고대 한국의 저승관과 지옥관념의 이해

Abstract

In the man"s primary idea, the other world was the world of the dead and the ideal world. And in many ancient societies men imagined that the world of the dead was located below the earth and dark and desolate place.

In records on ancient Korea, there are many ones that the world of the dead was imagined as the ideal world, but the records on the next world located in underground as dark and desolate place are few. On Sabok(蛇福) tale appeared on『Samgukyusa』(『三國遺事』) the post-mortem world is described as the underground world and the Yeonwhajang(蓮華藏) world, the ideal world of Buddhism. This shows traces that the next world is related to the underground world and the ideal other world in ancient Korean"s thought. Ancient Koreans had little ideas on the dark, terrible and pessimistic next world unlike Chinese and Japanese thought.

Not having the idea of fearful hell originally, ancient Korean had no regard for or avoided that when the idea of Buddhist hell was introduced. So in Unified Silla, the early stage of the idea of Buddhist hell"s introducing, the tales of retributive justice containing the tales of hell were less spread than the contemporary China and Japan in which the idea of fearful hell had been strong.