The Ethnolinguistic History of Koguryo

Abstract

The Puyo-Koguryoic peoples shared the same origin myth, the earliest preserved account of which, the Puyo version, is recorded in a Chinese philosophical work from the first century A.D., the 論衡 Lun Heng, by 王充 Wang Ch’ung.1 Versions of the myth are found in several of the standard Chinese histories, as well as the 廣開土王 King Kwanggaet’o memorial inscription of 414 A.D., and have been studied and translated by folklorists and other scholars (Gardiner 1982; Song 1974). The combined version of the legend presented here takes into account the main features of the different early versions, none of which include all of them.