1The transmission to Korea of the Chinese classics with the Song commentaries coincided with a time of crisis besetting the country’s society. Or, to put it another way, the social and intellectual crisis that affected all aspects of life in late Koryŏ 高麗 (918–1392) provided a receptive field for the appealing picture of an ordered society the classics portrayed. The classics’ elaboration of ritualism and morality promised to serve as a potent weapon against Buddhism and, at the same time, endowed early Confucian scholars with a vision of rehabilitating state and society on the model of Chinese antiquity. Based on their trust in the Chinese classics, the early Confucians delivered the intellectual and moral programme for a wide-ranging renovation of state and society and indeed laid the sociopolitical base of the new dynasty, Chosŏn 朝鮮 (1392–1910).¹

2The Chinese classics had been studied in Korea since at least the seventh century. In 788, in imitation of the Tang system, a kind of examination system was instituted that made them mandatory study materials. Following the establishment of formal examinations in 958 with Chinese assistance, the classics were read with the Tang commentaries by Kong Yingda 孔穎達 (574–648). Koryŏ being a Buddhist state, this literature had however little influence on the quality and conduct of everyday life before a few Koryŏ scholars sought an education in the Mongol capital, Beijing. There they came in contact with the Confucianism revived by the two Song Chinese scholars Cheng Yi 程頤 (1033–1107) and Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200). Usually termed Neo-Confucianism, Cheng-Zhu Confucianism was taught in Beijing by Xu Heng 許衡 (1209–1281), its major proselytiser in Mongol China. Xu’s teachings, continued by his disciples, advocated an activist approach to public affairs as outlined in the Great Learning and stressed moral, intellectual, and political education. They were later implemented in the 1313 examination reform. This curriculum opened to the Koreans a completely new view on how Neo-Confucianism could be used to remedy the ills at home. After returning to Korea, these early students of Neo-Confucianism turned into fervent advocates of reform on the blueprint of the Chinese classics. In short, it was through the Cheng-Zhu commentaries that the classics acquired for the Koreans their potential as guidebooks for far-reaching reforms.

3The adoption of Neo-Confucianism in Korea had a highly political component in so far as it provided the momentum for the late Koryŏ elite to regain political power in the new dynasty. Although a few Confucians did not recognise the need for dynastic change, a group of energetic ideologues teamed up with military leaders to realise their vision of sociopolitical renovation. Among those who rallied around the founder of the Chosŏn dynasty, Yi Sŏng-gye 李成桂, later known by his temple name as King T’aejo 太祖 (r. 1392–98), were Chŏng To-jŏn 鄭道傳 (1337–1398) and Cho Chun 趙浚 (1346–1405), scholars who laid the intellectual foundation of a long process that transformed Korean society. Indeed, without the felicitous support of King T’aejo, a military man, it is doubtful that these scholar officials, who lacked their own power base, would have been able to institute a new dynasty built uniquely on Neo-Confucian premises.

4The dynastic architects, who envisioned the reconstruction of an ideal human order on the example of the sage kings of Chinese antiquity, needed to fill in the ideological contours with practicable precepts that would help them to construct a “Confucian” society. The three rites canons that gave them the most authoritative approach to ancient society were the Liji 禮記 (Record of Rites), the Yili 儀禮 (Ceremonials), and the Zhouli 周禮 (Rites of Zhou). These books contained a vast amount of pre-Confucian lore and presented detailed descriptions of rites guiding family, community, and state.²

The Liji in Early Chosŏn

5The Liji was a key text the early dynastic legislators studied to gain practicable guidelines for socio-ritual reform.³ They explored this intricate text with the commentaries written over the centuries in China. In Koryŏ, Kong Yingda’s commentary on the Liji, the Liji zhengyi 禮記正義 (Correct Interpretations of the Liji), was presented to the king in 1045. It was probably consulted for instituting state rituals. Because Zhu Xi had not written commentaries on the Liji except for two chapters, Daxue 大學 and Zhongyong 中庸, he isolated to make parts of his Four Books, the Koreans in early Chosŏn consulted primarily the commentary by the Yuan scholar Chen Hao 陳澔 (1260–1341), the Liji jishuo 禮記集說 (Collected Remarks on the Liji) –a text completed in 1322 and made the standard interpretation for the civil service examinations in early Ming China in 1403.⁴

6Chen Hao’s Liji jishuo served as the basis of the first Liji commentary published in Korea: the Yegi ch’ŏngyŏllok 禮記淺見錄 (Superficial Views on the Liji) by the great scholar official and classicist, Kwŏn Kŭn 權近 (1392–1409). Kwŏn, who belonged to the first generation of Confucian scholars and teachers of Neo-Confucianism, reportedly studied the ritual canon all his life. He first earned fame with his introduction to Confucian learning, the Iphak tosŏl 入學圖說 (Diagrammatic Treatise upon Entering Learning). In this work, dated 1390, he sketched classical learning in forty diagrams, one of which characterised the structure and the application of each of the Five Classics.⁵ This programmatic outline of the core values of Neo-Confucian thinking aimed at presenting Confucian ritualism as its very foundation.⁶

7With his Yegi ch’ŏngyŏllok Kwŏn apparently fulfilled a wish of his teacher, Yi Saek 李穡 (1328–1396), who opined that the rituals had been in disorder since Qin Shihuangdi’s 秦始皇帝 book burning (in 213 BC) and had not been restored fully by either the Cheng brothers or Zhu Xi. Considering the reconstruction of the rites a most urgent task, Yi apparently had intended to write a commentary himself, but old age prevented him from doing so. Kwŏn is likely to have received a copy of Chen Hao’s commentaries from Chinese scholars he met in Beijing on one of his trips to China (he made the first in 1389). Kwŏn expressed his views on all Five Classics in Ogyŏng ch’ŏngyŏllok 五經淺見錄 (Superficial Views on the Five Classics), but his Yegi ch’ŏngŏllok is the most extensive product of his prolonged inquiries on rituals. This massive work in 26 kwŏn 卷 reproduces first the original Liji text, then adds Chen Hao’s comments and, at the end, Kwŏn’s editorial notes, marked by the mention “Kwŏn an” 權按. Kwŏn was often critical of Chen’s textual rearrangements and suggested corrections of Chen’s errors. In the early chapters Kwŏn’s notes were quite extensive, but later, perhaps as he began to feel that his time was running out, they became considerably shorter. His commentaries seem to have been less concerned with initiating a new discourse on rites than with producing a correct text.⁷

8Kwŏn Kŭn submitted the Yegi ch’ŏngyŏllok to King T’aejong 太宗 in 1406. The king appreciated the work so much that one year later, in 1407, he ordered its printing with movable type.⁸ Kwŏn’s colleague, Ha Yun 河崙 (1347–1416), wrote in his preface that “the ritual classics (yegyŏng 禮經) are the great records through which the Sage [Confucius] established his teachings; they are pertinent to the everyday application of the human imperatives.”⁹ Because the 1407 edition of the Yegi was limited to a few copies, Kwŏn’s son, Kwŏn To 權滔 (n.d.), arranged for a second printing in 1418 that reportedly found wide distribution. The fact that only Kwŏn’s Yegi ch’ŏngyŏllok is preserved in printed form is likely to be due to the circumstance that his notes on the other four classics were apparently less extensive and existed only as handwritten manuscripts which were eventually scattered and lost. After Yegi’s printing blocks were destroyed by fire, a third printing took place in 1705.¹⁰

9Kwŏn’s Yegi and Iphak tosŏl, praised as the “supportive wings of the sacred canon” (uik sŏnggyŏng 羽翼聖經), became key texts in early Chosŏn. While the Iphak tosŏl was intended to be an introductory text to Neo-Confucian thought for neophytes and as such became instructional material also for the king, the Yegi was often consulted as a ritual handbook during legislative processes in the early years of the dynasty. However, the demanding intellectual level of both works may have somewhat diminished their didactic value. Even Kwŏn Kŭn was ready to recommend the more practice-oriented Xiaoxue 小學 (Elementary Learning)¹¹ for familiarising the beginner with moral values and social leadership.¹² Likewise, he annotated the Zhuzi Jiali 朱子家禮 (Domestic Rites of Zhu Xi) in a shorter work entitled Sangjŏl karye 詳節家禮 (Jiali in Detailed Steps), that became required reading for lower-level officials to pass the civil service examinations in 1403.¹³ Although for practical reasons these shorter and more manageable texts may eventually have replaced Kwŏn’s two philosophical works as instructional materials, they testify to the general intense search for ways to penetrate the wisdom of Neo-Confucian theory and practice and translate them into restorative legislation.

10Before turning to the process of how Chinese canonical sources such as the Liji were used as guidebooks for renovating state and society, it is necessary to briefly sketch Korea’s pre-Confucian society.

Fig. 1.

Korea’s pre-Confucian past

11Prior to the advent of Neo-Confucianism at the end of the fourteenth century Korean (elite) society¹⁴ was organised on the basis of bilaterally structured descent groups (that is, descent was traced through both male and female links). Such a descent group, which could be large and segmented in several branches, was a collectivity of kin focused on common ancestry. Ancestral empowerment formed the sociopolitical foundation of the elite, and elite status was consequently determined not legally but socially. A man needed impeccable bilateral descent credentials in order to claim access to top ranks in state and society. In other words: the social, that is birth and descent, determined the degree to which a man could hold political office.

12During the Koryŏ period, a kinship group was inclusive: all members, male and female, of the same generation enjoyed equal rights and duties. Fraternal equality was an important condition for generational cohesion. Succession was flexible and non-lineal. If there was no son, collaterals and even non-agnates could function as substitute heirs. Although the state tried to institute lineal succession rules for the transfer of prebendal land rights bestowed on government officials, Chinese-inspired linearity was in conflict with native bilateral tradition. The law in Korea therefore had to include non-agnatic grandsons among possible heirs. While succession to state benefits was state-controlled, the state had no power over the inheritance of private property. Its transmission from one generation to the next followed its own customary path: all of an owner’s heirs, male and female, could expect a share of the “patrimonial land” –land accumulated over generations. Brothers and sisters thus were co-heirs in a double sense: they each inherited a share of the patrimony, consisting of paternal and maternal portions, and, under certain circumstances, could expect to inherit from one another. Such expectations must have motivated siblings to hold together as long as possible, as documented by extant household registers.

13Equal inheritance led to marriage patterns that did not necessarily disrupt a common household. On the contrary, uxorilocal marriages were common so that a sister did not inevitably leave the household upon marriage; if she died without offspring, her share was not allowed to pass into the hands of affines and was demanded back by her kin. As a member of his wife’s household, an in-marrying man had for himself usufructuary rights over his spouse’s property and also established his children as potential heirs of her group. At the beginning of the dynasty (late tenth and eleventh centuries), when times were unsettled, consanguineous marriages (for example between patrilateral and matrilateral cousins or even among siblings with different mothers) were widespread for keeping an estate intact.

14Another specific aspect of Koryŏ marriages was the fact that a husband could have several wives (“visiting husband”), apparently all of more or less equal status.¹⁵ This was possible because these wives were economically independent. Since the wives often continued to live in their native households in which they were co-heirs, they did not depend on their husbands for their upkeep. The impartial treatment of a man’s plural wives was decisive for their children: all were their father’s rightful heirs and thus could also expect to inherit equal shares of his property.

15Koryŏ was Korea’s Buddhist age. Buddhism permeated every facet of social and religious life, in particular mourning and funerals. Buddhist temples and monasteries flourished because they were lavishly supported by the royal house and the elite. The most intimate rituals, especially those connected with death, were entrusted to the monks’ care. Although the kings of early Koryŏ intended to give their dynasty the trappings of a civilised state, and consequently tried to introduce the Chinese mourning system (wufu 五服) as practised in Tang China, these rules were ill suited to native custom. According to ritual prescriptions, for instance, the mourning period for the mother had to be reduced while the father was still alive. With the woman’s strong position within Koryŏ society, such a rule was ignored, and both the father and the mother were mourned for the mandatory three years. The Koryŏ adaptation of Tang law also had to take into account that a man could have several wives and thus different sets of parents-in-law: for each one he was granted leave of absence from office to fulfil his filial mourning duties. Most significant, however, is the fact that there is no mention of any ritual responsibilities of the wife toward her husband’s kin. This is an important indication that the wife was typically not recognised as a full-fledged member of her husband’s family and treated as an outsider.

16Funeral rituals were profoundly influenced by Buddhist traditions. Evidence suggests that even elite officeholders, who were most under pressure to adopt Confucian culture, saw the deeper meaning of their existence in Buddhist terms and often awaited the end of their life in Buddhist temples. For this reason, cremation was a common way of disposing of the corpse. Furthermore, the cremated remains were often deposited in a Buddhist temple until they were finally buried.

17In short, a Koryŏ elite man was foremost a member of an ancestor-focused descent group and acquired his social status from bilateral descent criteria. Thus, thinking cognatically, he could claim certain benefits or privileges on the basis of either a patrilineal or matrilineal ancestor’s prestige. He enjoyed equal status with his siblings, regardless of gender, and the sibling bond often stood in opposition to the conjugal bond. Siblings could be easily replaced by cousins, and cousins of either patrilateral or matrilateral extraction were marriageable. Attempts to adopt, according to Chinese law, a fixed line of succession for certain functions clashed with native laterality, as succession lines could run vertically as well as sideways, even crossing sex and generational boundaries. Bilateral kindred played a prime role in a man’s life, and it was from this pool of consanguines that he chose his partners and allies in life –often even his wife. Clearly, the social organisation of Koryŏ society ran counter to the strictly patrilineal patterns laid down in the Chinese classics.¹⁶

The Challenge of Reform

18When the late Koryŏ Neo-Confucians envisaged the founding of a new dynasty on the precepts they had discovered in China’s classical literature, they had to deal with very complex societal and religious circumstances. They were surrounded by Buddhist believers and were themselves deeply imbued with that religious tradition. As such, they attempted to renovate a society of which they themselves were part. Yet, they diagnosed as the greatest evils of their time the grasp of power by non-elite elements, corruption, as well as moral and religious degeneration. The establishment of a new dynasty was therefore a moral and intellectual venture for which they believed they possessed the necessary authority as the interpreters of the Chinese classics that depicted the “ancient institutions” (koje 古制) created by the Chinese sage kings, Yao 堯 and Shun 舜. Moreover, in their view the adoption of the Chinese institutions was not an arbitrary measure to restore law and order because they were convinced that they already possessed a historical link to Chinese antiquity through Kija 箕子 (Chin. Qizi), the second outstanding ruler of ancient Korea,¹⁷ who had connected Korea to the civilised, that is, the Chinese world. This conviction provided them with an optimistic spirit to tackle the monumental task of transforming Koryŏ society into a renovated society on Confucian premises.¹⁸

19The legislative process that laid the legal basis for the creation of a Confucian-style patrilineal society is illustrated below by considering first the development of the ancestral cult and the emergence of agnation and second, the consequences for women and the marriage institution.

The Introduction of the Lineal Principle and Ancestor Worship

20It has long been an accepted view that ancestor worship is a religious domain in which kinship relations are indispensable. This is clear in the Neo-Confucians’ strategy to make agnatic lineal descent groups the basic element of their socio-religious theory. In the thirteenth chapter of the Liji, “Sangfu xiaoji” 喪服小記 (“Record of Smaller Matters in the Dress of Mourning”), Zhu Xi and Cheng Yi found the “ideal type” of the agnatic descent group. This text laid out the differentiation between superordinate (Chin. taizong; Kor. taejong 大宗) and subordinate (Chin. xiaozong; Kor. sojong 小宗) descent lines within a descent group. The former was to become the socio-ritual backbone of the descent group, headed by the eldest son who functioned as the ritual heir. The latter were headed by his younger brother(s) who did not have specific ritual obligations. The religious and social preeminence of the eldest son of the main line (Chin. zongsun; Kor. chongson 宗孫) was determined genealogically and therefore was inviolable and unchallengeable. Zhu Xi made this definition of the “agnatic principle” (Chin. zongfa; Kor. chongpŏp 宗法) the fundamental concept of his Jiali. Without agnatic law, the Song thinkers believed, a descent group would disintegrate at the death of the lineal heir, and his line would therefore not be transmitted to the next generation. With the agnatic law established, the high officials of the land would preserve their houses, develop loyalty and righteousness, and make the state’s foundation firm. In short, the agnatic principle was not merely a device for sorting out a descent group; it was also an instrument for stabilising the sociopolitical foundation of the state.¹⁹

21By consulting the Chinese classics, the early Chosŏn legislators gained the conviction that the Confucian sociopolitical ideology would restore the purportedly corrupt social and economic system of late Koryŏ and establish the “natural order” of Chinese antiquity as the new moral order of Chosŏn. The implementation of this new ideology, though on the surface deceptively simple, in reality introduced a completely new rule book of ritual thinking and practices. This necessitated fundamental changes in the social structure. Although the dynastic ideologues clearly underestimated the difficulties of implanting a lineal-agnatic system in their native bilateral society as well as the degree of resistance their new legislative measures would provoke, they did recognise early on that ancestor worship was a crucial ritual practice for inculcating agnatic consciousness and moulding a lineal society. The ritualist Cho Chun, who clearly understood the pivotal value of ancestor worship, demanded, as a first measure, that the government order the establishment of ancestral shrines (Chin. citang; Kor. sadang 祠堂). The first month of 1402 was given as deadline to comply. The liturgy was spelled out in Liji’s “Sangfu xiaoji”²⁰ and condensed in the Jiali. Ignorance and resistance were, however, widespread, and most officials in the capital –the principal target of this legislation– ignored the deadline, which had to be repeatedly extended. Ancestral shrines were thus rarely built in the first half of the fifteenth century.

22By making allowances for the hierarchical structure of Korean society, Cho Chun introduced complications into the law when he graded the sacrificial obligations toward the ancestors on the basis of office-holding. A law to this effect, already enacted in 1390, ruled that the highest-ranked officials had to conduct rites for three generations of ancestral antecedents, while lower-ranked officials had a reduced programme. This rule, repeated in the new dynasty’s first law code, clearly deviated from the prescriptions displayed in the Liji and Jiali. Besides, by making ancestral obligations a matter of prestige, it gave rise to numerous disputes. How, for instance, should the ritual obligations be distributed among brothers who held offices of different ranks? As long as the most senior brother, who was the ritual heir (chongson), held a high enough office to continue the ancestral rites in the same manner as his father had done, the transfer of ritual obligations was clear. But if a younger brother attained a position higher in rank than his older brother, fraternal conflict over ritual rights was inevitable; this threatened to blur the clear delineation of superordinate and subordinate descent lines. Evidence for the inviolability of the eldest son’s ritual rights was sought in the Liji, but the chapter “The Questions of Zengzi [to Confucius]” (Zengzi wen 曾子問), which, according to Kwŏn Kŭn, “treats what is not ordinary and therefore is difficult to understand except for a sage [i.e., Confucius],”²¹ provided an ambivalent solution: if the eldest son is too poor to build a shrine, his more affluent younger brother is permitted to conduct ancestral rites temporarily, but under no circumstance is he allowed to deprive his elder brother of his ritual prerogatives.²² Clearly, traditional perseverance of prestige and social prerogatives hindered the unequivocal acceptance of the agnatic rule that put the eldest son in exclusive charge of the ancestral rites.

Linearity and Women

23Emphasis on a clearly defined main descent line gave rise to equally difficult problems when the several wives of an early-Chosŏn elite man might have needed to be classified. Only one wife, the primary wife, could after all bear the legitimate lineal heir to the main line, a fact that degraded other wives to secondary status. While Koryŏ wives seem to have had similar social standing, in Chosŏn, then, the ranking of wives, legislated in 1413, introduced sharp social differentiations: while the primary wife henceforth had to belong to the elite in order to pass elite status on to her offspring, secondary wives were chosen from commoner or even slave background. The offspring of such minor unions were regarded as “illegitimate” or secondary and consequently suffered various forms of discrimination.

24In short, although descent was henceforth reckoned exclusively through the patriline, i.e., the male descent line, status ascription continued to be determined bilaterally. Both parents of a man had to belong to a certified elite descent group for him to be considered a genuine member of elite society and a suitable servant of the state. This unique combination of patrilineality and bilaterality was expressed in the distinctively Korean formula of the “four ancestors” (sajo 四祖), which included a man’s three lineal agnatic ascendants and his matrilateral grandfather. Because secondary wives were perceived as lacking such social qualifications, their sons (Chin. shuzi; Kor. sŏja 庶子) were excluded from bona fide membership of their elite father’s descent group: as minor heirs they were not only barred from domestic ancestral rites but also disqualified from sitting the civil service examinations and, by extension, from political participation. Clearly, Confucian agnation and linearity led in Korea to discrimination against many women and their offspring –in contrast to Chinese tradition– and introduced strain and conflict into the descent group.

25The legislators of early Chosŏn found it hard to define a primary wife’s proper position in a Confucian society. In the early days of the dynasty, profiting from the weak lineal consciousness and from women’s customary strong standing in domestic affairs, a primary wife played a limited role in ancestral rites and, after the death of her husband, could even succeed, though temporarily, to the ritual heirship of the latter’s line and designate his ritual heir. These were extraordinary privileges that led to severe tension among the descent group’s male members. Called “eldest daughter-in-law” (Chin. zongfu; Kor. chongbu 宗婦), a widow thus often delayed, for economic reasons, the choice of a male successor and, more seriously, clashed with her late husband’s younger brothers who, according to traditional fraternal equality, disputed her privileges and demanded ritual heirship. With the passage of time, however, lineal awareness gained strength, and the chongbu’s privileged role in ritual affairs, which hindered the successful implementation of the lineal principle, came under increasing scrutiny. It was gradually curtailed, and later, in the mid-eighteenth century, completely abrogated. Nevertheless, after her death the widow was enshrined beside her late husband in the ancestral hall and thereby received the ultimate recognition of her status.²³

26Confucian ancestor worship largely remained the privilege of the elite according to the dictum of the Liji that “rituals do not go down to the commoners.”²⁴ Although the ritual literature explaining the minutest details of the ritual process grew vast with time, the liturgies were never uniform, and a descent group might even pride itself on its own interpretation of ritual precepts.

Marriage Rules and Wedding Rites

27As mentioned earlier, the classification of wives, introduced in 1413, demanded the singling out of one wife. This led to tension in the inner quarters because it went against tradition, and its consequences for the various wives and their respective sons were grave. Yet, the ranking of wives was intimately connected with clarifying social status and thus fixing the social boundaries of elite society.

28During Koryŏ, marriages with close cognates had been customary. Although unions with patrilateral kin were, on the basis of Tang law, gradually outlawed, those with matrilateral relatives remained largely unaffected until the end of the dynasty. Another characteristic of Koryŏ was uxorilocal marriage with the husband moving, at least temporarily, into his wife’s house. These and other Koryŏ traditions hindered the timely introduction of agnation into Chosŏn society. The early Neo-Confucian legislators therefore demanded a rigorous reform of the marriage institution.

29According to the Liji, “the ceremony of marriage is intended to be a bond of love between surnames, with a view, in its retrospective character, to securing the services in the ancestral temple, and in its prospective character, to securing the continuance of the family line.”²⁵ Marriage thus was to guarantee uninterrupted continuation of the descent group in two directions, taking the living as the starting point –toward the dead and toward the unborn.

30Based on this insight, intermarriage between close kin was henceforth prohibited so that Confucian descent groups gradually became exogamous. This development was, however, very slow because the Confucian model not only went against sentimental values, but also raised economic problems since daughters had customarily shared land and other properties with their brothers. Moreover, during Koryŏ descent groups had not been clearly differentiated as the great familiarity with the mother’s relatives blurred kinship boundaries and led to marriages with matrilateral cousins. A law of 1471 legislated the immediate drawing of a clear line between marriageable and unmarriageable matrilateral kin, and shortly afterward an edict prohibited marriage within the radius of second cousins. By the end of the fifteenth century descent-group exogamy was no longer disputed, and marriage came to be regarded as an important way of establishing affinal relations with powerful descent groups. To the regret of Confucian purists, however, economic and political rather than moral criteria were then often critical for tying affinal ties.²⁶

31No native ceremonial rite in Chosŏn Korea more persistently resisted Confucianisation than the wedding rite. The Confucian wedding ceremony, which found its permanent form in the Jiali, was based on the Liji and the Yili and consisted of the so-called “six rites” –the six steps of the wedding procedure. The climax of the Confucian ceremony was the rite during which the bridegroom personally inducted the bride into his own home where the exchange of the nuptial cup took place. The main stumbling block for this scenario was the Korean custom of uxorilocal marriage, which prevailed during Koryŏ and survived far into the new dynasty. The Confucian model demanded a reversal of the Korean custom so that the bride would be transferred to the bridegroom’s house to become a member of his descent group. Although the legislators were aware of the inertia of tradition and the practical difficulties of ritual innovation, they pressed ahead to make Zhu Xi’s Jiali the etiquette of the elite. No Confucian-style wedding among the elite is, however, reported during the fifteenth century, and the elite essentially maintained native tradition. Accordingly, the ritual conjoining of the bridal couple took place, contrary to Confucian prescription, in the bride’s house, thereby preserving the uxorilocal tradition. After the ceremony, the groom stayed for three days and then left for home to visit again later. It was often after many years had passed that the bride entered the groom’s house and paid respect first to the groom’s parents and later to his ancestors. The presentation to the ancestors was the final rite of the wedding and confirmed the bride as a full member of her husband’s descent group.²⁷

32Although the Korean wedding ceremony incorporated certain features of the Confucian ceremony, in essence it did not entail the Confucianisation of an indigenous custom, but rather the indigenisation of Confucian elements. Indeed, the locus of the wedding ceremony remained until recent times the wife’s home, validating the bride’s social status by evidencing her father’s elite background.

The Rise of Patrilines in Korea

33A prime result of Korea’s Confucianisation was the gradual development of patrilineages from the seventeenth century on. Zhu Xi’s Jiali provided the model for clearly structured, exclusive groups of agnates. The changing sociopolitical conditions, in particular the shortage of land, were additionally responsible for creating the conditions in which the narrowing of kin boundaries was a sine qua non of the elite’s social and economic survival. Indeed, Zhu’s paradigm, built on the domestic cult of near agnatic ancestors, offered an organisational framework for contracting kin boundaries to lineal descendants and keeping the land together with corporate ancestral trusts.

34In the course of the sixteenth century, a small minority of educated elite leaders began to peruse the Jiali for their ritual performances. They recognised the pivotal role of the eldest son in his position as ritual heir (chongson) and bolstered his standing in the ancestral cult with special economic allowances. The Confucian emphasis on the senior line of descent as the central element of lineage ideology gained ever greater acceptance and was expedited by economic considerations. Because partible inheritance of land not only threatened the economic standing of the landed elite, the consolidation of land in corporately held lineage trusts, sanctioned by the ancestral cult, became a necessity for sustaining elite livelihood and social prestige. According to Zhu Xi, one fifth of the inheritable wealth was to be set aside for ancestor worship, and with time this proportion grew to the extent that most land was marked as “ancestral” and put into a corporately held trust. The eldest son’s elevation to primogeniture heirship resulted in the disinheritance of his sisters and also decreased the inheritance portions of his younger brothers.

35The Confucian-induced shift to primogeniture was a momentous event in the history of Korean descent groups. Because it violated traditional fraternal equality, it created intralineage conflicts: the younger sons saw themselves excluded from both ritual as well as economic benefits and consequently often resisted the introduction of Confucian-style ritualism. It is therefore likely that primogeniture would never have materialised if it had not been for the concomitant development of a more broadly conceived worshipping group called munjung 門中.²⁸ While the “ritual lineage” (Chin. zongzu; Kor. chongjok 宗族) grouped agnatic kinsmen in front of the domestic shrine according to fixed genealogical relationships, the munjung involved and benefited to an equal degree all agnatic male descendants of a chosen focal ancestor –usually an outstanding forbear no longer worshipped in the ancestral shrine– whose grave became the focus of their worship and the core of an eventually accrued landed trust. Munjung was uncanonical and had contractual traits –it dissolved when its members dispersed. While the ritual lineage, bound to a particular locality, emphasised vertical kin relationships dictated by the Confucian concept of lineal descent and thus embraced a rather small number of kinsmen, munjung, in contrast, satisfied horizontal aspects of kinship reminiscent of the native tradition of fraternal equality and thus was able to recruit large memberships. In the course of time, munjung grew into formidable socio-economic entities that acted, if necessary, as the ritual line’s protective umbrella and also represented the latter toward the outside world. In short, these two entities –the “religious lineage” and the munjung– reinforced each other and formed the mature lineage system that emerged in late Chosŏn.²⁹

Classic Controversies in Late Chosŏn

36While the Liji was an inspirational source for remodelling Koryŏ’s bilateral society into a lineal society at the beginning of Chosŏn, it continued to be studied as one of the Chinese classics long after the Confucian transformation had become social reality. By the seventeenth century, “right learning” was defined as faithful adherence to the Way as spelled out by Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi. Indeed, the veneration of Zhu Xi went so far as to regard him as the only arbiter of truth. This inflexible and uncompromising approach was sustained by those in power and led to sharp divisions among intellectuals along factional lines. Anyone who dared to deviate from Zhu Xi’s thought was branded as heterodox (Chin. yiduan; Kor. idan 異端). Yet, there were a few scholars who questioned the “blind” following of Zhu Xi and strove to come to their own personal understanding of classical wisdom. “How is it that Zhu Xi alone knew the profound meaning of the classics and their commentaries, and we do not?”, they asked.

37One of the notorious challengers of the right way was Ch’oe Sŏkchŏng 崔錫鼎 (1648–1715) who, as a high government official, pursued scholarly interests and, among other works, authored annotations to the Liji, the Yegi yup’yŏn 禮記類編 (Classifications of the Liji). Ch’oe divided the contents of the Liji into three major categories: “rites of the domestic realm” (Chin. jiali; Kor. karye 家禮); “state rites” (Chin. bangguo li; Kor. panggungnye 邦國禮); and “scholarly rites” (Chin. xueli; Kor. hangnye 學禮). The latter comprised the Daxue, the Zhongyong, and additional parts on rites, music, learning, and moral behaviour. Altogether the Yup’yŏn was made up of fifty sections (p’yŏn 編). Ch’oe wrote that he chose this arrangement because Zhu Xi’s commentaries and later Ming emendations were too complex and detailed for the beginner to grasp the work’s essentials. Upon Ch’oe’s initiative, the Yup’yŏn was printed and even used to teach the king. Ch’oe wrote that, although he had scrupulously followed Zhu Xi as his model, he had “corrected some mistakes and discussed some doubtful points.” It took him some ten years to finish this work.

38Later evidence suggests that Ch’oe’s “emendations” and “corrections” were far more incisive than Ch’oe had admitted, and some years passed before he was accused of having intended with his work to upstage Zhu Xi, in particular by restoring the Daxue and the Zhongyong to their original (that is, pre-Zhu Xi) textual sequence. Although the king tried to shield Ch’oe from further accusers, and Ch’oe himself wrote a lengthy memorial defending his work, pressure on Ch’oe grew. He handed in his resignation, but it was not accepted. An accuser argued that the Yegi yup’yŏn had poisoned the scholarly atmosphere and excited Confucian opinion. Scathing attacks kept coming in even from the provinces, and some hotheaded students in the capital went as far as to demand the destruction of the Yegi yup’yŏn’s printing blocks and all printed copies. Despite the king’s continued support for him, Ch’oe, who was under increasing fire, begged once more for relief from office, this time by citing illness. This was at last granted, and Ch’oe retired to the countryside. Clearly, the turmoil around Ch’oe was no longer a purely scholarly affair. It had turned into a political vendetta. The king himself finally felt the pressure of “public opinion,” and in the spring of 1710 he stripped Ch’oe of his patent of office and had him expelled from the capital. This dramatic act was topped with a bonfire in which the printing blocks of the Yegi yup’yŏn and all the printed copies were reduced to ashes. This was the only book burning in Chosŏn.

39Ch’oe Sŏkchŏng’s case, and a few similar “deviations” from classical scholarship, epitomises the centrality of the Chinese classics, in particular of the Liji, in the life of the Korean Confucians. Ch’oe stood clearly at intellectual crossroads. On the one hand, he still subscribed to the Song Neo-Confucianism of Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi, but, on the other hand, he was unwilling to endorse the holistic and absolute admiration of Zhu Xi-centred Neo-Confucianism. He thus anticipated scholarly trends in the eighteenth century, when obtaining an understanding of the classics through one’s own efforts presaged the notion of “genuine experience” as an important tool of classical scholarship.³⁰

Concluding Remarks

40This article has aimed to show that the ancient Chinese ritual canons had a profound impact on the elite’s life in Korea. The ritual canons, foremost among them the Liji, inspired the early Confucian scholars to found a new dynasty on Confucian premises. Critical in promoting this process was the ancestral cult as detailed in the ritual classics and concisely summarised in Zhu Xi’s Jiali. Ancestral worship translated agnation from an ideological postulate into a lived reality. It clarified the lines of descent and also marked kinship boundaries. It fostered among the agnates rallied in front of the ancestral shrine consciousness of common descent and solidarity. Ancestral rites thus introduced a kind of ideological corporateness that functioned as the prime mover in the formation of patrilineal descent groups in Chosŏn Korea. This patrilineal contraction of the Koryŏ descent group led to the institution of primogeniture –a feature that elevated the eldest son as the ritual heir above his brothers and thus laid greater emphasis on the continuation of the main descent line than that of collateral lines. This process, initiated during the first century of Chosŏn (fifteenth century), climaxed in the late seventeenth century with the building of patrilineal lineages. These were much more rigidly structured according to the ancient models than their counterparts in China, where primogeniture was practically unknown.

41Although the Confucianisation of Korea was a unique socio-religious engineering feat that gave Korean society the reputation of being the most ritualised society in East Asia, its limitations should not be overlooked. Because Korean society remained a descent-based, hierarchical society with a long bilateral tradition, in certain aspects it did resist complete conformity to ancient rites and Zhu Xi’s prescriptions. While Chinese canonical patterns were minutely followed in key rituals, particularly in the ancestral cult, the elite’s status consciousness prevented the change of the wedding ceremony’s locus to the groom’s home.

42In sum, patrilineality was the striking result of Korea’s Confucianisation, but native bilaterality remained a very persistent social feature. Indeed, the combination of adopted patrilineality and native bilaterality typifies the socio-religious distinctiveness that set Chosŏn dynasty society clearly apart from Ming and Qing China.