leaving aside the other problems this involves, the string tewŋpi
could never yield Modern Japanese tō, which is what occurs in tōru, tōsu, and tōi; topo
could, can, and does. Furthermore, although a pJ velar nasal phoneme has been proposed
(Unger 2008), a distinct OJ ŋ distinct from OJ g is not recognized and a prenazalized p
would be reflected in later b.
2 Additional observations on Beckwith's etymologies have been made in Pellard's 2006 review. Byington
2006 offers a critique of Beckwith's use of historical and archaeological data; interested readers may
find these two to be useful resources.
7
b. Old Japanese kuti, kutuwa
Beckwith proposes a Koguryo *kuәrtsi (2006, 128) as the cognate to Japanese
kuti, mouth, which he takes as a combined form with the the addition of a nominal suffix
tsi (Ibid. 119) from *tu-i. This necessitates the ponderous interpretation of the compound
kutuwa, “horse’s bit,” as involving the reflex of this *kuәrtsi, kutu, in which just a part of
the nominal suffix is to be seen, namely *tu, and then wa, “ring.” However, this is more
simply understood as a case of noun apophony, in which the bound form kutu is in
complementary distribution with the free form kuti. Just as OJ ko-no-pa 'tree leaf' ~ kwi
'tree' and similar pairs show the alternation otsu-type o-ending syllables with otsu-type iending syllables, so too does kutuwa ~ kuti >*kutwi, taking into account that the kō-otsu
distinction ti ≠ twi had collapsed by the 8th century.3
Accordingly, one can see that the etymologies that Beckwith proposes are
problematic, as is clear to anyone familiar with with OJ phonology and the reconstruction
of pre-OJ stages. Why does Beckwith indulge in such obviously incorrect comparisons?
A likely motive is not hard to find.
1b. The Central Eurasian Cultural Complex
Beckwith sees as the primal forces of world history what he terms the Central
Eurasian Cultural Complex on the one hand, and the Littoral System on the other. Of
these, the former, having its origin with Indo-European peoples in Central Asia,
particularly the Scythians, is according to Beckwith the origin of Western culture as well
as the ultimate source, on the other side of the world, for certain aspects of culture seen in
3 Though certain particulars of OJ phonology remain contentious, the situation is not as bleak as
Beckwith 2007 suggests and a stable consensus on the value of the kō-otsu distinctions does exist; see
Lange 1971, Martin 1987, and Unger 1993. Frellesvig 2010: 26-34 provides a useful overview.
8
Koguryŏ and Japan. Beckwith elaborates on the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex and
its enormous extent as follows:
The most crucial element of the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex was the
sociopolitical-religious ideal of the heroic lord and his comitatus, a war band of his
friends sworn to defend him to the death. …The core comitatus consisted of a small band
of warriors, who are called or referred to as friends. … The core group – usually a small
number of men – committed ritual suicide (or was executed) to accompany the lord if he
predeceased the group, and each man was buried “armed to the teeth” for battle in the
next world. (2009 12-13)
The comitatus is attested directly or indirectly in historical sources on the Hittites, the
Achaemenid Persians, the Scythians, the Hsiung-nu, the ancient and early medieval
Germanic peoples, the Sasanid Persians, the Huns, the Hephthalites, the Koguryŏ, the
early dynastic Japanese, the Turks (including at least the Turk, Khazars, and Uighurs),
the Sogdians, the Tibetans, the Slavs, the Khitans, the Mongols, and others. (15-16)
The early Japanese mounted archer warrior, the bushi, like the later samurai, his
institutional descendant, was “merely one variant of the Asian-style mounted archer
predominant in the Middle East and the steppe; similarities among all the fighting men of
these early centuries of Japanese history far outweigh the differences” (Farris 1995: 7)
The close warrior companions of a lord in early Japan also were expected to commit
suicide to be buried with him (called junshi ‘following in death’) and regularly did so.
(105)
Beckwith takes the existence of similar conventions in warfare as evidence a
single prototypical comitatus in Central Eurasia from which all similar systems in all
subsequent civilizations are directly descended. Evidence of any sort of war-band or
bodyguard is, to Beckwith, incontrovertible evidence of such a comitatus, or at least of its
presence somewhere in the remote past, even in cases lacking any mention of ritual
suicide or execution of members of the core comitatus, a significant facet of the
comitatus for Beckwith, is made.
In a footnote (2009: 4, fn. 11), for example, Beckwith claims, “The Celeres, the
mounted bodyguard of Romulus mentioned in Livy (Foster 1988: 56-57), was certainly a
9
comitatus, at least in origin.” The relevant passage in Ab Urbe Condita (I:15) reads
simply,
Multitudini tamen gratior fuit quam patribus, longe ante alios acceptissimus militum
animis: trecentosque armatos ad custodiam corporis, quos Celeres appellavit, non in
bello solum sed etiam in pace habuit.
[Romulus] was more pleasing to the multitude than to the patricians, and best received by
far in the minds of his soldiers. He kept about him three hundred bodyguards, whom he
called Celeres, not only in war, but in peace as well.
Exactly what in this makes it clear that the Celeres were a comitatus according to
Beckwith’s definition, and, even if they were, why such a social structure should be a
direct continuation of the Central Eurasian comitatus, I cannot say. Perhaps this is why
Beckwith qualifies his statement with “at least in origin.”
Is the Praetorian Guard
therefore to be taken as a comitatus? Is the private army of Sulla? But, as will be seen
later, such a casual approach, announcing a connection with the Central Eurasian Cultural
Complex without any supporting evidence, is typical of Beckwith.
In opposition to this Central Eurasian Cultural Complex, he writes, stands the
Littoral System: the mercantile, imperialistic peoples on the Central Eurasian periphery,
who impinge upon Central Eurasia from the age of European expansion in the sixteenth
century,
culminating in the rise of “Modernism” in the eighteenth century with
exponents like Rousseau. Beckwith summarizes the development:
[Modernism] began in the concatenation of economic, demographic political, and
intellectual changes that took place in Europe and the Europe-dominated Littoral System
with the spread of industrialization and urbanization. … In those turbulent concentrations
of humanity, consciousness of the great changes that were happening at an ever faster
pace in science and technology encouraged those who sided with “the moderns” against
“the ancients” in intellectual and artistic life. The leaders of mass urban culture also
favored popularism, an idea developed by Enlightenment thinkers and revolutionaries.
Joined together with other ideas and trends, they developed into the essential driving
force behind the political, social, and cultural changes that so greatly affected the entire
continent: Modernism.
10
The core idea of Modernism is simple, and seems harmless enough by itself: what is
modern – new and fashionable – is better than what it replaces. (…) But Modernism was
not merely a finite sequence in which something new (the industrial and urban) replaced
something old (the aristocratic and rural) and that was that. If only what is new is good, it
is by definition necessary to continue to continually create or do new things. Full-blown
Modernism meant, and still means, permanent revolution: continuous rejection of the
tradition or immediately preceding political, social, artistic, and intellectual order. (2009,
288-89)
This interpretation involves such a conflation of historical periods that untangling
it would take up more room than can here be afforded it. Briefly put, though, Beckwith
takes the rise of Modernism to be the result of the supplanting of aristocratic ideals of
social organization mediated in Europe through a feudalism ultimately derived directly
from the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex and the inherently aristocratic comitatus by
revolutionary modes of thought favoring democracy (Beckwith frequently brackets
democracy with ironic quotation marks; see e.g. 2009: 266, 296). When this order has
been lost, so too are the traditional arts, and Beckwith spends no little time berating T.S.
Eliot (2009: 263, 296), Pablo Picasso (295), Igor Stravinsky (295), and even Frank Zappa
(424) for their rejection of Nature, Reason, and Beauty.
Just as the loss of traditional, aristocratic values associated with, and indeed
directly derived from the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex, is responsible for the ills of
the 20th and 21st centuries, so too is the reclamation of that heritage the key to our
recovery. “Central Eurasia is our homeland,” says Beckwith, “the place where our
civilization started” (2009: 319) Thus Beckwith opposes the Central Eurasian Cultural
Complex on the one hand and Modernism, the offspring of urban, industrialized Littoral
culture on the other. Whatever the reality of these two as real, monolithic cultural entities
may be, Beckwith clearly favors the former, and the task of adding more peoples to its
11
domain appears to motivate his entire etymological apparatus, in both Beckwith 2007 and
Beckwith 2009.
1c. Novus Ordo Seclorum: A new Ordo for the ages
Having reviewed Beckwith’s Central Eurasian Cultural Complex, we may now
return profitably return to his treatment of Koguryŏ; a number of bizarre and unexplained
passages in Beckwith 2007 make a great deal more sense when viewed in its light.
Among these the following is prominent:
It is not possible to imagine that large armies of Japanese went to the Korean Peninsula,
fought significant battles, and returned to Japan – as we know they did – without
adopting as many contemporaneous continental practices as they could. Since the
Koguryŏ kingdom was constantly involved in fighting with both the Chinese to the west
and the Central Eurasian steppe peoples to the northwest, the Koguryŏ armies must have
been ‘state of the art’ in military technology at the time. When the battle-hardened
Japanese warriors and their aristocratic leaders brought this technology – and probably a
certain ‘attitude’ [italics FCB] – back to Japan with them, along with some warriors and
others native to the Korean Peninsula, whichever Japanese kingdom they fought for
would have had an immense advantage over all of the others. (23)
The "certain attitude” to which Beckwith refers is of course the Central Eurasian Cultural
Complex and the comitatus system, of which Beckwith sees Koguryŏ and Japan as the
easternmost outposts.
This preoccupation with enlarging the scope of the Central
Eurasian Cultural Complex, as we will see, informs Beckwith 2007 in quite fundamental
ways, even in its section on the pronunciation of what Beckwith terms Archaic
Northeastern Middle Chinese, which forms the philological basis of Beckwith’s
interpretation of the Koguryŏ place names in the Samguk sagi.
I do not possess the necessary background in Chinese historical phonology to
evaluate Beckwith’s Archaic Northeastern Middle Chinese in detail.
However, the
following observations can be made. Beckwith’s reconstruction of this purported variety
12
of Middle Chinese is surprisingly unsystematic.
For his sources, he cites only the
Samguk sagi material, though viewed, in contrast to the work of other scholars, as
reflecting regional Middle Chinese pronunciation. Yet he does not establish how he
knows what this pronunciation was.
Further, he does not attempt to reconstruct a
phonemic inventory of this dialect, perhaps because he means his treatment to be a
“preliminary attempt to describe some of the phonological features of this language”
(2006: 93) rather than an exhaustive treatment. He instead arranges his data into onset
consonants, syllable nuclei, and syllable codas. Further still, considering, as he notes,
that “the reconstruction of Koguryŏ depends more than anything else on the Chinese
phonetic value of the characters when they were adopted as transcriptions for Koguryŏ
forms” (93), Beckwith devotes comparatively little space in his book to what is to be its
foundation: a mere twelve pages out of 254, excluding prefatory material and indices.
If the foregoing give the impression of an ad hoc arrangement, what follows gives
that impression an emphatic confirmation.
Of the three syllable nuclei included in
Beckwith’s reconstruction, two are of particular importance:
OChi *wa = foreign o = Northern OChi *o > NMC *o
OChi *-u > MChi *-aw ~ NE MChi *-υ
Both of the above are to be found in a single word that is especially important to
Beckwith: Wantu 丸都 , the name of the city founded by Tongmyong 東明 in the Puyŏ
foundation story4 given in the Lun Heng 論衡5. Beckwith gives this toponym the reading
*Ortυ and says of it,
4 Take note that, in Beckwith's analysis, the Puyŏ foundation myth and its later adaptation in Koguryŏ
are one and the same story referring to the same ethnic group; see 2009: 378 and his presentation of a
combined Puyŏ-Koguryŏ story in 2007: 29 and 2009:7.
13
The name is certainly a transcription of the Central Eurasian culture word ordu ~ ordo
‘royal court, camp, capital’, which is well known from later times in other neighboring
languages (see chapters 2 and 3). (96-7)
Turning to chapters two and three, we read:
After their conflict with the Chinese at the time of Wang Mang, the Koguryŏ moved east
into the commanderies of Liao-Tung and Hsuang-t’u. The early Koguryo capital on the
Yalu River was *Ortυ, usually transcribed as Wan-tu (MChi *γwantu, NKor Hwando).
This is clearly the same word as the much later attested, well-known Turkic and
Mongolic word, ordu~ ordo ~ orda, ‘royal capital; camp of a lord and his comitatus.’
(37)
The name is the same as the Central Eurasian culture word ordu ~ ordo ‘capital, royal
court, royal encampment’, well known from medieval times on. (52)
Ordo also appears in Empires of the Silk Road:
One of he crucial elements of the comitatus was that it was the it was the lord’s personal
guard corps. The warriors stayed near him day and night, no further than the door of his
splendid golden hall or yurt, which stood in the center of the ordo, the camp of the ruler’s
comitatus and capital of the realm. (18)
Like some other Central Eurasian peoples in the northeast, the Khitan still practiced the
traditional comitatus, at least during their formative years, and their state was clearly
organized around the “khan and four bey” system, with a particularly interesting variant
in which the Khitan had five capitals, or ordu, one for each of the four directions plus one
for the center. (173)
One may safely say that it is a suspiciously convenient happenstance that among
the "most remarkable features" of Archaic Northeastern Middle Chinese Beckwith lists
(2006: 93), are the retention of Old Chinese *-r “in certain environments” (which ones,
Beckwith does not say) and the apparent preservation of Old Chinese *o, also “in some
environments," which turn out to be just those that allow Beckwith to make the
connection between Wantu and ordo. The conditioning environment for each retained
archaic feature, it turns out, is implicitly present just in case a particular word requires
some phonological adjustment to resemble another of particular importance in
5 'A first century collection of philosophical essays written by Wang Chong 王充 (27 A.D. - ca. 100
A.D.).' (Byington 2003: 29)
14
Beckwith’s Central Eurasian Cultural Complex. More than this, Beckwith apparently is
looking for a solution to the problem of the word’s origin: “Since the Turkic and
Mongolic words are problematic – the word is surely a loan into Turkic, and probably
into Mongolian as well – the possibility exists that it is an early Puyŏ -Koguryŏic word”
(37). Not only is Beckwith thus able to connect Koguryŏ with the Central Eurasian
Cultural Complex, but he is also able to provide the origin of one of its most important
cultural terms. One even gets the impression that Beckwith has postulated υ as the vowel
in 都 for no other reason than to explain the alternation of the final vowel in ordo and
ordu.
This impression is heightened by the scantiness of the philological backing for his
claims, frequently mentioned only in brief footnotes, and obviously ancillary to his lookalike etymologizing. Compare the footnote in which he justifies his emendation of Old
Chinese wa to NMC o (2007: 97, fn. 6: “Baxter reconstructs some MChi *-wa- as Ochi *o-…”) to the extremely confident tone with which he identifies his *Ortυ with ordo:
“The name is certainly a transcription of" (2007: 97), “This is clearly the same word as"
(37) and, more flatly, “The name is the same as” (52) ordo. In fact, this is about as selfevident as the "fact" that the Celeres were a comitatus of the Central Eurasian type; no
support for the claim is ever given, nor is any explanation as to how, when, and under
what circumstances borrowing of the word from “Puyŏ-Koguryŏic” into the Turkic and
Mongolic languages could have taken place. This self-reflexive reasoning is typical of
Beckwith's entire argument.
15
1d. The Scythians
Beckwith’s most circular maneuver involves the North Iranian nomads known to
classical historians such as Herodotus as Scythians, whom he considers to be if not the
originators, at least the perfectors of the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex, and so very
important indeed. He says, for example,
Non-Turkic, non-Mongolic, and non-Tungusic peoples have always been part of the
Central Eurasian world—including the nomadic lifestyle, which seems to have been
perfected by the Iranian-speaking Scythians. (2006, 194)
The essential features of the comitatus and its oath are known to have existed as early as
the Scythians and seem difficult to separate clearly from the oath of brotherhood to death,
which is attested from ancient sources on the Scythians through the medieval Secret
History of the Mongols. (2009, 12-13)
Starting from this foundation, Beckwith sets out to forge a link between the Scythians
and Koguryŏ and therefore, according to his interpretation, Japan as well. In doing so he
makes extensive and exclusive use of a monograph by Oswald Szemerényi, Four Old
Iranian Ethnic Names: Scythian, Skudra, Sogdian, Saka (1980).
Of the four names, Szemerényi sees three, Scythian, Skudra, and Sogdian, as
simply different outcomes of the same Old Iranian ethnonym, namely proto-Iranian
Skuda, meaning “archer.” This in turn he derives from the zero grade of IE skeud- “to
shoot.” The particulars of the phonological processes by which the three names are so
derived are somewhat knotty, particularly for one who is yet a stranger to the Iranian
branch of Indo-European and all its witness languages. However, in their broad outlines
they are given by Szemerényi as follows:
Scythian.
(Σκύθης, pl.Σκύθαι)This is name by which the Scythians were
known to the Greeks, and hence to the Romans. On the basis of this loan form containing
an aspirate, and an Akkadian form referring to the same people, Aškuz, Szemerényi posits
16
an underlying form Skuða. This form is according to Szemerényi able to explain both the
Greek aspirate (as in Iranian names with –farnah being rendered in Greek with φαρνorφερνηςand the voiced alveolar fricative of the Akkadian word (17). In interpreting
the name, Szemerényi posits the Proto-Iranian form *Skuda, yielding a later *Skuða,
“archer,” making note of the Scythians’ famed skill for mounted archery and
archaeological finds of many arrowheads and related objects at Scythian sites (19). To
this group he adds the name Skules, which according to Herodotus was the name of the
Scythians for themselves. He says,
The fact that the descendants of Kolaxais, the Scythian kings, are called Paralatai (Hdt.),
and this corresponds to Avestan paraðāta- ‘voran, an die Spitze gestellt’, proves that
intervocalic d (or –ð), at least in some parts of the Scythian linguistic territory had
changed by Herodotus’ time to l. (22)
The two forms Scythian and Skules are thus differentiated by the time of their respective
borrowings into Greek: while the former is attested in Hesiod, ca. 700 BCE (16), the
former does not appear until Herodotus over two centuries later: *Skuða underlies one
and *Skula the other (23).
As for the the proto-Iranian *Skuda from which Szemerényi derives both Scythian
and Skules, he takes it as a form derived from the zero grade of an IE root skeud- “to
shoot,” with reflexes in OE sceotan, ON skjota, and OHG sciozan (20). That the sure
reflexes of such a root with a meaning “shoot” are isolated to Germanic and absent from
Iranian complicates the matter, however.6
6 Pokornoy (IEW: 954f.) lists as possible cognates to the Germanic group from *skeud Lithuanian
skudrùs 'swift,' OCS kudati 'throw,' and Sanskrit codayati 'drive, incite;' given the semantic range of
these words, however, and their lack of a connection to the use of missile weapons, it may reasonably
be argued that the Germanic sense is a secondary development. The Sanskrit, for example, is
transparently a causative form of a root cud "to impel, incite;" could not the Germanic words be taken
as similar causative forms of *skeud in the sense of 'swift,' especially with the Lithuanian skudrùs and
OE sceot 'swift' in mind? Of course, it is also possible that the Germanic group is unique, deriving from
a different IE root not elsewhere attested. In any case, no Iranian reflex of the root is given.
17
Skudra. Szemerényi’s argument is here archaeological. The tomb of Darius the
Great is graced by a complement of thirty throne-bearers engraved in stone, the dress of
each of whom is presented in meticulous detail. Under each is a cuneiform inscription of
the name of the people the figure represents. Among the figures who are presented in
typical Scythian dress is one bearing the inscription Skudra.
From this comes the
conclusion that Skudra, too, is a derivative form of Proto-Iranian *Skuda (25-6).
Sogdian. Szemerényi argues against previous interpretations of this name as a
toponym, making use of the Avestan locution Gavam yam Suγða-šayanam, “Gava, the
settlement of the Sogdians,” in which Suγða is an ethnonym, and of Greek Σόγδοι (38).
Comparing the Middle Sogdian form of the word Suγð- and the Suguda found in Old
Persian inscriptions, Szemerényi concludes that a hypothetical Old Sogdian Suγða
presupposes an earlier form in which the ð had to come in intervocalic position in order
to allow for its lenition from d in pre-Old Sogdian. Of the two possible ways by which
an Old Sogdian form Suγða could arise (*Suguda > *Suguða > *Sugða > Suγða; *Sukuda
> *Sukuða > *Sukða > *Suγða), Szemerényi favors the latter, elaborating:
It is clear that *Suguda is not amenable to an appropriate interpretation in Iranian. On the
other hand, *Sukuda offers just as clearly the right solution: it is nothing else but the
anaptyctic form of the Pontic. Skuda.
By a curious interplay of dialectical
indiosyncracies [sic], the anaptyctic *Sukuda was in Sogdian again syncopated to Suγða,
whereas in Old Persian this form was taken over (with stops) as Sugda, and then given, at
least for a short time, an anaptyctic variant Suguda. (39)
Saka, however, bears no relation to either of the three previous names according
to Szemerényi’s analysis. Rather, he posits that this is a different designation for nomadic
North Iranian peoples used by their settled, city-dwelling counterparts, ultimately
deriving from an Iranian verbal root sak- “go, flow, run” and meaning “wanderer, vagrant
18
nomad” (45) Thus, for Szemerényi, of the four ethnic names, three are derived from a
proto-Iranian Skuda, “archer,” and one is not.
Beckwith, however, goes considerably further than this. Whereas Szemerényi
derives only the three names Scythian, Skudra, and Sogdian from Skuda, Beckwith
includes Saka in his reckoning. Beckwith explains his rationale,
Unfortunatley, he [Szemerényi] follows the old idea (probably a folk etymology) that
Saka is a Persian name for the Scythians derived from the Persian verb sak- ‘to flow, go,
run’, and therefore supposedly could mean ‘roamer, wanderer, vagrant nomad.’
However, his conclusion regarding the name Skudra states that it is “a derivative of
Skuda, name of the Scythians.” This means that because Old Persian actually preserves
the earlier form *Skuda in this local name, the usual Persian name of the Scythians
changed at some point from *Skuda to Saka. (2009, 379)
In addition to the obscurity of the last sentence here, the phrase “the old idea” is, I
believe, misleading. In fact, Szemerényi proposes his etymology of Saka to counter a
previous derivation from a root cognate with Indic *śak, “to be powerful,” seen in
Sanskrit śaknomi, id. Szemerényi notes that the Iranian cognates of sak- are so
predominately focused on the semantic range of knowing, learning, and teaching as to
suggest that the Sanskrit sense of ability and strength is secondary, and that the existence
of a sak- “to be powerful” in Iranian is highly unlikely (43-44). Further, again citing
previous scholarship, Szemerényi proposes that the Persians applied the name Saka to
their nomadic counterparts because nomadism – rather than some linguistic or ethnic
difference – was what saliently differentiated them (44). If anything, Szemerényi’s is a
novel proposal. Beckwith’s casual invocation of folk etymology, reminiscent of his use of
Japanese data and his asseverations concerning ordo/ordu and the Koguryŏ capital
Wantu, lacks support. He continues,
Rather than being a completely new word, as Szemerényi argues, in view of the form
*Saγla ~ *Saklai it seems clear that the name Saka, which as the sources say is the
19
“Persian” name for all Scythians, is a form of the very same ethnonym, *Skuda, via the
known intermediate form *Skula. The change evidently took place via insertion of the
epenthetic vowel a to break up the initial cluster sk, as in other cases. The foreign (nonPersian) name *Sakula thus became Saka in Persian, probably via an intermediary
*Sakla, or perhaps *Sak(u)da ~ *Sak(u)ra. (2009, 379)
What is the form *Saklai on which Beckwith’s etymologizing depends? It is none
other than his proposed reading for “the northern kingdom from which the PuyŏKoguryŏic peoples originated, according to their origin myth” (378). The basis on which
Beckwith posits this form is to be found in Endnote 13 of Empires of the Silk Road:
*Saklai 索離 NMan suǒlí from Late Ochi *saklai, a later form of the Scythians,
Sogdians, and Sakas, q.v. appendix B. In Beckwith (2004a: 31-32) I unfortunately
followed other scholars’ erroneous emendations of the text. The initial character found in
most texts,
索NMan suǒ (MChi sak) – or in some cases NMan 橐 tuó (MChi tak) – is
a phonetic transcription unconnected to the putatively “correct” *Ko (in Sino-Korean
reading), which gives *Koryǒ, and nonsense, for both the Koguryǒ (=Koryǒ) and the
Puyǒ myths. (388)
This requires further explanation.
Beckwith’s (2007) presentation of the 'Puyŏ-
Koguryŏic' foundation myth in the Lun Heng (soon to be revisited) begins, “Formerly, in
the north, in the country of Koryŏ, a maidservant who was the daughter of the River Lord
was sequestered by the king when he went out” (31). Koryŏ is the erroneous reading to
which Beckwith refers. Apparently, the claim of Beckwith 2009 that the reading Koryŏ
yields nonsense is related to the statement in Beckwith 2007, “Since the kingdom to the
north of Koguryŏ was in fact Puyŏ for the early part of the period under consideration, it
would be odd for the Koguryŏ to have said that the ancestral founder of the Koguryŏ
kingdom fled from a northern kingdom named Koguryo” (32). By dint of this, Beckwith
(2009) argues that the initial Ko is a faulty reading. He continues,
Although it is my fault for having trusted the “editions” I used, unfortunately there are no
true critical editions (with critical apparatus, etc.) of those texts, or indeed of any Chinese
texts, with a single exception (Thompson 1979), as far as I know. Critical editions of
20
texts in Greek and Latin, as well as in Arabic and other medieval Western languages,
have been produced since the nineteenth century, but as pointed out by Thompson (1979:
xvii), Sinologists, whether Chinese or non-Chinese, mostly do not even know what a
critical edition is, and those who think they know are adamantly opposed to them. Until
this sorry state of affairs changes, Chinese texts will continue to be unreliable, and
Sinology will remain in this respect a backward field. (388-89)
That is, Beckwith has based his reading *Saklai on texts he has not cited.
Moreover, this is yet another circular argument. *Saklai, a proposed emendation for
*Koryŏ presented on the basis of uncited textual variants, is given as the justification of a
form *Sak(u)la, a supposed intermediate form in the chain *Skuda *Skula (epenthesis)
*Sakula *Sakla Saka. The connection with the supposed origin of Scythian in Skuda,
“archer,” provides one more link between Koguryŏ and a salient feature of Beckwith’s
Central Eurasian Cultural Complex, namely archery; the reading *Saklai makes this
connection possible. The intervening steps – the epenthetic a breaking up the cluster sk
and the subsequent loss of the l to yield Saka – are all simply thrown together in service
of this connection without regard to the historical phonology of any relevant Iranian
languages.
Nor is it only the Iranian languages that are given short shrift; materials
particularly concerning Koguryŏ are also overlooked.
Beckwith's form *Saklai,
emendation of his earlier suggestion *Kaklai, relies upon his reconstruction of the
reading for the character strings 高驪
高麗
高句麗 橋離, according to Beckwith all
used to write the same name, Koguryo. This reconstruction, however, has been called
into question, as has the identity of the four. Unger (2009: 43, fn. 3), drawing on
Mabuchi 1999, elaborates:
21
The gloss OJ kure 'Koguryŏ' on呉 demands explanation. The word J kookuri < EMJ
kaukuri高句麗 (NKD 7:460c) is not found in Kojiki (712), Nihon shoki (720), or
Shoku Nihongi (797). The principal name for Koguryŏ in these works is written高麗,
which was glossed EMJ koma 'Koguryŏ; Korea' and probably goes back to OJ kwoma
(rather than koma) in view of EMJ koma 狛(dog), a likely reborrowing of pKJ *koma
> OJ kuma 'bear'; note also 固麻,the name of a Paekche capital recorded in Liang shu,
which would be OJ kwoma. No man'yogana reading of 高麗is known (NKD 8:371d),
but EMJ kaurai is attested in 1019 (NKD 7:618c), and it is doubtful that 高麗was read
kure since 呉(presumably glossed kure) contrasts with in at least one Nihon shoki passage
(37th years 2nd month of Ojin). As Mabuchi explains,高麗 and呉 both came to
designate Koguryŏ, but Japanese of the early Kofun period did not at first equate the land
they called kwoma with the foreign name *kure of the rapidly expanding kingdom taking
it over. Koguryŏ is referred to as 句麗, without the prefix 高, in Chinese texts, and that
word is the source of *kure > EMJ (kau)kuri, contrary to Beckwith (2004: 31-32), who
claims that the strings 高句麗,高麗 ,高驪 , and 橋離 (which he says is the oldest
form) all represented the same name (roughly *koklay).
Kang (2008:13) provides further support:
The name "Koguryŏ" is a combination of two elements, the first being the Chinese
character 高, meaning large or high, and the second a phonetic compound 句麗, meaning
village or walled town. Together th emeaning becomes large village or large fortress.
Furthermore, as mentioned above, exactly how Beckwith determined that the
reading *Saklai 索離 rather than *Kaklai 橋離 is to be preferred in the Puyŏ and
Koguryŏ foundation myths is unclear. Not only has Beckwith not cited the textual
variants on the basis of which he makes this determination, he gives the impression that
*Kaklai 橋離 is the putatively correct reading and generally accepted. Byington (2003:
255), however, gives quite a different impression, presenting Tuoli 橐離, not Kuoli 橋離,
as the standard name and citing the full number of textual variants: the first character of
the northern kingdom in the Puyŏ foundation myth is variously given as tuo 橐 suo
索
gao 高 and bao 褒; more variants are attested as well (255 fn 5) That Beckwith also
overlooks this data as well further suggests that his aim is the addition of further peoples
to the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex rather than the faithful description of those
22
peoples' histories, strengthening the impression given by his circular use of uncited
textual variants as the basis for unattested Indo-Iranian ethnic or place names.
In making these connections between Koguryŏ and the Central Eurasian Cultural
Complex, Beckwith has made extensive use of the 'Puyŏ-Koguryŏic' foundation myth,
from which the words he renders as *Saklai and *Ortu are both taken.7 In fact, he sees
the myth as an instantiation of what he calls the First Story, a common inheritance of all
the peoples who came under the influence of the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex.
The First Story, we are told, is an exposition of the beliefs that make the Central Eurasian
Cultural Complex what it is: concern for justice, a love of freedom, hatred of tyranny, and
the lifestyle of steppe warriors:
The subject people lived for a time under the unjust rule of their conquerors, and as their
vassals they fought for them. By fighting in their conquerors' armies, the subject people
acquired the life-style of steppe warriors. They also learned from their rulers the ideal of
the hero in the First Story, which was sung in different versions over and over from
campfire to campfire around the kingdom along with other heroic epics that told stories
almost as old, with a similar moral. (2009: 11)
The First Story provides the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex with its essential
characteristics.
The lifestyle of steppe warriors characteristic of Central Eurasian
peoples - the comitatus, a band of warriors sworn to loyally protect their lord, to die for
him if they must, and, should he predecease them, to commit suicide to accompany him
in death - provides a foil for the acquisitive, materialistic, and anti-aristocratic spirit of
the Modernism, defined as permanent revolution, that Beckwith takes as representative of
Littoral culture. To complete this juxtaposition, Beckwith needs to make the Central
7 Furthermore, as noted before, he assumes that a common 'Puyŏ-Koguryŏic' belonging to a ' PuyŏKoguryŏic' people is a viable entity. This assumption is problematic, however, as Byington 2003
indicates. We will return to this question soon.
23
Eurasian Cultural Complex into a monolithic cultural entity, with its own coherent ethos,
consistent over millenia, and its own creation myth, its own First Story. Against the
commandment to multiply and subdue the earth is posed the injunction to loyally serve
and die for the lord of one's comitatus.
To this end, Beckwith provides nine examples of the First Story, which are
adaptations of the foundation myths of the Zhou Chinese, the Scythians, the Romans, the
Xiongnu, The Wu-sun, the people of Koguryo, the Persians, the Turks, and the Mongols.
Beckwith's presentation of the Koguryo foundation story is as follows:
In the northern land of *Saklai a prince was miraculously born. Though his father was
the sun god and his mother was the daughter of the River Lord, the king of the country
took the child and cast him to the beasts. But the pigs and horses and birds of the
wilderness kept him warm, so the boy did not die.
Because the king could not kill the boy, he allowed his mother to raise him. When the
prince was old enough, he was ordered to serve the king as horse herder. He was an
excellent archer and was given the name TümeN.
The king was warned by his sons that TümeN was too dangerous and would take over the
kingdom. They plotted to kill him, but TümeN's mother warned him in time, and he fled
southward.
Reaching a river that he could not ford, he struck the river with his bow and called out, "I
am the son of the sun and the grandson of the River Lord. My enemeies are upon me.
How can I cross? The alligators and soft-shelled turtles floated together to make a
bridge. When TümeN had crossed over they dispersed, so his enemies could not reach
him.
He built Ortu, his capital, and established a new kingdom. His realm was divided into
four constituent parts, with one lord (*ka) over each of the four directions. (2009: 7)
Here everything falls into place. The readings *Saklai and *Ortu provide links with the
Central Eurasian Cultural Complex; their inclusion in one instantiation of the First Story
provides a further link. Beckwith has worked Koguryo into a chain of conquerors and
conquered extending back from the Hittites, through the Scythians, into all of Central
24
Eurasia and eastward to Manchuria, the Korean peninsula, and eventually Japan. If we
accept Beckwith's reading, it would seem that the people of Koguryŏ regarded
themselves as escaping from the land of *Saklai, a Scythian kingdom of indeterminate
location. The founder of Koguryŏ, though treated unjustly by his overlords, learned their
methods of archery and horse herding, and when he escaped he brought these methods
with him, going so far as to name his capital after the encampment of the lord and his
comitatus, a form of which he himself possessed in the form of his four ka.
This can be taken as the summation of Beckwith's argument for including
Koguryŏ in the purview of the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex. However, just as the
readings *Saklai and *Ortu rest on shaky philological foundation, the implicit claim that
Koguryŏ was founded by refugees from a Scythian kingdom, and one located to the north
of their eventual home in Manchuria and the northern Korean peninsula at that, is quite a
novel one. In fact, as we will see shortly, the kings of Koguryŏ did believe themselves
descended from refugees from a northern kingdom. However, this was not a Scythian
kingdom, one link of many in the eastward transmission of the Central Eurasian Cultural
Complex, and the belief held more pragmatic than religious import.
25
Part 2. Making Sense of the Koguryŏ Foundation Myth
Having considered Beckwith's use of etymology to forge links between Koguryŏ
and the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex culminating in the presentation of the
Koguryŏ founding story as one more version of the First Story of the Central Eurasian
Cultural Complex, it may be profitable to take a closer look at that story. Beckwith
(2009: 7, fn. 29) has this to say about it: "The earliest recorded version is in the Lun heng,
by Wang Ch'ung, a first-century AD text, followed by the Wei lüeh, a lost work quoted in
the annotations to the San kuo chih, a third-century AD text. The earliest version written
by the Koguryo themselves is found in the King Kwanggaet'o memorial inscription of
414."
If we return to Byington, we see that the situation is in fact quite more
complicated than this. First, the account given in the Lun heng is not the foundation myth
of Koguryŏ at all. Rather, it is an account of the founding of the Puyŏ state, Koguryŏ's
neighbor to the north (Byington 2003: 29). According to this account, the founder of
Puyŏ, Tongmyong 東明 (rendered TümeN by Beckwith), fled southward from the
kingdom Tuoli橐離(compare Beckwith's statement on the "putatively correct" character
Kuo橋mentioned above) and became the ruler of Puyŏ (29, 495). Indeed, it is reported in
the San guo zhi that the elders of Puyŏ referred to themselves as refugees亡人. It is,
however, not clear what exactly this means (29, 495).
26
Furthermore, in the Koguryŏ version of this story, adapted from the Puyŏ version,
the founder, now known as Chumong, escapes not from Tuoli or *Saklai but from Puyŏ
itself and founds Koguryŏ, whose capital is not Wantu or *Ortu but, depending on which
text one consults, Cholbon or Hulsung-gol (30). Accordingly, the various versions of the
story involving Tongmyong/Chumong/TümeN are more profitably understood as
comprising two primary layers: first, the foundation myth of Puyŏ, comprising an old
mythical account of uncertain origin and, second, an adaptation of this story which,
mutatis mutandis, is made to refer to the foundation of Koguryŏ. Indeed, Byington (496)
notes that the Koguryŏ myth is "particularly suspicious," being modified from its Puyŏ
model only in the details of the hero's home and his destination. As such, Beckwith's
observation, "It would be odd for the Koguryŏ to have said that the ancestral founder of
the Koguryŏ kingdom fled from a northern kingdom named Koguryŏ” (2007: 32), is a
valid one. However, such a claim is not to be found in the Koguryŏ foundation myth, in
which the Koguryŏ founder is said to have fled from a northern kingdom named Puyŏ.
The problem is only a problem when the Puyŏ and Koguryŏ stories are conflated.
Moreover, there are significant discrepancies even among different versions of the
story as adapted to Koguryŏ, the common element being the claim of Koguryŏ origin in
refugees from Puyŏ. For example, the two earliest expressions of the myth, those found
on the 414 King Kwanggaet'o Stele and a slightly later inscription a Koguryo tomb at
Ji'an, identify Chumong's point of departure as "Northern Puyŏ" (Byington 2003: 240),
identified as the Puyŏ kingdom in Jilin mentioned in in the Introduction. Later versions
of the story, however, diverge. The Samguk sagi, for example, states that Chumong fled
from a coastal region known as Eastern Puyŏ (234). Chumong's divine parentage also
27
admits of variations: he is taken as the son of the Heavenly Empeor, of Hae Mosu, or of
the sun god (237).
The variations are even more numerous and enumerating them
singly would prove too lengthy a digression.
The variations do, however, strongly
suggest that the unity among these different versions which Beckwith would require in
order for his interpretation to make sense does not exist, and that his presentation of the
story, both in 2007 and 2009, is a harmonization and conflation of Puyŏ and Koguryŏ
elements. The details of the Puyŏ and Koguryŏ foundation myths - the history, that is, in
so far as it is recoverable, of Central Eurasia and Central Eurasians that Beckwith set out
to describe - has been overlooked. The facts in all their variety have been made to fit
into the schematic of the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex which, if it is to be a worthy
opponent of the Littoral System, must be as extensive as possible.
Putting aside all these variations of the Puyŏ and Koguryŏ versions of the
Tongmyong/Chumong story, why should the people of Koguryo have adopted the
foundation myth of Puyŏ, a state with whom they had fought in the past and whose
territory they ultimately overtook after Puyŏ's defeat by the Xianbei? Byington considers
these origin stories to be part of the process of state formation and to have as their goal
less the accurate description of a people's historical origin, which may well have been
long forgotten even to them, than the forging of a common political and mythic identity:
Regardless of how the early states might actually have taken form, the foundation myths
present a version of state formation that served the interests of the authors of those myths.
That is, the myths were a means of describing state and elite origins as the authors would
have wished them to be perceived by others. (2003, 497)
The origins of Puyŏ, except that its pre-state predecessors were the peoples of the
Xituanshan culture, and those of Koguryŏ as well, are lost to history and it is not
28
sufficient to seek those origins in the foundation stories of those states. What may be
found there, however, is a reflection of the social realities of those states at the time their
mythic origins were decided upon and recorded and what the authors of the foundation
myths felt about those realities. Byington notes that in the case of the Puyŏ myth, the
rulers are set apart from those they rule by virtue of their foreign origin (500). This, it is
argued, serves to make the difference between governors and governed acceptable, in
effect "validating a social structure that permits and guarantees the existence of a small,
non-producing wealthy elite, who derive their livelihood from the toil of the governed
populations" (500). That is, the Puyŏ foundation story, representing as it does the rulers
of the state as descended from a founding figure of divine descent, grants the rulers
similar divine sanction, thus legitimating inegalitarian social structures typical of the
state. The divine wanderer is a later fiction, not an historical reality.
Koguryŏ's adaptation of the Puyŏ story, Byington contends, is similarly motivated
by concern with political legitimacy, though in a different way. Compared to Koguryŏ,
Puyŏ was an elder state. Its antecedents first came into contact with and under the
influence of the Chinese in the third century BCE. It was highly regarded by the Chinese
court (504), as described above, and entered into an alliance with the Eastern Han, by
which it became yet more of a power in the region, conducting successful campaigns
against the younger Koguryŏ state from the first century BCE. Even after Koguryŏ had
assimilated the territory of the former Puyŏ state in 410, memories of what Puyŏ once
had been remained strong. Accordingly, the kings of Koguryŏ claimed descent from
Puyŏ as a means of constructing what Byington refers to as a veneer of antiquity and
long-held legitimacy: "this quality," he continues, "would be particularly useful for
29
communicating with states in the Central Plains of China, where respect for political
pedigree has long dictated the language of statecraft" (505) Furthermore, it was not only
Koguryŏ that claimed such descent from Puyŏ. Paekche did as well, though Paekche
claimed descent indirectly through the ruling house of Koguryo (496, 505).
We can therefore see that Beckwith's treatment of the Koguryŏ foundation story,
even with all of its attendant etymological apparatus, is very much a simplification of a
long and complicated process involving the appropriation of of the Puyŏ foundation myth
by Koguryŏ, followed by the later appropriation of the already appropriated story by
Paekche. In addition, far from celebrating that "the unjust overlords who suppressed the
righteous people and stole their wealth were finally overthrown, and the men who did the
deed were national heroes" (2009: 11), these myths served to establish a veneer of
antiquity and legitimacy for the ruling houses of Koguryŏ and Paekche, thus granting
them respectability in inter-regional politics and establishing their right to live on the
labor of those whom they ruled.
30
Part 3. What Does This All Mean?
We have briefly introduced Puyŏ and Koguryŏ as Byington presented them. We
have continued to an overview of Beckwith's concepts of the Central Eurasian Cultural
Complex, the Littoral System and its offspring Modernism, and the conflict between
these two forces. We have further seen Beckwith's use of etymology to link Koguryŏ and
Japan with the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex, culminating in his presentation of the
Koguryŏ foundation myth, augmented with his readings *Saklai and *Ortu, as an
instantiation of the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex's First Story. We have considered
this analysis in comparison to Byington's treatment of the Puyŏ and Koguryŏ stories and
have seen that it is a harmonization and conflation of disparate versions of the story used
by different people to further different, but very specific and concrete, political aims. By
now it is not unreasonable to conclude that Beckwith's use of the Koguryŏ data has been
subordinate to the end of making Koguryŏ a member of the Central Eurasian Cultural
Complex, sharing its salient cultural, mythological, and religious features, irrespective of
its historical realities.
This aim itself, I contend, is itself subordinate to a larger,
essentially mythopoeic aim of Beckwith's work, hints of which are to be found in his
presentation of the First Story.
Having presented all his examples of the First Story, Beckwith writes:
No one can say that the heroes who accomplished these deeds for their people did not do
them. The Chou Dynasty of China, the Roman Empire, the Wu-sun Kingdom, and the
31
Hsiung-nu Empire are all historical facts, as are the realms of the Koguryŏ, the Türk, the
Mongols, and others. How these nations really were founded is obscured by the mists of
time, in which the merging of legendary story and history is nearly total. (...) Yet that is
unimportant. What really mattered was that the unjust overlords who suppressed the
righteous people and stole their wealth were finally overthrown, and the men who did the
deed were national heroes. (2009, 11)
That is, the path of the unrighteous shall perish. Irrespective of the uses the people of
Puyŏ or Koguryŏ may have made of his story, Tongmyong/Chumon appears as a
Manchurian Brutus, an Aristogeiton of the steppes, liberating his people from oppressive
overlords.8 When viewed in the light of Byington's account, this is clearly romanticism.
It is, however, not without purpose.
Quite contrarily, this collection of disparate elements into a common mythology is
at the center of Beckwith's work. These motifs of oppression by unjust ovelords and
triumph against it by a righteous founding hero, I believe, are meant to serve as
prefigurations of the present day struggle between Modernism, the offpsring of the
Littoral peoples, and the respect for Reason, Nature, and the old aristocratic order
represented by the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex, the ultimate but forgotten source
of common world culture. Beckwith poses the question,
Can the peoples of Central Eurasia - and of Europe, Russia, the Middle East, India, and
China - learn from the past, or will they continue to repeat its mistakes? Can they recover
from the disasters wrought by Modernism, fundamentalism, and nationalist racism
without destroying themselves and the rest of the world? And will Europeans, Russians,
Iranians, and Chinese who now dominate Central Eurasia, our common heartland, finally
allow that font of creativity the freedom to flourish once again? (2009: 319)
8 In this connection, consider Beckwith 2009: 293: 'The substitution of populist ideals for aristocratic
ones necessarily eliminated the idea of cultural paragons - the great men who, as Yeats put it, "walk in a
cloth of gold, and display their passionate hearts, that the groundlings may feel their souls wax the
greater." In all spheres of society, there was no longer any higher model to aspire to.' We need such
models again; Beckwith seeks them in the heroes of the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex's First
Story.
32
He answers,
It depends on whether they can restore the rule of Reason, reject the Modernist legacy of
populist demagoguery, and make a firm commitment to join the rest of the world not as
fanatics or tyrants but as partners. (319)
To borrow the terminology of Biblical typology, each of the types in Beckwith's
First Story finds an antitype in the present-day struggle between the Littoral powers and
Central Eurasia. The Littoral powers, under the spell of Modernism, have forgotten their
Central Eurasian heritage, and as colonial powers have brutally oppressed the people of
Central Eurasia, their common heartland. They have suppressed righteous people and
stolen their wealth just as their types, the unjust overlords in the various versions of the
First Story, did before them; they have repeated the mistakes and iniquities of the past
and sinned as their fathers did. Beckwith's vision of a resurgent Central Eurasia and a
rediscovery of our common Central Eurasian heritage culminates in the overthrowing of
these unjust social structures, just as it did in the First Story. The nations of the world
coming together as partners, as comites, after the present social order has been
overthrown bears a definite resemblance to the comitatus, the social structure of the
Central Eurasian Cultural Complex, the ancient and rightful order of human affairs
unjustly supplanted by Modernism and its attendant populist demagoguery. The nations
of the world will become partners in a comitatus, just as the founding hero in the First
Story had his sworn band of warriors. "The warriors of Central Eurasia," he writes,
"were not barbarians. They were heroes, and the epics of their peoples sing their
undying fame" (2009: xxv). Quite the opposite, it is we, the Littoral powers, who are the
true barbarians; with the resurgence of Central Eurasia and the restoration of the values of
the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex, the founding heroes of the First Story will live
again and their fame will be truly undying.
33
For Beckwith, in the end all will be as it was in the beginning. A global comitatus
will be established, and nation will no longer take up arms against nation.
What
Beckwith would make of the conflicts between Koguryŏ and Puyŏ, or the story related in
Livy that Romulus slew Remus for stepping over his walls, is unclear, though these
parallels suggest that Beckwith's representations of Koguryŏ and the other states he takes
as representative of the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex are less concerned with the
historical or linguistic realities of these states than they are with granting the struggle
between the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex and the Littoral powers under the spell of
Modernism a mythological prefiguration that points a way toward that struggle's
resolution. Indeed, we are even told, "I hope that some of the points I have noticed, and
the arguments I have made, will lead to a better understanding of it [Modernism] and
maybe even point the way to improving the human condition today" (2009 xiii).
The way to improving the human condition today, I posit, consists for Beckwith
in rejecting Modernism and restoring the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex.
This
concern is to be found throughout his work. We have seen it in his work on Koguryŏ,
ancillary as it is to his presentation of the Koguryŏ foundation myth as a version of the
First Story.
His invocation of "Archaic Northeastern Middle Chinese," his use of
Szemerényi's work, and his conflation of disparate versions of the Puyŏ and Koguryŏ
foundation myths are all subordinate to this goal. That is, Beckwith employs history and
etymology alike in the service of the broader goal of establishing what is essentially a
mythological framework for understanding what he sees as the defining conflict of
modern life, a conflict that he hopes will be concluded with the rejection of Modernism.
34
It is interesting to note the parallels between the method Beckwith employs and
that which the authors of the Puyŏ and Koguryŏ foundation stories did. Just as the Puyŏ
elites claimed foreign extraction to claim the legitimacy of their rule and just as the
Koguryŏ elites claimed Puyŏ descent to claim the gravitas possessed by the elder state, a
move in which Paekche would follow them, so Beckwith makes use, indeed frequently
quite ingenious use, of this material and related etymological material to create a veneer
of antiquity and long-held legitimacy for the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex.
35
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