ABSTRACT
Following the outbreak of the Imjin Waeran at the end of the sixteenth century, the Chos ŏ n government established two shrines, the Kwanwangmyo shrine in honor of the military god Guan Yu and the S ŏ nmusa to deify the generals of the Ming army. Rituals performed at Kwanwangmyo shrine and S ŏ nmusa were recorded in a compilation of rituals (K. saj ŏ n ) as state sacrifi ces or rites to honor the gods of heaven, earth, and man as performed by a kingdom. This manner of public worship provided a space in which Confucian beliefs could be enacted visually. The Chos ŏ n state noted all its rituals in a compilation of ritual protocol, producing Kukcho orye ŭ i (The Five Rites of the State) in 1474. 1 In the mid-eighteenth century, the government compiled a supplement, entitled Kukcho sok orye ŭ i (Supplement to the Five Rites of the State), completed in 1744. 2 It was in this book of protocol from the later Chos ŏ n period that the Kwanwangmyo shrine and the S ŏ nmusa, two shrines closely associated with the Imjin Waeran, newly gained their places as sites of low rituals. 3 Because the rituals celebrated a military god and soldiers, the chief celebrants at the Kwanwangmyo shrine and the S ŏ nmusa were military offi cials (Jr. 2) rather than civil offi cials. 4
Kukcho orye ŭ i divided all state rituals into three categories: high, middle, and low. 5 High ritual was conducted at the Sajikdan, a shrine to the gods of the land and an altar for the worship of the millet of the gods of a rich harvest, and at the Chongmyo, the royal shrine that housed the spirit tablets of former kings. Although rituals for Confucius were middle level, the Chos ŏ n court used Neo-Confucianism as its ruling ideology and placed emphasis on rites celebrating Confucius (K. munmyoje , J. sekiten ). The government established altars in the S ŏ nggyungwan, which was the state university, and in provincial schools. 6 To emphasize the legitimacy of the Chos ŏ n kingdom, the government also conducted middle-level rituals for the founders of various Korean kingdoms such as Tan’gun and Kija of Old Chos ŏ n, King Tongmy ŏ ng, Onjo, and Pak Hy ŏ kk ŏ se of the Three Kingdoms, and Wang K ŏ n, the dynastic founder of Kory ŏ . 7 However, Chos ŏ n rituals differed from the Chinese case in certain ways. 8 For example, the W ŏ n’gudan rituals that celebrated Tiandi,
the highest deity of Heaven for Confucians, were excluded from the Chos ŏ n roster, because the only person who could celebrate Heaven was the Ming emperor. 9 This understanding of the W ŏ n’gudan rituals carried over into the late Chos ŏ n period.
