The Three Han三韓

The kinds of Han (韓) are three: the first is called Mahan, the second Jinhan, the third Byeonhan. Jinhan lies south of Daebang, and on the east and the west the sea is its limit.

Mahan lies between the mountains and the sea, and it has no walled towns. There are fifty-six small states in all; the large ones have ten thousand households and the small ones a few thousand homes, and each has its own chief. Their customs have little order and rule, and they have no rite of kneeling and bowing. For dwellings they make earth houses shaped like grave mounds, with the door opening upward, and the whole household lives together inside, with no separation of old and young or of men and women. They do not know how to ride oxen or horses, and what they raise they use only for burying the dead.

In their customs they do not set much store by gold and silver or brocade and felted wool, but they prize strings of beads, sewing them on their clothes or dressing their hair with them or hanging them from their ears. The men go bareheaded with the topknot showing, wear cloth robes and straw sandals, and are brave and fierce by nature. When there is labor service in the country, or when they raise walls and moats, all the young and hardy men pierce the skin of their backs and pass a great rope through it, and shaking the rope with a pole they shout and work hard all day long and do not think it painful. They are skilled with bow and shield and spear and pavise, and even when there is quarreling and fighting they think it fine to yield to one another.

In their customs they believe in spirits. Always in the fifth month, when the sowing is finished, they gather in crowds to sing and dance and sacrifice to the spirits, and in the tenth month, when the farm work is done, they do the same again. Each state town sets up one man to take charge of the sacrifice to the god of Heaven, and they call him cheongun (天君). They also set aside a separate town, which they name sodo (蘇塗), where they raise a great tree and hang bells and drums on it. The meaning of that sodo is something like the Buddhist shrines (浮屠) of the Western Regions, but in the good and evil that they practice there is a difference.

In the first and second years of Taikang under Emperor Wu, their ruler often sent envoys to bring in the products of his land as tribute, and in the seventh, the eighth and the tenth years they came often again. In the first year of Taixi they went to He Kan, the Colonel Protector of the Eastern Yi, and presented tribute. In the third year of Xianning they came once more, and the next year they asked also to come in and attach themselves (內附).

Jinhan lies east of Mahan. They say of themselves that they were men who fled from Qin to escape labor service and came into Han, and that Han cut off its eastern border and let them live there. They set up walls and stockades, and their speech is like that of the men of Qin, and for this reason some call them the Han of Qin, Qinhan (秦韓).

At first there were six states, and later these were divided little by little into twelve. There is also Byeonjin, again twelve states, and together they have forty or fifty thousand households. Each has its own chief, and all belong to Jinhan. Jinhan always takes a man of Mahan for its ruler, and though the succession passes from age to age they cannot set up one of their own; it is clear that, being men who drifted in, they were held under the rule of Mahan.

The land suits the five grains, and their customs are rich in silkworms and mulberry, so they weave fine silk cloth well, and they work oxen and ride horses. Their customs may be likened to those of Mahan, and their weapons are the same as theirs. When a child is born they press its head with a stone to make it flat. They delight in dancing and are good at plucking the se (瑟), which is shaped like the chuk (筑).

In the first year of Taikang under Emperor Wu their king sent an envoy to present the products of his land. In the second year they came again with tribute, and in the seventh year they came once more.