The bon-puri (Jeju and Korean: , ) are Korean shamanic narratives recited in the shamanic rituals of Jeju Island, to the south of the Korean Peninsula. Similar shamanic narratives are known in mainland Korea as well, but are only occasionally referred to as bon-puri.
The bon-puri is a formalistic genre of syllabic verse that tells the story of how the deity or deities being invoked came to hold their divine position. Their recitation is believed to please the gods and encourage their participation. There are three primary types of bon-puri. The general bon-puri, of which there are twelve, involve deities who are worshipped throughout the island, such as the goddess of childbirth or Gangnim the psychopomp. The village-shrine bon-puri number more than seventy, and center on patron gods of specific communities. The ancestral bon-puri, which are the least understood, feature the patron gods of specific family lineages or occupations; the god is not necessarily an ancestor. There is a small group of bon-puri narratives which are no longer performed by shamans and which do not clearly belong to one of the three above. These are called special bon-puri.
Etymology
Bon-puri is a compound of the Sino-Korean noun bon, meaning "origin," and puri, the nominalized form of the verb pulda "to narrate." The fundamental meaning of a bon-puri is thus the story of a deity's origins, i.e. how the deity being invoked came to hold their divine position. In some phrases pulda can also mean "to soothe," and bon-puri may have the additional nuance of being a story that pleases the gods or soothes their dissatisfaction.
Ritual context
The bon-puri is always recited by shamans as part of gut rituals, where the shaman calls the gods into the human world in order to beseech their favor. Many bon-puri works explicitly state that the reason for the performance is to delight the gods and encourage their greater participation in the ritual, as in the following excerpt from the Chogong bon-puri:
By telling a god's origins, one makes the god giddy with delight
By telling a person's origins, one makes an enemy for a hundred years.
In Jeju shamanism, humans are imperfect beings whose faults become clearer the more about them is known. By contrast, the venerated gods are exemplary beings, and to recount their deeds is to make their excellence known and thereby win their favor in the ritual.
Shamans sing bon-puri while seated before and facing the sacrificial altar, and turn their back to the people. The bon-puri is always sung to the beat of the janggu drum.
Characteristics
The bon-puri is a genre of oral poetry. As no codified text exists, each shaman has their own versions of the bon-puri. However, a certain degree of consistency is expected. The ethnologist Chang Chu Keun cites one example of a Chogong bon-puri performance which was interrupted ten times by more experienced shamans, who repeatedly disputed the details given in the recitation and ultimately demanded that the performing shaman name the man who taught him. In extreme cases, the shaman may be replaced.
Bon-puri performances are initiated by an announcement to the gods that the recitation is about to begin. This is followed by a request for the gods to descend to the ritual place, then by the genealogy of the gods being invoked. The example below is from the bon-puri of the god of the village of Tosan:
We present the nansusaeng of the Great House of the Seventh Day. May you descend with full vigor to your native land... The mother of the Great House of the Seventh Day's God is Lady Baekju from the Utson shrine, and his father is Lord Grandfather Socheon-guk from the Alson shrine. First, second, third, fourth, five, sixth—he is the seventh son.
The meter of the bon-puri is based on the number of syllables. The basic meter involves a line of two four-syllable feet, but lines where the first foot has three syllables and the second foot has five syllables are also frequent. The genre is also characterized by formulaic phrases often involving parallelism or repetition, which are found identically in many different works. For instance, many village-shrine bon-puri include the following sentence word-to-word in their conclusions, describing how the protagonist became a god that governs the lives of the villagers:
With a godly book more than an armful thick and a godly brush more than a fistful thick, [the god] grinds ink for ten thousand pages in an inkstone for three thousand pages... and takes charge of the town's jangjeok and hojeok documents.