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The year 2019 marks the seventieth year since Princess Jeonghye’s epitaph was discovered. An epitaph refers to an inscription that contains the name and title of as well as the deeds done by the deceased. For such details about Princess Jeonghye of Balhae, it took the world 1,269 years to find them on an epitaph that had been buried since 780. And as much as the epitaph of Princess Jeonghye has been acknowledged as an invaluable source to studying Balhae history, it has also become a subject of countless controversies. To commemorate the upcoming seventieth anniversary of the discovery of Princess Jeonghye’s epitaph, this article will offer a brief introduction to less known documents involving the epitaph and trends in Chinese research on the history of Balhae.

An Overview of Princess Jeonghye’s Epitaph

The following is a summary of a polished overview about Princess Jeonghye’s epitaph and its discovery authored by the Korean professor Song Ki-ho. Based on the 1981 paper "Investigating the Epitaph of Balhae's Princess Jeonghye" he published in the journal Korean Culture 2, Professor Song went on to write the overview from considering other previous studies done by scholars including Yan Wanzhang (閻萬章), Jin Yufu (金毓黻), Shimamda Masao (島田正郞), Wang Jianqun (王健群), Wang Chengli (王承禮), Luo Jizu (羅繼祖), Wang Xia (王俠), Chae Hui-guk, and Bang Hak-bong.

Princess Jeonghye was born in 737 as the second daughter of King Mun. the third king of Balhae, and passed away at the age of forty in April 777. Her tomb is currently among the clusters of tombs on a hill called Liudingshan (六頂山) in Dunhua County, Jilin Province of China. Labeled as Tomb IM2, Yanbian University excavated the tomb at the center of Tomb Cluster no. 1 in 1949 and further surveyed it in 1959.

The tombstone inscribed with Princess Jeonghye’s epitaph was found shattered into seven pieces along the passage leading to the burial chamber. The rectangular slab with its top corners trimmed off is 90 centimeters tall, 49 centimeters wide, and 29 centimeters thick. The epitaph is engraved on the front side in regular script referred to as Haeseoche (楷書體) in Korean. The epitaph consists of twenty-one lines and unlike the epitaph of Princess Jeonghye’s younger sister Princess Jeonghyo, the last line informs the exact date of when the tombstone was erected. Out of a total of 725 Korean Chinese characters forming the epitaph, 491 characters were clearly identifiable, while the rest could be inferred by comparing the epitaph to that of Princess Jeonghyo’s discovered in 1980. Engraved above the epitaph is a pattern of clouds while an arabesque pattern surrounds the epitaph’s other three sides. The tombstone is currently being kept at the Jilin Province Museum.

The epitaphs of the two princesses describe their respective lives in such a similar fashion that there are only six places where they diverge from one another as can be seen from the table below.

Written in the typical pianliwen (騈儷體) style, the epitaph begins with an introduction that lasts for thirteen lines, followed by six lines of main text, and ends with a final line that mentions when the tombstone was erected. As for details on the epitaph’s content, interpretations of and annotations regarding them, please refer to the section on Princess Jeonghyo’s epitaph.

Along with Princess Jeonghyo’s epitaph, the epitaph of Princess Jeonghye is a truly invaluable historical source left by the people of Balhae. They particularly provide vital keys in studying the early history of Balhae. The discovery of them confirmed that Liudingshan used to serve as a cemetery for the royal family and the nobility of Balhae during its early days. This also confirmed that the Dunhua area used to be referred to as the mountain area Dongmosan (東牟山) where early Balhae's capital was based. Such confirmations have made it possible to assume that Chengshanzi fortress (城山子山城) is the mountain fortress Balhae's founder King Go is said to have built on Dongmosan.

Furthermore, the epitaphs helped identify several historical facts about King Mun of Balhae that are not mentioned in written records. First, they offered hints about King Mun's posthumous title. His complete title was finally revealed when Princess Jeonghyo's epitaph became discovered. Second, they confirmed that "Boryeok" was the name of an era that began in 774, the thirty-seventh year of King Mun's reign. Once again, the discovery of Princess Jeonghyo's epitaph revealed that the era name during King Mun's reign was changed from "Daeheung" to "Boryeok" only to be reverted back to "Daeheung" later on. Third, although it is not yet definitive, Tomb IM6 in Tomb cluster no. 1 near where Princess Jeonghye was buried is presumed to be jilleung (珍陵), the name of the tomb of Dae Mu-ye who became King Mu, the second king of Balhae. Fourth, since Princess Jeonghye passed away on April 14 of the fourth year of the Boryeok era and was buried on November 24 of the seventh year of the same era, it can be assumed that she was mourned for three years, which must have been according to a tradition inherited from Koguryo. Fifth, the word "princess," "crown prince," and "burial mound" appearing in the epitaph makes it possible to infer that in Balhae, titles were given to those listed in Oemyeongbu, a roster of female royal family members other than the king's wife or concubines, that there was a crown prince, and that burial mounds were created to inter royal family members.

Song Ki-ho, 1992, Section on the Epitaph of Princess Jeonghye from "Yeokju Hanguk godae geumseokmun" [Annotated Ancient Korean Epigraphs] Vol. 3, Garakguk sajeokgaebal yeonguwon [Institute for Developing Historical Sites of Garakguk].

As the overview mentions, all the indistinguishable characters on Princess Jeonghye's epitaph were able to be identified when Princess Jeonghyo's epitaph was discovered in 1980 among the ancient tombs at the mountain Longtoushan in the Chinese city Helong. The identification served as a breakthrough in studying Balhae history and helped achieve significant progress in other fields of research including that on Balhae epigraphs. And it can only be described as apropos for Professor Song to consolidate such progress through an overview on Princess Jeonghye's epitaph and publish it the same year South Korea established diplomatic relations with China. The overview managed to point out all the major developments regarding the epitaph's discovery including the fact that Yanbian University was the first to discover it in 1949. It mentioned the findings that the ancient tombs at Liudingshan in Dunhua County where the epitaph was found used to be a cemetery for the nobility during early Balhae and that Chengshanzi fortress is most likely to have been what Balhae built and referred to as Dongmosan. The overview also included inferences based on the epitaph that the tomb east to where Princess Jeonghye was interred is likely to be the tomb of Balhae's second king Dae Mu-ye and that Balhae inherited the Koguryo tradition of mourning for three years once someone passes away. After spending years researching at Yanbian University, however, I have come to reconsider my understanding of the above overview.

New Discoveries at Yanbian University

The aforementioned overview's author and other scholars researching Balhae share the understanding that Princess Jeonghye's epitaph was discovered while Yanbian University excavated the ancient tombs at Liudingshan in 1949. Yet, all that Professor Bang Hak-bong, who participated in the excavation as a student studying history at Yanbian University and was among the first class to graduate from its department of history, mentioned about the experience in his memoir was that he "went to Dunhua County and participated in the excavation with Oh Bong-hyeop (吴凤协) in September 1949." Regarding the excavation, Yan Wanzhang's only mention in 1958 that he went to Yanbian University and investigated the epitaph, while Wang Chengli left but a brief update in 1979 on how much progress Yanbian University had made on studying the epitaph. Hence, almost nothing has been revealed about what sort of investigation Yanbian University students performed on the epitaph in 1949 and what their conclusions were.

By chance, I happened to discuss the matter with the archival department at Yanbian University in 2017 and was able to gain access to documents left by Oh Bong-hyeop. And among those documents was a book he authored in 1951 under the title "Recollection of Past Activities at Dunhua," containing details about Yanbian University's excavation of ancient tombs at Liudingshan in 1949. From Wang Chengli's description, I had previously gained a sense of the developments made through excavations prior to the 1960s, but it remained unknown as to which remains were excavated or which relics were found in which location in 1949. It was Oh Bong-hyeop's documents that revealed which relic was found in which tomb, and in what form Princess Jeonghye's epitaph had been in when it was first discovered. And while authoring "Recollection of Past Activities at Dunhua," Oh Bong-hyeop seems to have thoroughly examined Chinese classics to identify words used in Princess Jeonghye's epitaph. The book also indicates that Oh Bong-hyeop was the first to suggest that the tomb to the east of Princess Jeonghye's tomb is jilleung where King Mu is thought to be buried, contrary to the previous understanding that the idea had originally been suggested by Yan Wanzhang and Jin Yufu. The discovery of "Recollection of Past Activities at Dunhua" didn't fundamentally change my understanding of Balhae history, but it is nevertheless a most significant historical resource for providing a glimpse as to how Princess Jeonghye's epitaph was understood by a scholar who participated in its initial excavation.

New Trends in Chinese Research on Balhae History

The discovery of Princess Jeonghye's epitaph provided an important key to researching the history of Balhae around 780. The epitaph's discovery confirmed that the ancient tombs at Liudingshan were where the royal family and nobility of early Balhae were interred, which thereby confirmed that Dunhua County used to be the Dongmosan area where Balhae's early capital once was. These conclusions were first presented by Liu Zhongyi (劉忠義) who worked at Dunhua Office for the Preservation of Ancient Monuments. Since his paper "Where is Dongmosan?" was published in the journal Study and Exploration (學習與探索) no. 4 in 1982, the Dunhua area has been considered to have once been Balhae territory and the Chengshanzi fortress as Dongmosan where the kingdom Balhae became established. To uncover archaeological evidence on where Balhae was established, the Research Center for Chinese Frontier Archaeology at Jilin University has been excavating ruins at the Aodongcheng site and Yongsheng near Dunhua since 2000, but has so far only discovered relics from the Liao or Jin era. After constantly investigating the ancient tombs at Liudingshan from 2004 to 2009, it has been confirmed that there are 235 tombs, most of them being earthen pit tombs while stone chamber tombs in a variety of forms were concentrated in Section no. 1 of the cemetery's western half. These findings have undermined the rationale based on Princess Jeonghye's epitaph for searching the Dunhua area to pinpoint the location of Balhae's Dongmosan or the place where the kingdom was established.

One other source of controversy surrounding Princess Jeonghye's epitaph is the mention of "jilleung." The phrase "interred on the hill west of jilleung" has sparked several different suggestions as to who the tomb called jilleung belongs to and which one of the tombs at the cemetery is jilleung. Some theories suggest that the tomb belongs to King Mu, the second king of Balhae, while others suggest that it belongs to the third king of Balhae, King Mun. Views that Tomb no. 6 in Section no. 1 is jilleung have been against those that regard jilleung to be in Section no. 2. However, according to the results from excavating the ancient tombs since 2004, Professors Wang Peixin (王培新) and Liu Xiaodong (劉曉東) have come to consider the term jilleung as a name that refers to the entire Liudingshan cemetery.

As for the connection between Balhae's Princess Jeonghye and the kingdom Koguryo, Chinese scholars have so far also strongly negated Koguryo's connection to the ancient tombs at Liudingshan. However, they have come to critically accept the conclusion from Tamura Koichi's research that "Princess Jeonghye married a Koguryo man." In addition, Chinese scholars have been actively acknowledging the fact that the stone chamber tomb in Liudingshan cemetery's Section no. 1, the same section where Princess Jeonghye has been interred, is a Koguryo tomb based on the fact that the roof-end tile found at the cemetery is similar in shape to Koguryo's roof-end tiles.

Challenges for Future Studies

Seven decades have gone by since Princess Jeonghye's epitaph was discovered. During that time, significant progress was made on studying the epitaph due to the additional discovery of Princess Jeonghyo's epitaph as well as other remains and relics. However, there are still many challenges yet to be overcome.

One of them would be discovering logs or documentation related to each excavation performed on the ancient tombs at Liudingshan including Princess Jeonghye's tomb. Research efforts have been focused on excavation reports to the point where countless information outside such reports have been neglected. This is an issue I noticed anew as I recently reviewed documents related to Yanbian University's 1949 excavation of the ancient tombs at Liudingshan.

Another challenge would be to continue investigating all the remains located within Balhae's territory including those near Princess Jeonghye's tomb. Chinese scholars are now skeptical toward the argument that Balhae remains are located in the Dunhua area, but that doesn't change the fact that Princess Jeonghye's tomb is one of the ancient tombs at Liudingshan in Dunhua. Regardless of the fact that Princess Jeonghye married a Koguryo man, it is undeniable that the Liudingshan cemetery was closely linked to Balhae during the late eighth century. It is therefore necessary to continue investigating the Dunhua area as well as remains in other areas nearby.

It would also be necessary to thoroughly examine previous research outcomes and fill in the gaps that still exist. To take Princess Jeonghye's epitaph as an example, not one clear rubbed copy of the epitaph has been made publically available so far. To improve such circumstances, it will be necessary to constantly engage in exchange with Chinese scholars and persuade them to disclose historical sources that have remained inaccessible.

The discovery of Princess Jeonghye's epitaph 1,269 years later served as tremendous reinforcement to researching Balhae history, a field in which historical sources are rare. As much as the countless debates and issues over the past seven decades have contributed to advancing studies on Balhae history, I hope more Balhae epitaphs can be discovered and disclosed for the benefit of historical research.