A Study on the Variant Chinese Characters Seen in the Deokjusa Woodblock Edition of a Book Titled “Seokgayeoraesipjisuhaenggi”

This study concerns the variant Chinese characters seen in a book titled "Seokgayeoraesipjisuhaenggi," which is a collection of Buddhist tales on the theme of Buddha's Samsara (meaning "continuous cycle of life, death, and rebirth"), which has come down to us only in Korea. According to the relevant studies from the academia of Korean literature, this book was first published in the 15th year of King Chungsuk's reign (1328) during the second half of the Goryeo dynasty and was then republished after being organized and proofread by a man named Sosilsanin (少室山人) in the 30th year of King Sejong's reign (1448) during the early Joseon dynasty. The book is also known to have been republished at the Deokjusa Temple located in the foothills of Mt. Woraksan, Chungcheongbuk-do, Korea in the first year of King Hyeonjong's reign (1660). This Deokjusa edition was used as the original script for this study. The engravings for this edition were done by the Buddhist monk Seonri (禪利) at the temple in 1660, in the mid and late Joseon dynasty, and its original is said to be a handwritten manuscript completed by Cheono (天悟), a wandering monk.Unlike Confucian scriptures that were proofread with great exactitude at the state level and usually printed in proper graphic form, this Deokjusa woodblock edition originating from a monk's handwritten manuscript used a wide range of variant Chinese characters such as popular form (俗體) and corruption (訛變體). In this study, the patterns of variant Chinese characters seen in this edition were categorized into 'increase/decrease and variation of stroke (筆劃),' 'omission and replacement of semantic symbols,' 'omission and replacement of phonetic symbols,' 'overall creating characters (造字),' and 'assimilation (類化)', with brief descriptions of each character example. In addition, '敀·嫰·婹·□·□,' the variant Chinese characters deemed necessary to be further discussed, were addressed in great detail, and their origins were explored. Therefore, the discussions in this study are expected to be utilized as a reference for future relevant studies.