Page 92 - 국제학술문화제-정신문화 분과

정신문화 분과

Abstract

The relationship between 桓仁, 桓雄, and 檀君 is described in 古朝鮮 chapter of 三國遺事.
Among the contents, when 桓雄, one of the sons of 桓仁, wanted to rule the human world, 桓
仁 looked down on the 三危太伯 and thought that 弘益人間 could be possible so he sent 桓雄

down under the 神檀樹 at the top of 太伯山. So, in order to understand the meaning of 弘益人間
accurately, it is a prerequisite to understand the meaning of 三危太伯 first. There have been

many studies with interests in finding the geographical locations of 三危太伯, but relatively little
interests in the meaning of 三危太伯 itself and not much research has been conducted on it.

The only mountain in both Korea and China that has a geographical name of 三危山 as we
know it today is in 敦煌 County, 甘肅 Province, China. It is a rugged mountain directly facing
the 莫高窟 cliff of 千佛洞 in 嗚沙山.

In the 三聖紀(下) of 桓檀古記 it is said that 盤固可汗 founded a kingdom inside 拉林洞窟 in
三危山 and became king of the region. Currently, there is a large cave called 檀君窟 in 妙香山,

and in the end, 拉林洞窟 in 三危山 and 檀君窟 in 妙香山 form a combined dual set.
As a history book written at about the same time as 三國遺事, in 帝王韻紀, there is a record
that 檀君 乙未入阿斯達山爲神, and another record that 阿斯達山 is 今九月山也 一名 弓忽 又名

三危 祠堂猶在. The same content is found in 新增東國輿地勝覽 compiled 250 years later.
Here, it is inferred that the 三危山 is 九月山 in 黃海道, and the geographic name 三危 is not the

name of a specific mountain, but rather a mountain in which the heavenly god descends to the
earth as a human being, or a human dies and becomes a god and ascends to the sky.
In 三危太伯, 太伯 can be thought of as <the eldest of great mountains> or simply <a very big

mountain>, as the Chinese characters say 訓. In the case of the 三危太伯, when the god of
heaven is coming down to the human world, if the peak of the 太伯 is a sharp rock then it can

become a connecting point between the heaven and the earth. It can be seen that it means a
place with a lot of habitable space with many caves because it is a mountain of big rocks.
The ancients thought that the god of heaven comes down to the world and conducts the role

of the king in the world of human beings. When the life of the god is exhausted, the soul does
not die, but becomes a god again and ascends to heaven. In this case caverns are not necessary,

so it is not 三危太伯, but 三危山 is enough because it is an easy place to connect the earth with
the heavenly world.
In this study, the meaning of 三危(山) or 三危太伯 was grasped through the process to

obtain these research results, so that the basic work approaching the true meaning of 弘益人間
was made.

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