Baekje百濟

The state of Baekje was, it seems, a dependency of Mahan, and it came out of the state of Saengni (索離國). Its king once went out on a journey, and while he was away a serving girl behind him was with child. The king came back and meant to kill her. The girl said, "The other day I saw a breath in the sky like a great hen's egg come down, and I was moved by it, and so I am with child." The king let her be. Later she bore a son, and the king threw him into the pigsty; but the pigs breathed on him with their mouths and he did not die. He was moved to the horse pen, and it was the same there. The king held him a wonder and had him reared, and named him Dongmyeong (東明). When he grew up he shot well, and the king, fearing his boldness, meant to kill him again. Dongmyeong then fled. Going south he came to the Eomchesu, and he struck the water with his bow, and the fish and the turtles all made themselves into a bridge. Dongmyeong crossed upon them, came to Buyeo, and reigned there as king. Among the descendants of Dongmyeong there was Gutae (仇台), deep in benevolence and good faith, who first founded a state in the old land of Daebang. Gongsun Du, the Han governor of Liaodong, gave him his daughter to wife, and so it became a strong state among the Eastern Yi. At the first a hundred households (百家) crossed over (濟), and from this it was named Baekje (百濟).

That state reaches Silla at its eastern end and touches Goguryeo in the north, and on the west and the south alike it is bounded by the great sea. It lies south of the small sea, four hundred and fifty li from east to west and more than nine hundred li from north to south. Its capital is called Geobalseong, and also Gomaseong. Outside it there are five bang besides. The middle bang is Gosaseong, the east bang Deuganseong, the south bang Gujihaseong, the west bang Doseonseong, and the north bang Ungjinseong. The king's surname is Yeo (餘氏). He is styled eoraha, and the people call him geongilji; in the speech of China both mean king. The king's wife is styled eoryuk, which in the speech of China is consort. The offices have sixteen ranks. The jwapyeong, five men, are the first rank; the dalsol, thirty men, the second rank; the eunsol the third; the deoksol the fourth; the usol the fifth; the nasol the sixth. Those of these ranks and above ornament the cap with a silver flower. The jangdeok is the seventh rank, with a purple belt; the sideok the eighth, with a black belt; the godeok the ninth, with a red belt; the gyedeok the tenth, with a blue belt; the daedeok the eleventh and the mundok the twelfth, both with yellow belts; the mudok the thirteenth, the jwagun the fourteenth, the jinmu the fifteenth, and the geugu the sixteenth, all with white belts. From the eunsol down the offices have no fixed number of holders, and each has its own busa, which divides the many duties among them. Among the inner offices there are the jeonnaebu, the gongnaebu, the naeryakbu, the oeryakbu, the mabu, the dobu, the gongdeokbu, the yakbu, the mokbu, the beopbu, and the hugungbu. Among the outer offices there are the sagunbu, the sadobu, the sagongbu, the sagubu, the jeomgubu, the gaekbu, the oesabu, the jubu, the ilgwanbu, and the sibu. The jangni are changed once in three years. Below the capital there are ten thousand households, divided into five bu, called the sangbu, the jeonbu, the jungbu, the habu, and the hubu. A bu has five hang, where officials and common folk live, and each bu commands five hundred soldiers. Each of the five bang has one bangnyeong, and a dalsol is made bangnyeong, with a bangjwa as his second. A bang has ten gun, and a gun has three generals, and a deoksol is made general; they command twelve hundred soldiers at most and seven hundred at least. The people inside and outside the fortress, and the lesser fortresses besides, are all divided up and made subject to them.

Among its people there are Silla, Goryeo, and Wa mixed in, and there are people of China too. What they eat and drink and what they wear are much the same as Goryeo. At court audiences and at sacrifices they add wings to both sides of the cap, but not in matters of war. In the rite of bowing and presenting themselves, they take it for respect to set both hands on the ground. The women do not use powder or eyebrow black. A girl braids her hair and lets it hang down behind, and once she is married she parts it into two strands and coils them on her head. The garment is like a robe, but the sleeves are a little wider. For weapons they have bows, arrows, swords, and lances. Their custom holds riding and archery in high regard, and they love the classics and the histories as well, and the outstanding among them are quite able at composing prose and skilled in the work of an official. They know medicine too, and divining by milfoil and by tortoise shell, and the art of reading faces, and the method of yin and yang and the five phases. There are monks and nuns, and temples and pagodas are many, but there are no Daoist priests. They have the music of the drum and the horn, the gonghu, the jaeng, the u, the ji, and the jeok, and games of many kinds: tuho, jeopo, tossing beads, and aksak. They prize baduk above all. They use the Yuanjia calendar of Song and take the month of yin as the head of the year. Taxes are in cloth, silk, thread, hemp, rice, and the like, graded by the measure of the year's plenty or want. Their punishments are these. Those who rebel, those who fall back in battle, and those who kill a man are beheaded; a thief is banished and pays back twice the worth of what he took; a woman who commits adultery is taken into her husband's house as a slave. The rites of marriage are much the same as the customs of the Hua. When parents or a husband die, they keep mourning for three years; for other kin they take it off once the burial is done. The soil is damp, the climate is warm, and the people all live in the hills. There are great chestnuts. The five grains, all the fruits and vegetables, and wine, sweet ale, and dishes of food are mostly the same as in the inner land; only there are no camels, mules, donkeys, sheep, geese, or ducks. The great surnames of the country are eight clans: Sa, Yeon, I, Hae, Jin, Guk, Mok, and Myo. In the middle month of each of the four seasons the king sacrifices to heaven and to the spirits of the five emperors. He has set up the shrine of his first ancestor Gutae in the capital, and sacrifices there four times a year. In the sea to the southwest of the country there are fifteen places where people live on islands, and all of them have walled towns.

In the second year of Yanxing of the Wei, its king Yeogyeong (King Gaero) first sent his champion general, commandant of the imperial equipage, and Marquis of Bulsa; his chief clerk Yeorye; and his general of the soaring dragon and governor of Daebang, the adjutant Jang Mu, with others, to present a memorial and open relations of his own accord. It said: "Your servant and Goryeo have their source alike in Buyeo, and in the time of our forebears we held the old bond in deep honour. Then their ancestor Soe (King Gogugwon) lightly cast aside the friendship of his neighbour and trampled on your servant's borders. Your servant's ancestor Su (King Geungusu) set his host in order, went like lightning, and cut off the head of Soe and hung it up; and from that time they have not dared look southward. But since the fortunes of the house of Pung came to an end and the last embers of it fled and hid, the foul kind has grown strong little by little, and at last your servant has met with scorn and pressing, and grudge has been knotted and disaster has followed for more than thirty years. If the mercy of heaven should bend down and pity him, and reach far to where there is no outside, send one general quickly to save your servant's country. Then he will send his poor daughter to sweep in the rear palace, and send his sons and younger brothers as well to feed the horses in the outer stables, and he will not dare keep for himself one foot of ground or one man. In the years after the gyeongjin year that is past, your servant saw more than ten corpses in the sea on his western border, and got clothes and vessels and saddles and bridles with them. He looked at them, and they were not things of Goryeo. Afterwards he heard that they were the king's men (王人), the envoys of the emperor, coming down to your servant's country, and that a long snake had barred the road and sunk them in the sea. Now he sends up one of the saddles he got, to be a true proof."

Xianwen, seeing that they were remote and out of the way and had braved danger to come and offer gifts, treated them with generous courtesy, and sent his envoy Shao An back together with their envoy. The edict said: "We have your memorial, and hear that you are well. You are not at peace with Goryeo, and have come to suffer scorn and inroads; yet if you can follow what is right and keep your state with benevolence, what is there to fear even from an enemy? The envoys we sent before were to float over the sea and comfort the countries of the outer waste. Years have piled up since they went and they have not come back, and whether they live or are dead, whether they arrived or did not, we cannot know for certain. The saddle you sent we have compared with the old ones we ride, and it is not a thing of China. We cannot make a certain charge out of a matter that only seems so. As for the chief points of the plan of campaign, they are set out in a separate instruction." Another edict said: "Goryeo called itself a vassal in the time of the former court, and has long offered its service. Though there be an old rift between you and them, they have as yet no fault of breaking our command against the state. You have but opened relations by envoy, and you ask at once that they be attacked; and when we look into the matter and the occasion, the reason for it is not yet complete. The brocade and cloth and the things of the sea you offered did not all arrive, but your utmost heart is clear. Now we bestow on you various goods, as set out apart." A further edict bade Ryeon (King Jangsu) escort An and the others on their way. When they came to Goryeo, Ryeon spoke of his old feud with Yeogyeong and would not let them pass eastward, and so An and the rest all turned back. An edict was then sent down reproving him sharply. In the fifth year An and the others were made to float over the sea from Donglai and carry a sealed letter to Yeogyeong praising his loyalty and constancy; but An and the rest reached the shore of the sea, met a wind, were driven about, and came back in the end without arriving.

When Jin, Song, Qi, and Liang held Jiangnan, it sent envoys to them as well and called itself their vassal, and received investiture from them; and with the Wei too it was never broken off.

When Qi received the abdication of the Eastern Wei, its king Yung (King Seong) also opened relations by envoy. Yung died, and his son Yeochang (King Wideok) likewise sent envoys to Qi. In the first year of Wuping the last ruler of Qi made Yeochang commissioner bearing the tally, palace attendant, and grand general of chariots and cavalry, and left him Duke of the Daebang Commandery and King of Baekje as before. In the second year he further made Yeochang bearer of the tally, commander of all military affairs of Dongqingzhou, and governor of Dongqingzhou.

In the sixth year of Jiande of Zhou, when Qi was destroyed, Yeochang first sent an envoy to open relations with Zhou, and in the first year of Xuanzheng he sent an envoy again to present gifts.

At the beginning of Kaihuang of the Sui, Yeochang again sent an envoy to offer the products of his land, and was appointed to the upper opened office, Duke of the Daebang Commandery, and King of Baekje. In the year Chen was subdued, a warship drifted to the state of Tammora east of the sea. When that ship was able to return it passed by Baekje, and Chang supplied it very generously and sent it on, and sent an envoy with a memorial as well to give joy at the subduing of Chen. Emperor Wen thought well of this and sent down an edict saying, "That country is far off and apart, and coming and going is hard in the extreme. From this time on it need not come to offer tribute year by year." The envoy went away dancing. In the eighteenth year Yeochang sent his chief clerk Wang Byeonna to offer the products of his land; and as the campaign in Liaodong was then being raised, he sent up a memorial asking to be a guide for the army. The emperor sent down an edict, treated his envoy generously, and sent him back. Goryeo came to know a good deal of this, and its soldiers invaded his borders. Yeochang died, and his son Yeojang (King Mu) ascended the throne. In the third year of Daye Yeojang sent his envoy Yeon Munjin to court with tribute, and in that year he sent his envoy Wang Hyorin as well to present gifts and to ask that Goryeo be attacked. Emperor Yang allowed it, and ordered him to spy out how Goryeo was moving. Yet within, Yeojang was at peace and in league with Goryeo, and he held deceit in hand and watched China. In the seventh year the emperor went against Goryeo in person, and Yeojang sent his subject Guk Jimo to ask the date the army would march. The emperor was greatly pleased, laid on rewards generously, and sent Xi Lu, gentleman of the works bureau in the department of state, to Baekje to come to an understanding with him. In the next year the six armies crossed the Liao, and Yeojang too drew his soldiers up in strict array on his border, saying aloud that he was helping the army while in truth he held to both sides. Before long a rift arose with Silla, and they were always at war with each other. In the tenth year he sent an envoy to court with tribute once more; but afterwards all under heaven fell into disorder, and the sending of envoys came to an end.

To the south of it, three months' sailing away, is the state of Tammora (耽牟羅國), more than a thousand li from north to south and several hundred li from east to west, with many roe deer and deer, and it is a dependency of Baekje. Going west three days one comes to the state of Maek (貊國), a thousand li and more, they say.