Hangul 향가 Revised Romanization hyangga | Hanja 鄕歌 McCune–Reischauer hyangga | |
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Hyangga were poems written in a native writing system, composed in the Three Kingdoms, Unified Silla and early Goryeo periods of Korean history. Only a few have survived. The number of extant hyangga ranges between 25 and 27, depending on whether the hyangga are regarded as authentic or not.
Contents
Features
The hyangga were written using Chinese characters in a system known as hyangchal. They are believed to have been first written in the Goryeo period, as the style was already beginning to fade. 14 hyangga are recorded in the Samguk Yusa and 11 in the Gyunyeojeon. Wihong, the husband of Queen Jinseong of Silla, and the monk Taegu-Hwasang compiled a book about hyangga.
The name hyangga is formed from the character for "back-country" or "rural village" (used by Silla people describing their nation) and the character for "song." These poems are accordingly sometimes known as "Silla songs."
Hyangga are characterized by formal rules. The poems may consist of four, eight or ten lines. The ten-line poems are the most developed, structured into three sections with four, four, and two lines respectively. Many of the ten-line poems were written by Buddhist monks, thus Buddhist themes predominate.
Another dominant theme was death. Many of the poems are eulogies to monks, to warriors, and to family members — in one case, a sister. The Silla period, especially before unification in 668, was a time of warfare: the hyangga capture the sorrow of mourning for the dead while Buddhism provided answers about where the dead go and the afterlife.
Example
A typical hyangga is "the Ode for Life Eternal" or, perhaps, "the Ode for Nirvana". The poem is a song that calls upon the moon to convey the supplicant's prayer to the Western paradise, the home of Amita (or Amitabha, the Buddha of the Western Pure Land Sukhavati). The poem's authorship is somewhat unclear; it was either written by a monk named Gwangdeok (hangul:광덕 hanja:廣德) or, one source says, the monk's wife.