The bon-puri (Jeju and , ) are Korean shamanic narrative recited in the shamanic rituals of Jeju Island, to the south of the Korean Peninsula. Similar shamanic narratives are known in mainland Korea as well, but are only occasionally referred to as bon-puri.
The bon-puri is a formalistic genre of syllabic verse that tells the story of how the deity or deities being invoked came to hold their divine position. Their recitation is believed to please the gods and encourage their participation. There are three primary types of bon-puri. The general bon-puri, of which there are twelve, involve deities who are worshipped throughout the island, such as the goddess of childbirth or Gangnim the psychopomp. The village-shrine bon-puri number more than seventy, and center on patron gods of specific communities. The ancestral bon-puri, which are the least understood, feature the patron gods of specific family lineages or occupations, although the god is not necessarily an ancestor. There is a small group of bon-puri narratives which are no longer performed by shamans and which do not clearly belong to one of the three above. These are called special bon-puri.
Etymology
Bon-puri is a compound of the Sino-Korean noun bon, meaning "origin," and puri, the nominalized form of the verb pulda "to narrate." The fundamental meaning of a bon-puri is thus the story of a deity's origins, i.e. how the deity being invoked came to hold their divine position. In some phrases pulda can also mean "to soothe," and bon-puri may have the additional nuance of being a story that pleases the gods or soothes their dissatisfaction.
Ritual context
The bon-puri is always recited by shamans as part of gut rituals, where the shaman calls the gods into the human world in order to beseech their favor. Many bon-puri works explicitly state that the reason for the performance is to delight the gods and encourage their greater participation in the ritual, as in the following excerpt from the Chogong bon-puri:
By telling a god's origins, one makes the god giddy with delight
By telling a person's origins, one makes an enemy for a hundred years.
In Jeju shamanism, humans are imperfect beings whose faults become clearer the more about them is known. By contrast, the venerated gods are exemplary beings, and to recount their deeds is to make their excellence known and thereby win their favor in the ritual.
Shamans sing bon-puri while seated before and facing the sacrificial altar, and turn their back to the people. The bon-puri is always sung to the beat of the janggu drum.
Characteristics
The bon-puri is a genre of oral poetry. As no codified text exists, each shaman has their own versions of the bon-puri. However, a certain degree of consistency is expected. The ethnologist Chang Chu Keun cites one example of a Chogong bon-puri performance which was interrupted ten times by more experienced shamans, who repeatedly disputed the details given in the recitation and ultimately demanded that the performing shaman name the man who taught him. In extreme cases, the shaman may be replaced.
Bon-puri performances are initiated by an announcement to the gods that the recitation is about to begin. This is followed by a request for the gods to descend to the ritual place, then by the genealogy of the gods being invoked. The example below is from the bon-puri of the god of the village of Tosan:
We present the nansusaeng of the Great House of the Seventh Day. May you descend with full vigor to your native land... The mother of the Great House of the Seventh Day's God is Lady Baekju from the Utson shrine, and his father is Lord Grandfather Socheon-guk from the Alson shrine. First, second, third, fourth, five, sixth—he is the seventh son.
The meter of the bon-puri is based on the number of syllables. The basic meter involves a line of two four-syllable feet, but lines where the first foot has three syllables and the second foot has five syllables are also frequent. The genre is also characterized by formulaic phrases often involving parallelism or repetition, which are found identically in many different works. For instance, many village-shrine bon-puri include the following sentence word-to-word in their conclusions, describing how the protagonist became a god that governs the lives of the villagers:
With a godly book more than an armful thick and a godly brush more than a fistful thick, [the god] grinds ink for ten thousand pages in an inkstone for three thousand pages... and takes charge of the town's jangjeok and hojeok documents.
Another stylistic feature of the bon-puri is the use of the emphatic present-tense in key moments of the narrative, marked by the verb-final suffix -go(na). This gives the impression that the story is being reenacted in the present day through the course of the ritual. The impression that the mythical past is being reenacted is strengthened by the use of long stretches of directly quoted dialogue, unbroken by narration. The example below is from the Samgong bon-puri:
"Eunjang-agi! Eunjang-agi! By whose grace do you eat rice and wash your face with silver basins, wash your face with bronze basins?"
"That is by my father's grace, and also by my mother's grace."
"Our daughter knows what's right. Go back to your room."
Many expressions in bon-puri are attested nowhere else in Jeju or Korean. For instance, the bon-puri poems refer to the guardian hounds of the gods as "the naguri of the courtyard, the naguri of the earth." The precise meaning of many such expressions is unclear.
Many bon-puri conclude by explaining the mythical reasons for specific facets of Jeju ritual life. For village-shrine bon-puri, the very last sentence is typically a formulaic invocation such as the following:
We raise our acclamation before the benevolent Lord of the Great House.
Types
There are three basic types of bon-puri: general, village-shrine, and ancestral.
The twelve general bon-puri ( ) must be memorized by all shamans, and narrate the origins of gods who are worshipped throughout the island. The village-shrine bon-puri ( ) feature the patron gods of specific villages. Shamans memorize only the bon-puri of their own village and neighboring villages, sometimes because the gods of adjacent villages are considered to be close relatives. Finally, ancestral bon-puri ( ) involve deities (sometimes deified historical individuals) that are the patrons of a specific family or occupation. Ancestral bon-puri are memorized only by shamans who belong to the relevant family.
Five bon-puri are commonly classified as special bon-puri ( ) because they do not fit neatly into the categories above and have unclear ritual significance. Shamans no longer recite any of the special bon-puri.
General bon-puri
There are twelve general bon-puri works.
Cheonji-wang bon-puri: The Jeju creation myth. In most versions, the creator god Cheonji-wang descends into the human world, either because the world had two suns and two moons which made life unlivable, or to punish the impiety of a man named Sumyeong-jangja. Cheonji-wang then sleeps with an earthly woman, who gives birth to the twins Daebyeol-wang and Sobyeol-wang. The twins ascend into heaven, meet their father, and engage in a flower-growing contest to decide who will rule the living. The benevolent twin Daebyeol-wang wins, but the malevolent Sobyeol-wang switches the flowers while his brother sleeps. Sobyeol-wang thus becomes the ruler of the living and is responsible for evil on earth. The doubled sun and moon are either destroyed by the twins together, or by Daebyeol-wang alone when his brother comes begging for help in ruling the living. Samseung-halmang bon-puri: Like Daebyeol-wang and Sobyeol-wang, two deities engage in a flower contest, but in this myth there is no cheating. The goddess who grows the better flowers becomes the goddess of childbirth and young children and establishes the Seocheon flower fields, whose flowers govern life, death, and human emotion. The loser becomes the goddess of dead children who sends disease to infants to kill them. Manura bon-puri: In a sort of sequel to the Samsung-halmang bon-puri, the childbirth goddess pleads the smallpox god to not harm the children. The latter insults her for being a woman and horribly disfigures the children. The goddess then refuses to allow the smallpox god's wife to give birth, causing her excruciating pain as the child grows inside her. The smallpox god begs for mercy, and the goddess allows his wife to give birth. Chogong bon-puri: Triplets are born to the scandalous liaison of a nobleman's daughter and a Buddhist priest. The triplets grow to be talented young men who all pass the civil service examinations. Three thousand Confucian scholars, envious of their success, cancel their grades in the examinations and murder or imprison their mother. At the end of a quest, the triplets invent the shamanic rituals and become the first shamans. They use their shamanic powers to resurrect or free their mother, who becomes the ritual mother of all future shamans. After the triplets die, they become judges of the sins of the dead. Igong bon-puri: The gods appoint a man as the governor of the flower fields of Seocheon. The man's wife is too pregnant for the full journey, and she is left behind in the house of a rich man to give birth to a son named Hallakgung'i. The rich man attempts to seduce the wife. When she refuses, he employs both her and her son as slaves. When Hallakgung'i escapes to Seocheon at the age of fifteen, the man kills his mother in rage. Hallakgung'i uses the flower of evil thought to kill the rich man and his family and the flowers of life to resurrect his mother. Hallakgung'i succeeds his father as the ruler of Seocheon, while his mother takes care of children there. Samgong bon-puri: Two beggars become fabulously rich soon after their third daughter is born. One day, they ask their daughters who they credit for their fortune. The older two daughters say their parents, but the youngest daughter thanks her own linea nigra. Her parents tell her to leave the house but soon regret it, and tell their older daughters to bring their youngest sister back. The sisters lie and tell her to stay away; they then turn into mushrooms and centipedes. The parents go blind, lose all their wealth, and become beggars again. Meanwhile, the third daughter marries a kind-hearted taro farmer, then discovers that her husband's taro fields are full of gold. The couple becomes rich and holds a feast for beggars. The parents come to the feast, realize that their daughter is there, and miraculously regain their sight. The youngest daughter explains that she is the goddess of jeonsang. Chasa bon-puri: A woman's three sons all fall dead the day they pass their civil service examinations. The ruler orders a man named Gangnim to capture Yama, the King of Death, so that the woman may know why her sons died. Gangnim journeys into the realm of the dead and meets Yama, who agrees to visit Gangnim's country. Yama reveals that the woman's sons were the reincarnations of three princes that the woman had murdered, who decided to be reborn as her sons and fall dead in order to cause her grief, and makes Gangnim his servant who conducts the spirits of the dead to his realm. Samani bon-puri (also called Menggam bon-puri): A man named Saman discovers an abandoned skull in the hills and worships it as an ancestor. One day, the skull warns him that he is about to die and gives him advice on how to cheat the gods of death. With the help of the skull, Saman lives for three thousand or forty thousand years.