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Eastern Okjeo東沃沮

Hou Han Shu Dongyi Zhuan (Accounts of the Eastern Yi in the Book of the Later Han) 後漢書 東夷列傳 · Fan Ye · 5th century (about 432–445) · 3 passages · 394 Chinese characters · reading time 1.6 min

Hou Han Shu Dongyi Zhuan (Accounts of the Eastern Yi in the Book of the Later Han) Complete in one volume A fifth-century man's ordering of how China looked at the east through the two hundred years of the Later Han. Buyeo, Eumnu, Goguryeo, Eastern Okjeo, Ye, the Three Han and Wa come in turn. Compiled some hundred and fifty years after the Accounts of the Eastern Yi in the Records of the Three Kingdoms, yet treating an earlier age, it lays bare side by side what each of the two books left out and what it added at the same places. Here are the tale of Dongmyeong striking the water with his bow and founding Buyeo, how Himiko came to be set up as ruler, and the Sodo that Mahan raised by hanging bells and drums on a great tree.

1Eastern Okjeo — when the flesh is gone they gather the bones into one outer coffin

東沃沮在高句驪蓋馬大山之東,東濱大海,北與挹婁、夫餘,南與濊貊接。其地東西夾,南北長,可折方千里。土肥美,背山向海,宜五穀,善田種,有邑落長帥。人性質直强勇,便持矛步戰。言語、食飲、居處,衣服,有似句驪。其葬,作大木椁,長十餘丈,開一頭為户,新死者先假埋之,令皮肉盡,乃取骨置椁中。家人皆共一椁,刻木如生,隨死者為數焉。

Eastern Okjeo lies east of the great mountain Gaema (蓋馬大山) in Goguryeo. On the east it reaches the great sea, and it borders Eumnu and Buyeo on the north and the Yemaek on the south. Its land is narrow from east to west and long from north to south, and folded over it would be about a thousand li square. The soil is rich, and the land has mountains at its back and faces the sea, and it suits the five grains, and they farm the fields well. The settlements have their own chiefs. The people are straight and strong by nature and quick, and they are practiced in holding the spear and fighting on foot. Their speech, their food and drink, their dwellings, and their clothing are like those of Guryeo.

For a burial they make a great wooden outer coffin more than ten fathoms long, and they open one end of it for a door. One newly dead is first buried for a time, until the skin and flesh are all gone, and then the bones are taken and put into the outer coffin. All the people of one house share a single outer coffin, and they carve wood in the likeness of the living, as many figures as there are dead.

2The commandery of Hyeondo moves away, and Okjeo belongs to Guryeo

武帝滅朝鮮,以沃沮地為玄菟郡。後為夷貊所侵,徙郡於高句驪西北,更以沃沮為縣,屬樂浪東部都尉。至光武罷都尉官,後皆以封其渠帥,為沃沮侯。其土迫小,介於大國之間,遂臣屬句驪。句驪復置其中大人為使者,以相監領,責其租稅,貂、布、魚、鹽、海中食物,發美女為婢妾焉。

Emperor Wu destroyed Joseon and made the land of Okjeo the commandery of Hyeondo. Afterward it was invaded by the Yimaek (夷貊), and the commandery was moved to the northwest of Goguryeo, and Okjeo was made a county again and put under the Eastern Commandant of Nangnang. When Emperor Guangwu came, the office of commandant was done away with, and afterward they all enfeoffed the chiefs there and made them marquises of Okjeo.

Their land is cramped and small and lies between great countries, and so at last they became subject to Guryeo. Guryeo again set up great men from among them as saja, to watch over them and lead them and to exact their taxes in sable and cloth and fish and salt and the food of the sea, and they took the beautiful women of Okjeo to be serving maids and concubines.

3Northern Okjeo — what the sea carried in

又有北沃沮,一名置溝婁,去南沃沮八百餘里。其俗皆與南同。界南接挹婁。挹婁人喜乘船寇抄,北沃沮畏之,每夏輒臧於岩穴,至冬船道不通,乃下居邑落。其耆者言,嘗於海中得一布衣,其形如中人衣,而兩袖長三丈。又於岸際見一人乘破船,頂中復有面,與語不通,不食而死。又說海中有女國,無男人。或傳其國有神井,窺之輒生子云。

There is also Northern Okjeo, which is also called Chiguru (置溝婁), and it is more than eight hundred li from Southern Okjeo. Their customs are all the same as in the south. Their border touches Eumnu on the south. The people of Eumnu like to go in boats and plunder, and Northern Okjeo fears them, so that every summer they hide in caves in the rocks, and when winter comes and the sea road is closed they come down and live in their settlements.

Their old men say that once they got a cloth garment from the sea, and its shape was like the clothing of the people of the central land, but the two sleeves were three fathoms long. They say too that at the water's edge they saw a man in a broken boat who had another face in the top of his head; they spoke to him but could not understand him, and he would not eat and died. They say also that in the midst of the sea there is a country of women where there are no men. Some hand it down that in that country there is a holy well, and that a woman who looks into it conceives a child.