LETTERS
FROM
HEAVEN
THE needle in Halmoni's fingers flew back and forth through the pale green silk of the screen panel she was embroidering. As she stitched in the golden beak of a rose-colored stork, her dark head moved in time to the singsong voice of Yong Tu.
The boy was sitting crosslegged on the floor. Half speaking, half chanting, he was repeating aloud a wise saying of the ancient Chinese teacher, Confucius. "Obedience to one's parents is the mother of one hundred virtues," he said again and again, trying to learn the proverb by heart.
The Thousand Character Book Yong Tu held in his lap had three different columns, running up and down its soft paper pages. There was first the column of characters, or word pictures, of Chinese writing. Then there was a middle column that told the boy how to pronounce them. The third column gave their meaning in unmun, which means words formed by the letters of the Korean alphabet.
"The Wise Confucius wrote that book in one single night," Halmoni told her grandson. "So great was the task that when morning came, his hair and his beard were turned white as the snow."
"The Chinese word pictures are hard to remember, there are so many, Halmoni." the boy complained. And he yawned a great yawn. "Now it this book were only written in unman, I could read it Straight through. Alphabet writing is so much easier than writing with word pictures."
"The young schoolman has wisdom," his grandmother replied smiling. "Unmun is indeed easier, but unmun does not bring true learning. The scholar whom the Dragon carries to the Highest Heaven must be the master of the learning of the ancient sages of China. Only such a one becomes the Great Man who faces a king without trembling. Only he dresses in fine silk, and only he wears the court seal at his belt. No young scholar should be frightened away from such rewards by a few difficult tasks.
"Everyone knows, Yong Tu, that our Korean 'low writing' is easy to learn. Ok Cha already has by heart the twenty-five letters of its alphabet, and she is but a girl who does not truly need to learn anything save the ways of the Inner Court." The Korean grandmother paused to pat the shoulder of her granddaughter and to retie the red bow on her long braid of black hair. Ok Cha was also learning a lesson that morning, a lesson in embroidery. She was stitching a bright red flower on a scrap of the green silk left from Halmoni's screen.
"Not even the King who invented our alphabet ever compared it with the jade writings from China," the Korean grandmother began again. "Not even when he told the people its letters came directly from Heaven."
"How could letters come from Heaven, Halmoni?" Yong Tu asked. The boy hoped to prolong this pleasant pause in his morning study.
"Hé, blessed boy, who can say how messages come down to us from Heaven? Sometimes it is in a dream while one is asleep. Sometimes it is in a thought when one is awake. And sometimes it comes in the form of a sign or a miracle. For most people a miracle is always the best, and a miracle is what the good, wise King desired when he called on the earthworms to help him."
Ok Cha, too, put down her work when she heard these strange words spoken by her grandmother.
"It was thus it happened, they say, though it was so long ago that it is recorded only in this ancient story. A good King gave the precious gift of reading to our people through this unmun alphabet. He knew well that learning is the greatest treasure of man. He knew also that few of his subjects could master the thousands upon thousands of word pictures in the books that came to us from China.
"The King searched and searched for a simpler way of writing and reading. And because of a dream, or perhaps because he was so wise, that King reasoned thus: 'Words are made up of sounds, and sounds could be given symbols, or letters, that would stand for them. To learn, say, twenty-five letters would not be too difficult for any man, or even for any woman. By putting these letters together, all the words we need could be made.' And with his brush and his inkstone he carefully set down on paper the form of each one of the twenty-five letters of our alphabet.
"In those times, my children, as now, our people honored the customs of their ancestors. It would have been hard indeed for that good man, for all he was the King, to persuade them to adopt this new way of writing. They must have a sign from Heaven,' he decided. And doubtless here again it was a message from the Jade Emperor, up in the sky, that showed him the way.
"The King dipped his writing brush into a pot of honey. With its sticky sweetness he brushed each letter on the face of a tender green leaf. These leaves he spread out on the damp garden path where the earthworms could find them.
"His clever plan worked. The worms followed the sweet honey trails, eating their way along the face of the leaves. In this way they traced clearly the outlines of the twenty-five letters upon them.
"'Here is a miracle,' the King called to his courtiers in the garden next day. 'Here clearly are messages sent us from Heaven, written on leaves.'
"Pretending he knew nothing of their hidden secret, he offered a reward to that scholar who should uncover their meaning. He took a young paksa into his confidence, and he gave him the task of explaining to the people the use that could be made of these 'letters from Heaven.'
"In this way our unmun alphabet was invented and spread over the land. In this way all people could learn to read if they would. Some tell other tales of its invention, but this is the one my grandmother believed."
"It was really just a trick, Halmoni, saying those letters came to us from Heaven," Ok Cha said knowingly.
"Who can say, precious Jade Child? But if it was a trick, it was a good trick. It gave books to people who never could have hoped to read otherwise. And it brought shining light into the darkness of women and girls who dwelt in the inner courts."
In Korea, in these days when Yong Tu and Ok Cha were children, learning was indeed prized above everything else. Sobang, which means "schoolman" was the polite common title. It was used just as Mister is in Western lands. Old Pak might be only a dark, unlearned gatekeeper, but he was pleased when a familiar peddler, entering the bamboo gate with his spices or silks, bowed to him, saying, "Peace, Sobang Pak, have you eaten your honorable meal?"