ABSTRACT
SILLA, in the south-east, was the furthest from the Chinese colonies and though it had traded with them, its culture developed in a way that showed much less of their influence. Their own shamanistic beliefs had reached high levels of artistic expression, with graceful flying horses as their angels and fantastic masks, crowns and ornaments of gold and jade for their royal priesthood. The ruler was known as the isagum or 'successor prince', and the succession was not yet from father to son, but in an earlier style still based on consensus and qualities of leadership so that it more often went to brothers, nephews or cousins than to sons. Once chosen from two, or three, clans, after the time of Naemul, who reigned from 356 to 402 and had been responsible for calling in Kogury 's Kwanggaet'o against Paekche, the title was changed to maripkan and became the hereditary privilege of the Kim family. After his death the office went to a mature relative rather than to his young son Nulchi but in 417 Kogury intervened to put Nulchi on the throne. From this point, as in Kogury , a father to son succession was formalized, but the Kims were required to take their queens from the still powerful holy-bone family of Pak.
