CHAPTER V
MEDIEVAL HISTORY
UPON the founding of the kingdom of Koryu, with its capital at Songdo, a new and different regime was inaugurated. There seems to have been something of a reaction against Chinese ideas. From the start Koryu was dedicated to Buddhism and Buddhistic thought.
This was an Indian rather than a Chinese cult, and it appealed rather more strongly to the Korean imagination than did the bald materialism of the Confucian code. It is on this theory alone that we can account for the temporary rehabilitation of Korean virility. So long as Buddhism was held within bounds, and was the servant rather than the master, the Koryu state flourished. The people began in a gradual way to assimilate some of the material for thought which the Chinese intellectual invasion had deposited here, and out of it all the Koreans evolved a rather nondescript, but still a workable, plan of national life. But erelong it appeared that the pendulum had swung too far, and their fanatical adhesion to Buddhism led them into difficulties which were almost worse than those which they had escaped. The priesthood encroached more and more upon the prerogatives of the state, and assumed more and more of the political power, until at last the king himself was constrained to don the monastic cowl. This was not until two centuries after the founding of the dynasty, but the transformation was sure though slow. It was during this time that Japan received such an impetus in the direction of Buddhism. She obtained large numbers of books and vestments and other ritualistic necessities from Koryu, and it is probable that a number of Korean monks went to Japan to teach the cult. There is very little mention of this
