Kanbando kara nagatneta Kittan Joshin [??][Khitan and Jurchen as seen from the Korean Peninsula].

• Author: Falkenhausen, Lothar Von
• Position: Book review

Kanbando kara nagatneta Kittan Joshin [??][Khitan and Jurchen as seen from the Korean Peninsula]. By AISIN GIORO ULHICUN [??] and YOSHIMOTO MICHIMASA [??]. Kyoto: KYOTO DAIGAKU GAKUJUTSU SHUPPANKAL 2011.

From the early tenth through the early thirteenth centuries, the Khitan and Jurchen empires successively interacted--sometimes violently--with their neighbors on the Korean peninsula. Beginning even before the respective empires began their inroads into the Chinese heartland, these interactions took locally specific forms that cannot be completely understood based on the Chinese sources alone. in order to cbtain a less biased perspective, the historiography of Continental Northeast Asia must be refocussed on the actual inhabitants of the region. This book makes a welcome contribution to the refocusing of historiography concerned with Northeast Asia on the actual inhabitants of that region by analyzing sources pertaining to Korea in the Khitan and Jurchen languages, as well as texts that, though written in classical Chinese, were at least produced in the Korean Peninsula. The body of material is 'small, but important for its concreteness and unique local flavor.

Part I begins with an extensive analysis of the term .futwur, used by the Khitan to refer to their southeastern peninsular neighbors (this word is also the origin of the modern Mongolian Sologo, "Korea"). The authors find that gulwur, which is documented in eight Khitan-language tomb inscriptions excavated in northeastern China, originally derives from the name of the (Unified) Silla kingdom (668-935), but was later successively (mis-)applied to Bohai/Palhae (698-926) and Koryo (918-1392). The remainder of Part I is devoted to an analysis of Koryo historical texts--both transmitted and epigraphic--pertaining to the Khitan and their relationship with the kingdoms in the Korean peninsula.

Part II presents epigraphic texts in the Khitan and Jurchen languages that have survived in Korea: a smattering of mirror and coin inscriptions in the "Khitan Small Script" and two stone inscriptions in the "Jurchen Large Script," one of which is preserved in the original, whereas the other, in a remote location in North Korea, was accessible to the authors only in the form of antiquarian records. Due to the superficial similarity of the scripts involved, museum curators had previously catalogued the...