Research Article
"Western Region Person" or "Image of a Western Region Person"?
Published: January 2002 · No. 236 · pp. 45-67
Full Text
Abstract
We have already seen lots of studies revealing that "the Western Region people" had come to Korean peninsula in the period of Unified Shilla (統一新羅). Some studies proposed the possibility that the Unified Shilla played an active role in drawing many alien goods from Western Region by direct communicating with them. As a result, we often make a picture of the Unified Shilla, that is, a lot of Western Region people had stalked along the street with the Shilla people. So they concluded that whole statues similar to the Western Region people could have been made after the people whom the Shilla people had really seen.*br* I don't want to repeat this controversial debate whether they had come to this place or not. However, I put my stress on the fact that seeing them and making into a certain image are totally different things. Moreover, there had been ready-made images about these Western Region people in China, where the Tang (唐) people had seen crowds of them for more years than the Unified Shilla people. Then, is it probable that the Unified Shilla people neglect this image which many monks and merchant brought to them, and made their own special linage?*br* At first, it was in China that “Western Region people image" was made as an icon. Their characteristics are obvious and conceptualized. They have big eyes and noses with full of beards, and their facial expressions and whole body motions remind us of brave*br*warriors. They sometimes wear their own clothes, but more often wear Tang-style clothes or armours. Actually, the “Western Region people" statues of the Unified Shilla are so similar to the Tang-style ”Western Region people image" that we could hardly say it would have made by seeing them directly in Shilla.*br* A warrior statue is standing left and right at the entrance guarding a royal Unifed Shilla tomb. This seems to be Tang-style "Western Region image". The reason why this "Western Region warrior" guards this royal tomb is not because he came from Western Region. but because Vajrapa i was needed to guard the sacred place. And this Vajrapa i's image had been fixed into a Western Region people's image in Tang period. Therefore, the Unified Shilla people should have copied the ready-made Vajrapa i according to the trend, in result it is natural that it took Tang-style.*br* Communication with other people does not necessarily make a new image. The Unified Shilla people who already knows about Tang-style "Western Region people image" would have not neglected this fixed image without any special reason. As we do not say Vajrapani was made after the real Western Region people. we should be careful to say a warrior statue in the Wonsung(元聖王) royal tomb was made after the real Western Region people.
