Du Clan Tongjeon Hall

The Dusi Tongjeon, compiled by the Tang-dynasty Chinese chancellor Du You (735–812), classifies China's historical institutions from high antiquity down to the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang into eight categories: food and goods, the selection of officials, official posts, rites, music, punishments (including military affairs), prefectures and commanderies, and the frontier; it is also known simply as the Tongjeon (Comprehensive Institutions). Together with the Tongji, compiled by Zheng Qiao in the Southern Song, and the Wenxian Tongkao, compiled by Ma Duanlin at the turn from Song to Yuan, it is so central to the study of China's history of institutions and material culture that the three works together are known as the "Three Comprehensive Histories". This copy of the Dusi Tongjeon, held by the Seoul Museum of History, is a movable-type edition of 200 volumes bound into 75 books, printed with the medium-size Eulhaeja type, cast in 1455 (the first year of King Sejo) using the calligraphy of Kang Hui-an as its model. The first page of the first book bears the royal seal reading "Seonsajigi" (Record of Royal Bestowal), which shows it must be a royally bestowed copy, although no accompanying bestowal inscription survives. However, copies of the Tongjeon printed in the same format — nine lines of seventeen characters per line, half-frame 22.5 cm by 16 cm — using the Eulhaeja type and bearing a bestowal inscription survive, one set each, at Dosanseowon Confucian Academy in Andong and at the Hosa Bunko in Nagoya, Japan. Since these were printed in September 1560 (the 39th year of the Jiajing era, the 15th year of King Myeongjong), the copy held by the Seoul Museum of History appears to have been printed in the same year. The first page of every book in the Seoul Museum of History's copy also bears ownership seals reading "Yanggok", "Gwangsan Hu-hak" (a later scholar of the Gwangsan clan), "Kim-ssi Bu-ui", and "Sinjung", or "Gwang-Kim", with a further seal reading "Gwang-Kim□□" on the last page, indicating that the set was owned by Kim Bu-ui (1525–1582). Kim Bu-ui was from Ocheon in Yean, belonged to the Gwangsan clan, and had the courtesy name Sinjung and the pen name Eupcheongjeong; he was the second son of Kim Yeon (1487–1544) and a disciple of Yi Hwang. According to a colophon written by Jo Tae-eok (1675–1728) in July 1722, this set was originally bestowed in 1407 upon his tenth-generation ancestor Jo Mal-saeng (1370–1447), posthumously honoured as Mungang-gong, and was later obtained by his grandson through a daughter, Kim Bu-ui, through whom it passed down in the Yeongnam region. Jo Tae-eok himself, on hearing of this while serving as Governor of Gyeongsang Province in the winter of 1720, went to Yean County and reacquired the set from Kim Dae, a descendant of Kim Bu-ui; a missing volume was then supplemented by copying a Tang-period edition held in the Okdang, the Hongmungwan, and printing it with the cast type of the Ungak, the Gyoseogwan.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Jongno-gu, Seoul

Designation

Provincial Tangible Heritage · 시도유형문화유산