Catastrophe: An Investigation Into the Origins of the Modern World (26 page)

In
A
.
D
. 535—the very year the climatic disaster started in China and almost certainly in Korea as well—the only surviving pagan state in the peninsula, the Kingdom of Silla, decided to adopt Buddhism. It was a momentous decision that was to play a key role in creating the circumstances that led to the emergence of a united Korea. Once again, the sixth-century climatic events seem to have helped realign geopolitics and redesign history, bringing to a close the era of ancient Korea and ushering in its protomodern successor. But how did the climatic events of the 530s lead to the adoption of Buddhism, and how did the adoption of that particular religious faith lead ultimately to the unification of a country that over the centuries was to grow into an important regional political power and then, more recently, into a major second-tier world industrial power?

According to the record of Korean history of the sixth century, the so-called
Samguk sagi,
535 seems to have marked the start of a period of climatic chaos in the peninsula.
¹
The climate in the period 535–542 was among the two worst bouts of weather experienced in Korea during the whole of the sixth century.

Although some of the
Samguk sagi
material covering the sixth century is often regarded skeptically by historians, the climatic details (especially the 530s and 540s entries), correlate so well with data from the rest of the world that the Korean material has to be considered to have some credibility. Taken together, the climatic data for north China, Korea, and Japan for 535 and 536 is quite striking.

In north China, only 120 miles west of Korea, the
Bei shi
(the north Chinese annals) say that by March 535 drought conditions were so intense that “there was an imperial edict which ordered that in the capital, in all provinces, commanderies and districts, one should bury the corpses.” By May 535 not only had the crops failed (almost certainly the cause of the deaths referred to in March), but even supplies of drinking water were running short.

In Korea itself, the
Samguk sagi
records that in 535 there was flooding and that in 536 “there was thunder and also a great epidemic” followed by “a great drought.” To add to the problems, an earthquake hit Korea in late 535. All these Korean records for 535 and 536 pertain to the northern and central part of the peninsula, not the southern part; there is no information available at all from the south for these years, but records from Korea’s eastern neighbor, Japan, suggest climatic chaos there, too. The 536 entry in the Japanese chronicle
Nihon shoki,
suggests that people were suffering from appalling hunger and were “starving of cold.”
²

It is virtually inconceivable that, alone in the region, the Kingdom of Silla escaped the climatic disaster of 535–536. It is therefore vital to look at the adoption of Buddhism in Silla against the background of natural catastrophe.

Prior to the 530s, the dominant system of religious beliefs in Silla appears to have been one in which nature spirits and ancestors were seen as being able to influence all natural phenomena. There was no one religion, just a series of local cults centered around local spirits and deities. Nevertheless, there were common rituals, feast days, and beliefs, and religious matters were broadly in the hands of shamanic priests or priestesses.

There was a belief in immortality, at least of the soul, and the elite were buried along with golden jewelry they had worn in life and winged crowns and caps that may have symbolized their shamanic power to ascend to heaven. Certainly in the neighboring region of Kaya, the dead had at one time been supplied with pairs of large bird wings to facilitate their flight to eternity. Magic, divination, and ancestor worship were practiced, and the entire population celebrated key holy days, probably including the seed-sowing and harvest festivals when drums may have been played to invoke the help of, or to thank, the spirits or deities of the harvest or those of the sky.

Buddhist ideas first began to take permanent root in Silla early in the sixth century, when a Chinese diplomat and Buddhist missionary arrived at its royal court. The king was sympathetic, but most of the aristocracy was stubbornly opposed to the new faith. Indeed, a previous attempt to introduce Buddhism in the mid–fifth century had also run into massive opposition and had failed.

But then came the climatic disasters of 535–536, which must have been so severe that they had, by 536, led to a massive outbreak of disease (the “great epidemic” referred to above), presumably following on the heels of famine. Buddhism must have been seen by the Silla monarchy, and no doubt by much of the population, as essentially a more powerful form of magic than their own assorted spirit deities. It was identified with the power and the glory of the Chinese empire and regarded with some awe. Only the conservative aristocrats, with their vested interest in the social and religious status quo, were opposed, and it is likely that as the climatic chaos started to bite and crops started to fail, the balance of power between pro- and anti-Buddhist camps at court tipped in favor of what was seen as the strongest brand of disaster-curing magic on offer.

The official adoption of Buddhism by the Silla government in 535 can now be seen as the key watershed in Korean history, for it launched Silla on an expansionist path that ultimately led to the creation of a united Korea.³ But how did this happen? After all, the two other Korean kingdoms—Paekche and Koguryo—had been Buddhist for more than 150 years and their conversion had not led to such developments.

It was essentially a matter of timing. The fact that Silla was the last to be converted gave it considerable advantages in the peninsula’s geopolitical struggles. In a sense, it gained what its competitors had gained from Buddhism—an aggressive sense of national identity and destiny. But because the two other Korean kingdoms, Paekche and Koguryo, had converted a century and a half earlier, it was Silla alone that was also able to benefit from the positive political organizational aspects of its very recent pre-Buddhist past.

Buddhism in Paekche, Koguryo, and elsewhere had tended to encourage the development of absolute monarchies at the expense of aristocratic/royal oligarchies. Although there were some advantages to absolute kingship systems, they were, on the whole, more vulnerable to political destabilization. On the other hand, pre-Buddhist, pre-absolutist, more oligarchical systems in which royalty and top aristocrats essentially shared some aspects of power were, in many cases, probably more stable and had deeper social roots through the traditional aristocratic network.

In a sense, in the decades following the 535 conversion, Silla enjoyed the benefits of being Buddhist without its political drawbacks, and it also enjoyed the pre-Buddhist political system, which did not immediately die with the introduction of the new faith and which, at least for a time, guaranteed social organization and the loyalty of virtually everybody who mattered.

It was based on a principle known as
kolp’um
—literally, “bone rank”—which held that everyone had a specific inherited niche in society. The whole population was divided into eight ranks. Some members of the royal family belonged to the top group, the
songgol
(hallowed-bone rank); minor royals and a few top aristocrats belonged to the
chin’gol
(true-bone rank); and most aristocrats belonged to “head ranks,” six, five, and four. The rest of the population belonged to head ranks three and two and, at the very bottom, head rank one. The daily life of this extraordinarily organized and ordered society was determined utterly by the rank system. True-bone houses could be a maximum of twenty-four Korean feet in length or width. One rank down (head rank six) and you were restricted to twenty-one feet. Head rank five had to content themselves with eighteen-foot-wide homes, while everyone else was forbidden to exceed fifteen feet.

Bone rank and head rank even governed what color clothes an individual was permitted to wear and what color trappings his horse could have. All state positions were also ranked so that, for instance, those in head rank six could not have jobs above office rank six, and those in head rank five could not aspire to anything more than office rank ten. And in a system mirrored in the British army in the nineteenth century, only true-bone aristocrats were allowed to hold the top military positions.

To express its new Buddhist-inspired determination—and despite the climatic disaster still raging in East Asia (presumably including Silla)—the king announced in 536 the beginning of a new era, the
konwon
(literally “the initiated beginning”). Buddhism was usually beloved of monarchs because it defended and promoted the concept of the state as being of almost supreme importance. Indeed, a massive nine-story Buddhist shrine, the Temple of the Illustrious Dragon, was later built in Silla’s capital, and the population, from the lowest-ranking to the highest, maintained that its nine stories symbolized their nation’s destiny to conquer nine other countries—including Japan and China. Silla Buddhism also began to claim that some of its bravest fallen warriors—boy-soldiers of the so-called
hwarang
(flower of youth)—had been reincarnations of Lord Buddha (technically, incarnations of the reborn Buddha, the Maitreya).

Inspired by Buddhist-derived nationalism and strengthened by its still strong pre-Buddhist social traditions, Silla succeeded in trebling its territory between 550 and 576. Interestingly, another development initially set in motion by the 530s climatic destabilization—China’s move toward unity—helped create, in turn, a Korean desire to unify their peninsula in the face of Chinese aggression.

This unity was achieved in 675 under Silla direction and survived the demise of the kingdom of Silla itself. Its successor state, Koryo (Korea), rose in the early tenth century like a phoenix from its ruins and preserved the Sillan legacy of a united Korea—a legacy that has endured from that day till this, except for the north-south division of the past forty years.

“ T E N  T H O U S A N D  S T R I N G S
O F  C A S H  C A N N O T
C U R E  H U N G E R ”

“F
ood is the basis of the empire. Yellow gold and ten thousand strings of cash cannot cure hunger. What avails a thousand boxes of pearls to him who is starving of cold?”
¹

Thus says the major chronicle of early Japan, the
Nihon shoki,
in words attributed to an edict issued by the Japanese king Senka in the year 536.
²
It is the only entry of its type in the entire 120,000-word chronicle, and it is no coincidence that its date coincides precisely with the climatic disaster that was unfolding worldwide at exactly that time.

As with so many countries around the world, Japan’s crucial period of emergence was the sixth century
A.D.,
a century in which the climatic chaos of the 530s had acted as one of the key initial motors for change. In Japan, climatic catastrophe was translated into massive political and religious change through four key interrelated factors: climate, migration, disease, and religion.

The crucial sequence of events actually began in Korea, where in 536 (and probably already in 535) drought and famine had struck. The pattern of drought followed by intense famine is documented in greater detail in the north Chinese annals pertaining to areas just 120 miles from Korea, but it is probably safe to assume that Korea would have suffered equally.