Does anyone have any infrmation about this text, which allegedly was compiled during the Silla dynasty period, and is purported to be the basis not only of the sword techniques taught to the Hwarang but also the foundation for teo handed sword techniques later transmitted to Japan and forming the basis for modern geumdo ( I surmise the latter term being meant to include both HDGD and the kendo version)?

There are a variety of books with this title and not all of them are in any way historical. For example, I have seen a Bon Guk text with diagrams of Tai Chi jian.

Anyway, yes - there is a Shilla document 'detailing' their national sword technques, the Chinese are known to have commented favorably about the sword form, and a version of it was included in the Damned Book [the Muyedobot'ongji].

Thanks, Anthony; I forgot to check the Damned Book. Any idea if any copy of the historical Silla Bon Gook Gum Bup ???????) that Prince Sado is said to have used in compiling the Muye Shinbo intermediate version of the Damned Book, when the Shilla sword form was added, is still extant?

If I remember correctly, and it has been so long since I really gave much thought to this particular topic I may not, there is a copy of it, or a "book" with a supposed transcription of it, in the collected military works of the Chinese... which in the end was how it came back around to be included in the Damned Book.

What has fired your interest in Shilla?

Thanks again, Anthony. Although the introductory material in the Damned Book concerning its provenance doesn't address this issue, If true, it's very interesting that the Silla Bon Gook Gum Bup ???????) only came to be included in the Damned Book because the Koreans were able to access it in a Chinese compilation of military manuals.

My recent interest is not so much in Silla or the Bon Gook Gum Bup ???????) per se, but in the use of the text in the inevitable "my family is older than yours"/"we (not you) invented X" arguments. I ran across a reference to it in an article by Alexander Bennett of the
International Research Centre for Japanese Studies entitled "Korea- The Black Ships of Kendo: -The Internationalisation of Kendo and the Olympic Problem." Bennett himself doesn't really engage in the argument; rather his objective is to assess what it means in terms of the politics of kendo, particulalrly the jockeying for hegemony between the (Japanese dominated) IKF (with which the KKA is affiliated) and the newer Korean created IKA and the significance of that contest in connection with the drive of the IKA to make kendo an Olympic sport. ( He mentions HDGD in passing as an example of internal fissures within the doemstic family of Korean geomdo - without really seeming to recognize that it represents something significantly more than just a faction within the world of (what I'll call just for the sake of differentiation) "sport" kendo; maybe his perspective is based more on an appreciation of the Na Han Il variant of HDGD?). The overarching theme of his article, which unfortunately he himself loses sight of in the blizzard of detail in which he gets caught up, is the way in which both contemporary Japanese and Korean practitioners (and to some degree their indigineous successors in other countries) are building on the "blueprint" of budo unquestionably created in Japan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries - which makes the usual sturm and drang of the arguments about ancient origins otiose, to say the least.

Is the manual you refered to called Ji Xiao Xin Shu (????), by Qi, Jiguang (??? )? On Ron's old website he had a reference to this book in one of his articles. You can probably still find copies of this book, but I don't know if there are English translations.

About the topic at hand, I'm wary to believe any story about a book that not only contained the techniques of the Hwarang, but also formed the basis of Japanese kendo. It sounds to me like if someone said they had a manual that not only contained the techniques of the Knights of the Round Table, but that also proved Arthur drew up the blueprints for the Eiffel Tower.

Exactly... the neverending armchair quests for primacy get a little tedious after a while.

I don't think that proving the historical validity of Korean swordsmanship is my fight anymore. I can use a sword. Nothing else needs to be proved on that front.

I don't think that proving that Korean arts came before Japanese arts ever was my fight. There is a certain simple logic to it, in terms of lines of cultural and technological transmission, and most of the evidence is pretty solid, but it also puts the evolution of the sword outside of Asia so if one is looking for primacy one better decide to become a deep fan of all things which are now Hungarian...

I concur that the quest for historical primacy is both futile and misguided. What interests me, in a minor way, is not really the truth or falsity of the claims made by the proponents of one or another group's eligibility for the Swordplay version of the "Daughters of the American Revolution", but the "meta" issue of the quest itself. Even that, as you say, is trivial relative to being able to sling a sword convincingly.

To my mind, Silla is too late in the game [despite the astonishing popularity of the kingdom and the Hwarang - whatever they *may* have been] to have had the influence suggested. Baekjae and Gaia fill that roll more believably for me.

Again, roger that. I'd also go a step further and suggest that while Baekje and Kaya may have been important in connection with the transmission of technological items, e.g., metallurgy, etc., it's at best unknowable given the absence of the sorts of material archeological evidence for such technological influence whether there was any particular influence of Korea on Japan in connection with swordsmanship, either as a progenitor or a relay station for Chinese techniques. Moreover, even if it were knowable, I suspect that would would be known would be pretty uninteresting compared with the indigenous Japanese development of what they may have learned elsewhere - Japanese swordsmanship would be found unique in this regard at least as much in this case as Korean Confucianism is vis-a-vis Chinese Confucianism - which if you know the rather elevated opinion Korean Confucians had for their own brand and the way in which they differentiated it even from the Chinese, you'll know is saying a lot; there are strong elements in Korean Confucianism that claim a direct line of "purer" tranmission straight from the Yellow Emperor to Korea, thus denigrating even Confucius and his paragon the Duke of Chou.