Abstract

Kŭmdok t’aejajŏn or “The story of prince golden bullcalf ” is one of the 10 texts of the Sŏkkayŏrae sipchi suhaeng gi —shortened as Suhaeng gi —which was a collection of short stories of Buddha, compiled in 1328. Some of the 10 texts of the Suhaeng gi contain verses and the Kŭmdok t’aejajŏn has as mamy as 13 verses. Relating to the employment of the verses, one remarkable thing of this text is found in its unique expression ‘yusi wijŭng’(有詩爲證), a verse‒introducing word which is nowhere to be seen in other 9 texts of the Suhaeng gi. Furthermore it is also notable that unlike verses,which are inserted into other texts, are referred only to as ‘ke ’(偈), those of this text are referred to as ‘si ’(詩) along with ‘ke’. This text also contrasts with other texts which were composed on the basis of Buddhist sutras in that it was not based on any of them. This article considers these factors to be clues exhibiting some important points of the text: when and how this story was brought into existence,when it became compiled into the Suhaeng gi, who was the story maker,and how it was circulated, etc. With the fact that the word ‘yusi wijŭng’was commonly used to introduce verses in prosimetric art of the Song period and the Won period in mind, this article proposed two hypotheses: one is to consider the hwabon(話本) of the Song period to be yusi wijŭng’s origin and the other is to consider the p’yŏnghwa(平話) of the Won period to be its origin.