Semin-hwangje bon-puri

Semin-hwangje bon-puri
First page of the transcription of the 1931 version
Korean name
Hangul	세민황제본풀이
Hanja	世民皇帝本풀이
Revised Romanization	Semin-hwangje bon-puri
McCune–Reischauer	Semin-hwangje pon-p'uri

The Semin-hwangje bon-puri is a Korean shamanic narrative formerly recited in southern Jeju Island during the funeral ceremonies. As it is no longer transmitted by the oral tradition, it is classified as one of the special bon-puri.

Two versions of the myth are known. In the older version recited in 1931, the tyrannical Chinese emperor Taizong of Tang dies and is obliged to compensate those he had taken unjustly from while alive. However, his afterlife vaults are virtually empty, as he has given so little to charity while alive. The emperor pays off his victims by borrowing from the rich afterlife vaults of a couple named Maeil and Jangsang, and is then allowed to return to the living world. The resurrected emperor disguises himself as a beggar and observes Maeil and Jangsang's good works firsthand. He resolves to live a moral life, sends a monk to retrieve the Buddhist canon from the divine realm of Sukhavati, and takes Maeil and Jangsang as his mentors. The much shorter and rather disorganized 1961 version begins with a discussion of Maeil and Jangsang's charity and ends with the two building a bridge to the afterlife, with Taizong only appearing in the middle of the story.

The Semin-hwangje bon-puri is a shamanic adaptation of the Tale of Tang Taizong, a Korean Buddhist novel itself inspired by a small portion of the sixteenth-century Chinese novel Journey to the West. The 1931 version is much closer to the Buddhist source than the 1961 version, but both diverge somewhat from the original novel—such as by emphasizing the role of Taizong as more of a human individual than as an emperor—in order to better fit the new shamanic context. The narrative also shows influence from other shamanic narratives and from folktales.