Talk:Korean creation narratives

First comments
As I said before it will be a while before I get time to read properly, just a couple of things
 * I don't know if you use [User:Evad37/duplinks-alt this script], but there appear to be a couple of duplicated links
 * Thank you for taking this on and for letting me know of that script, the duplicated links have been removed.


 * In my FAs, I often mention obscure plants, insects or bacteria, which are notable by definition. Reviewers therefore often make them into red links, which I don't like, so I'll write a one-sentence stub. Gods like Mireuk must be notable, so you might consider doing the same. Incidentally, Mireuk is a re-direct to Maitreya, but I don't know if that's appropriate for your purposes Jimfbleak - talk to me?  11:04, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Unlike in Western polytheistic pantheons, the gods of Korean mythology exist largely independently of each other—Mireuk as a shamanic deity (and not in the Buddhist context as Maitreya) appears only in the creation narratives, for example, and none of the creator gods are the objects of active worship—so I'm not sure that the deities would deserve their own articles independent of the myths they feature in. I will consider doing so for some of the rituals mentioned, though, like the Durin-gut.--Karaeng Matoaya (talk) 15:20, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

more
So far I’ve read down to relationship with Buddhism
 * Shouldn’t wikisource links be at the end?
 * I couldn't find any relevant information in Manual of Style/Linking, but my feeling was that if the actual topic of discussion (or examples of such) is included in WS, it should have a relatively prominent position in the article.


 * Seems a bit underlinked, words like “cosmos” and “primordial” won’t be in every reader’s vocabulary
 * The two specific examples have been addressed. More generally, I'll admit that the vocabulary here tends on the academical side of things, but I'm not sure to what extent this should or can be fixed. The topic itself is quite academic—it's not well-known in South Korea itself outside academia and maybe older folks in Jeju Island.


 * ’’unbearably hot during the day and unbearably cold at night ‘’ perhaps avoid repetition
 * Second "unbearably" has been removed.


 * ’’beseeched the gods for long life and sons ‘’ perhaps ’’beseeched the gods to grant long life and sons ‘’
 * Done.


 * ’’which, however, opens with a lengthy creation narrative ‘’ not sure what the function of “however” is here
 * The idea was that it connects the existence of the creation narrative to the opposing fact that it's mainly a Jeseok myth, not a creation one.


 * Danggeum-agi (titled after the heroine of the myth) &mdash;I’d just keep the English explanation, the name isn’t a title meaning as headed
 * Done, but what do you think about the "Song of Danggom-agi" then?

Comment. 'The eponymous Song of Danggom-agi'?
 * ”Incipit” is pretty obscure, link or replace
 * Replaced and reworded.

Comment. I can see Jim's point, but incipit can be linked, and has a technical nuance, especially in creation stories or myths (in my reading I see it every other day, because I read a lot of that material). Sometimes, esp. now that links allow instantaneous comprehension, expanding the reader's familiarity with technical terms is good encyclopedically. A second consideration is that this outstanding piece of ethnography is not going to grab casual readers by the scruff of their curiosity, but will certainly attract many specialists for whom the word is a commonplace. Just a suggestion.Nishidani (talk) 14:25, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * ’’grow a good flower won by stealing the other's flower ‘’ there are a lot of flower repetitions throughout, vary a bit with blossom etc
 * About two dozen flowers have been removed or replaced.


 * ”rooster “ I wondered about this AE term, but I guess it’s obvious to a BE speaker what it means
 * ’’The flower is grown in a silver platter ‘’ platters are flat, so perhaps “on” rather than “in”
 * This instance of "platter" should actually have been "jar" (Korean dong'i), the mistake has been fixed.--Karaeng Matoaya (talk) 12:36, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Jimfbleak - talk to me?  15:55, 25 July 2020 (UTC)


 * transfigured into natural objects. A bit vague, do we know what they became
 * That paragraph is a summary paragraph for the rest of the section; the specific objects (pine and rock) are mentioned in the final paragraph.


 * In Jeon's Changse-ga, the first contest is to shatter a bottle of liquor liquor needs some variation in this para
 * Reworded.


 * of Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth Why the caps?
 * This is conventional in English for the Five Phases from what I've seen.


 * its internodes are hollow, bamboo leaves actually grow from the nodes, which are solid is a real Easter egg of a link, with little relationship to plant stem
 * I'm not sure quite what to do about this, as Plant stem is the only article that discusses nodes and internodes in the growth of leaves. We don't have dedicated articles for either.


 * cosmogonic obscure and unlinked
 * Linked, although admittedly the target article (or any article in Wikipedia, for that matter) does not properly discuss Eliade's theories.--Karaeng Matoaya (talk) 14:54, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Jimfbleak - talk to me?  14:01, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

A few other suggestions
On the repetition of ‘narrative’

The mainland narratives themselves are subdivided into four northern and three eastern narratives, along with one from west-central Korea.(in the paragraph itself ‘version’ is used once, ‘narrative’ 5 times.


 * "The mainland versions themselves are subdivided into four northern and three eastern varieties, along with one from west-central Korea."

Perhaps =
 * "Korean creation stories belong to the genre of shamanic tales: hymns with a mythological content, sung by shamans during gut rituals, often bear the title of  puri ( narration)  or bon-puri (origin narration') in Korean."


 * ’more experienced shamans to newer ones’. The comparative ‘Newer’ is awkward here, because by definition an acolyte/ neophyte/initiand is under the tutelage of a master. Initiand, linked to initiation, is strictly speaking more precise because both neophyte and acolyte bear nuances in English of ‘high’ religions (though there is nothing high or low about various belief systems)

Suggest =
 * "‘accomplished shamans to their disciples/initiands.'"


 * "Eight creation narratives have been preserved from mainland Korea.[7][8] Some are independent narratives. Others survive as elements of the Jeseok bon-puri, a pan-Korean shamanic narrative"

= 'a pan-Korean shamanic cycle.'(On the lines of the extraordinary Djanggawul song cycle Ronald Berndt transcribed and analysed in his classic monograph, Djanggawul: An Aboriginal Religious Cult of North-Eastern Arnhem Land (1952))

Perhaps =second phase.
 * "it was sung as the second step of the Dodang-gut"

I hope these suggestions are not completely useless. Feel free to bin them.Nishidani (talk) 15:37, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the (not at all useless!) suggestions. I've taken all of them into account, except for the "narrative > cycle" one. My understanding of "cycle" is of the sort described in the literary cycle stub, and Korean shamanic narratives are not of this sort; they're in fact quite remarkable for their self-containedness, to the point that it is outright surprising for one deity to appear in multiple myths.
 * I'm also generally attached to the term "shamanic narrative." In Korean academia where effectively all relevant research has been conducted, the genre is without exception referred to as 서사무가/敍事巫歌 seosa muga "narrative shamans' songs". "Shamanic narrative" is the most common English translation of this key Korean term, and it should be understood to some extent as a proper noun that shouldn't be easily reworded.--Karaeng Matoaya (talk) 15:47, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I can't help flying off into a flight of 'shamanic' fantasy whenever my eye catches the character 巫 a flourish of poetic images of a chanting dancer and historical memories, since my mind was set on fire by reading a paper on the history of the character written by the younger brother (L.C. Hopkins) of my favorite poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins.
 * Three things:(a) what is the proportion of males to females (mudong) in Korean shamanism? Eliade had a silly theory about that, but from my reading of the corresponding figures in Japanese shamanism, the role was predominantly feminine.
 * (b) You corrected 'platter' to 'jar' above, citing dong'i. I don't know Korean but I do recall that ancient Korea silver bowls or platters (not necessarily flat) were highly prized and known as 'Silla' (新羅) basins in China.Nishidani (talk) 16:41, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * (c) In really archaic shamanic songs, from my broader reading of ethnography, there is an intricate vocabulary for flora, resonant with allusions. Are the flowers just a generic descriptive abstraction, or are distinctions made between varieties of flower? If you're busy, don't bother to reply.Nishidani (talk) 16:41, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * (a) In mainland Korea most shamans are female by a ratio of about two to one, which has been stable for the past century. Female shamans are also generally higher-ranked and deemed more spiritually potent.
 * This may be a recent phenomenon. As you might be aware, the Joseon state (1392―1910) upheld a dogmatic form of Neo-Confucian ideology whose fervor is without East Asian parallel. The end result of the Confucian transformation of Korea was that popular religion became gendered; Confucian practices and worship were construed as masculine, and the indigenous shamanic religion was perceived as feminine. Accordingly, female shamans became more common, especially since the norms of gender segregation enforced by the Joseon state meant that it was difficult—scandalous, even—for a male shaman to perform rituals for female worshippers.
 * Sources on shamanism prior to the twentieth century are fragmentary to the point of uselessness, but it is important to note that in Jeju Island (whose peripheral location meant that Confucianization was delayed significantly, and whose shamanism is thus the most archaic) there are about as many male shamans as female ones. The highest-ranking Jeju shamans were also usually male until the collapse of the traditional priesthood that began in the 1960s. So the pre-Joseon form of shamanism may have been somewhat patriarchal, or at least not as women-centered as it is today.
 * An additional note that mudang may not be the most appropriate term—see the Wiktionary entry for a very brief overview.
 * (b) Very interesting, I really should look more into that.
 * (c) The flower in the flower contest is variously a magnolia, a lotus, a pear blossom, or a generic flower in the mainland accounts. The magnolia is probably the original variety, given that it appears in the Ryukyuan myths and that the lotus is obviously due to Buddhist influence. The pear blossom may also be a product of Buddhist influence due to a phonetic similarity between the Korean words for "pear blossom" and "navel". In Jeju, Daebyeol-wang's flower is described as a generic healthy flower, while Sobyeol-wang's one is often specified as a 修羅滅亡惡心꽃 Sura-myeolmang-aksim-kkot "flower of asura and destruction and evil mind".
 * Flower symbolism is of paramount importance in Korean shamanism. In the mainland we have the Princess Bari myth, and all ceremonies are accompanied by paper models of various mythical flowers. In Jeju religion, he goddess of childbirth manages a garden in the west where human souls grow in the form of flowers. Flowers are used in the fertility ceremony for the deities of childbirth and young children, which includes a pregnant mother plucking a flower to divine the future of the pregnancy and a ritual destruction of the sura-myeolmang-aksim-kkot in order to ward off the threat of death from the mother and the child. Other sorts of flowers grow in this garden, including the sura-myeolmang-aksim-kkot and also ones that govern human emotion, such as the useum-useul-kkot "laughter-laughing flower."
 * But the flowers of Korean shamanism are not associated with any real flowers, to the point of being represented by paper and not physical flowers, and are strictly mythological.--Karaeng Matoaya (talk) 14:13, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks indeed. That is deeply informative, as one has come to expect from you.Nishidani (talk) 18:27, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks indeed. That is deeply informative, as one has come to expect from you.Nishidani (talk) 18:27, 4 August 2020 (UTC)