The Seng-gut narrative is a Korean shamanic narrative traditionally recited in a large-scale gut ritual in Hamgyong Province, North Korea. It tells of the deeds of one or multiple deities referred to as "sages," beginning from the creation of the world. It combines many stories that appear independently in other regions of Korea into a single extended narrative. In the first story, the deity Seokga usurps the world from the creator, creates animals from deer meat, and destroys a superfluous sun and moon. In the second, the carpenter Gangbangdek builds a palace for the gods, loses a wager to a woman, and becomes the god of the household. In the third and fourth stories, a boy who does not talk until the age of ten becomes the founder of a new Buddhist temple and melts a baby into iron to forge a temple bell. In the fifth, the same priest destroys a rich man for having abused him. Finally, the priest makes his three sons the gods of fertility, ending the story. The narrative has a strong Buddhist influence.
Source and ritual context
The Seng-gut narrative was recited on September 26, 1965, by Gang Chun-ok, a female shaman from Hamhung who had fled North Korea during the Division of Korea. The Seng-gut was a large-scale gut ritual in the Hamgyong region, in which shamans beseeched the gods for long life, sons, and fortune generally. Seng or seoin means "sage; holy person" in Northwestern Korean, and is here used to refer to a variety of shamanic deities that appear in the garb of a Buddhist priest. With the exception of the Gangbangdek story, the narrative has a strong Buddhist influence throughout.
According to scholar Kim Heonsun, the only transcription (by ethnologists Lim Seok-jae and Chang Chu-keun) is riddled with serious orthographic errors and mistranscriptions.
Myth
Creation narrative
The Seng-gut narrative opens with the spontaneous generation of the universe, as heaven opens in the direction of zi and earth opens in the direction of chou. This statement is copied verbatim from the philosophical cosmogony proposed by the eleventh-century Chinese philosopher Shao Yong. Humans are created from red clay, which is why they return to the earth upon death. In this primeval world, birds and horses can talk, trees can walk, horses have horns and bulls have manes, and dogs have combs and chickens have ears. This is followed by a discussion of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors of Chinese religion, from Heavenly Sovereign to Yu the Great, founder of the Xia dynasty.
The Indian sage (Northwestern Korean: ) Seokga, the Korean version of Shakyamuni 'Sakya sage', a title of the Buddha, studies in the Western Heaven (Sukhavati) for nine years. After entering the human world to preach Buddhism in the East and Christianity in the West, he finds Korea under the rule of the creator god Mireuk, the Korean version of the name 'Maitreya'. He tells him to hand over Korea, but the creator refuses, and a series of disputes ensues. First, Seokga and Mireuk play "immortal go" and "immortal janggi." Next, they each try using a rock to moor a boat whose rigging is of sand. Seokga is triumphant both times, because Mireuk is "foolish" while Seokga is "full of ruses and full of artifice, with cunning stratagems." Mireuk refuses to accept his defeats."미런한"; "게고 많고 메꾀 많고 수단이 좋은" Finally, they hold a contest to grow a flower while both are asleep. Mireuk sleeps genuinely, but Seokga only pretends to sleep. When a chrysanthemum blooms near the sleeping Mireuk, Seokga plucks it and places it in his own lap. When Mireuk awakes and realizes Seokga's cheating, he departs but curses the world:
After Mireuk's departure, there are indeed two suns and two moons in the sky, so that life is unlivable for humanity. Seokga resolves to return to the Western Heaven to end this calamity. On the way, he finds a deer crying while crossing the road. The god throws a six-hooked staff at the animal, immediately killing it. He orders the deer to be roasted for its meat, but his two servants refuse to eat the meat, saying that they would rather become Buddhas. While eating, Seokga spits out some of the deer meat into the waters, thereby creating the fishes of the world. Then he spits towards the sky and creates the birds. He spits a final time, and the meat crawls and runs away as the animals of the earth.
Making his way west, Seokga encounters a river three thousand leagues wide. The fish—his creations—allow him to cross on their backs, but scatter when his two servants attempt to cross. Going alone, Seokga meets a beautiful woman named Dongjibaek who lives below the road and a hideous woman named Sesi-aegi who lives above the road. Only the latter tells him the directions to the Western Heaven. When Seokga finally reaches the Western Heaven, a Buddha there tells him to thread three thousand beads together with a single string. He asks the two women for help, but only Sesi-aegi reveals the solution: smear the beads with honey and tie the string to a fire ant, which will thread the beads together as it is lured by the honey. The Buddha then destroys the doubled sun and moon for Seokga and uses them to create the stars, the "map of the Son of Heaven of Zhongyuan," and "the map of the Son of Heaven of Korea."
On his return to Korea, Seokga confers divinity to Sesi-aegi but dooms Dongjibaek to working in the smithy. He crosses the river on the backs of fish again and discovers that his two servants have turned into giant boulders. He makes one the god of the Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper, and the other the god of the (mythical) Seven Stars of the Southern Dipper. Back in Korea, Seokga thrashes a mouse three times until it reveals the secret of making fire (to strike iron on stone) and thrashes a frog three times until it reveals the secret to finding water (to dig for aquifers underground).
Finally, the god teaches humanity about the inevitability of death; the implication is that death did not exist before Seokga entered Korea. He is eventually cremated. He ascends into heaven, and his ashes crystallize into śarīra pearls.
Gangbangdek narrative
The Jade Emperor wishes to build a new palace and attempts to enlist the help of a sage (seoin) named Gangbangdek, a deity reincarnated as a human carpenter. The spider volunteers to bring him and weaves a web in front of Gangbangdek's door, but the carpenter kills the spider. The owl then goes to bring him to heaven, but Gangbangdek kills the bird with an arrow. A god named Eotteoki reveals that Gangbangdek is protected from the gods by an amber headband brooch, a coral topknot pin, and a blade made of wood from a lightning-struck peach tree. Eotteoki strikes the man with a sleeping disease, so that he falls asleep even while standing. Gangbangdek takes a bath to rouse himself. When he drops his brooch, his pin, and his blade, Eotteoki spirits his soul away.
Gangbangdek tells the Jade Emperor that he will need to use a tree that grows on Mount Penglai, whose branches number ten thousand and whose roots stretch out for three thousand leagues, in order to build the palace. The god commissions three thousand human craftsmen and three thousand oxen to help him in the project, and three thousand people and three thousand oxen fall dead in the human world so that their souls can cut down the tree.
While transporting the Penglai tree to the Jade Emperor's realm, Gangbangdek encounters a weaving woman named Mosi-gakssi, who proposes a challenge to the carpenter. She will weave a thousand dong (two million Chinese feet, or six hundred kilometers) of ramie cloth alone. If she finishes weaving before Gangbangdek finishes the palace, he must give all his pay to her. If Gangbangdek finishes first, she will gift him all thousand dong of cloth. Mosi-gakssi, who weaves with her loom amid the clouds, finishes earlier by a few days. The Jade Emperor gives her all of the carpenter's pay. Gangbangdek is incensed and curses the palace.
Soon upon making it his residence, the Jade Emperor falls ill. He consults his servants, who tell him that he must venerate Gangbangdek as Seongju, the god of the household. The Jade Emperor holds an enormous gut for the carpenter, involving tens of thousands of dong of cloth and tens of thousands of seok of rice. The Jade Emperor's disease is cured, and Gangbangdek becomes worshipped widely as Seongju today.
Miraculous birth and temple bell narratives
A wealthy couple, Ching'ae-dure and Ching'ae-seonbi, are childless even as they are nearing forty. One day, a Buddhist priest and sage (seoin) comes on an alms round. Chinag'ae-dure asks him if there is any way she can have a child, promising the priest as much food as he could possibly want. The priest tells her to pray with her husband at the mythical Golden Temple, and vanishes without receiving any food. After praying at the Golden Temple, Ching'ae-dure gives birth to a beautiful boy, but he never cries as a baby and has not learnt to speak even by the age of ten. When the sage returns, Ching'ae-dure asks him if he knows how to make the child speak. He tells her to pray with her husband at the Golden Mountain to the god of the Seven Stars. When they do so, their son speaks for the first time, while dancing an immortal's dance:
"Mother, look at how I act. Father, look at how I am. I will go to the Buddhist temple where I was made and become a sage.""'오마이 내거둥 보시요 아부님 내 모양 보시요 나는 내 생긴 절간에 서인님으로 가겠슴니다'"
Though his parents are devastated, the boy leaves forever. He goes to the Golden Temple, whose priests abuse and expel him for dancing an immortal's dance. The boy goes to a nearby hill and curses the temple, which is then "swept away." The priests of the temple who abused him are transformed into rat snakes. The boy-sage takes the Buddha statue and the remaining priests to found the new Geumgang Temple at the mythical Mount Anhe.
The sage sends his priests to the Eight Provinces of Korea to collect iron to forge a bell for Geumgang Temple, and goes personally to the house of a man named Wonsan-durei because he knows that something strange is there. Wonsan-durei's family is desperately poor, and the wife says that they cannot afford to give him "cast iron, or raw iron, or even broken iron"; all they have is their three-year-old son Wonmaek."무쇠도 없고 생쇠두 없고 파쇠두 없고" The sage convinces her to donate at least Wonmaek's spoon and returns to the temple. Though the priests pool together and melt their iron, they find that it cannot be forged into a bell. The sage tells a priest to bring Wonmaek to him, and the priest persuades the mother to give him the child under the condition that he be returned once the "great business of the temple" is done.
The webs of purseweb spiders sprout on the road by which Wonmaek goes to the temple. When the child arrives, the priests mix blood from his middle finger into the molten iron, but forging is still impossible. Finally, Wonmaek volunteers to enter the molten iron himself, on the condition that he be wrapped in silk. The child is thus melted alive into the iron. The bell is finally forged with the sacrifice, but the priests find that they have made a talking bell that speaks with Wonmaek's voice. The sage holds a shamanic ritual to appease and liberate the child's soul. Three years later, the bell has become unusable, its surface covered with moss. Fifteen workers destroy the bell, and shattering it into pieces. The shards are retrieved by shamans, who reforge them to make their sacred drums.
Jangja narrative