Incense Burners in the Rituals of the Koryŏ Dynasty as Described in a 12th-Century Chinese Source, Gaoli tujing 高麗圖經

Abstract

This study examines the design of two incense burners closely related to the rituals of the royal house of the Koryo dynasty that are referred to in the Gaoli tujing, a Chinese record of Koryo, written in the 12th century. The first of these incense burners is decorated with a motif called "baby animal with its mother" that was used both in garye Alt (rites conducted for royal weddings and other congratulatory rites) and binrye 14 (rites conducted when receiving foreign envoys). The second one is what is called a ding-shaped incense burner, which was used in royalgarye andgilrye rites. The article also explores the presumed former appearance of the incense burner following a tentative reconstruction of them and discusses the rituals for which they were used.The findings reveal that the ding-shaped incense burner referred to in the Gaoli tujing was a Chinese cauldron of the ding At type, which is characterized by three legs and two ears. However, in his description, Xu Jing 4L (1091-1153) - a high official of the Song court - only mentioned its three legs and supporting dish but not its two ears, which seems to imply that the vessel whose form he described might have been adapted to conform with a Koryo sense of style. On the other hand, the use of the motif baby animal with its mother as decoration on an incense burner's lid is considered typical for Koryo-style iconography, as confirmed by an extant celadon kettle decorated with a different baby-animal-with-its-mother motif that is datable to the Koryo dynasty. According to Xu Jing, these two incense burners were specifically used for royal and religious rituals, respectively. These findings contribute to the existing literature on the different types of incense burners used in ancient China and Koryo and the rituals for which they were used.