The purpose of this paper is to present 'the women's social sphere' in contemporary rural Korea, through the analysis of the myonuri-siomoni relation (the relationship between the bride, as an additional member of the family headed by her husband's father, and her husband's mother), the ork'e-sinui relation (the relationship between a married woman and the sister of her husband, or a woman and the wife of her brother) and tongso-chi-gan (the relationship between a married woman and the. wife of her husband's brother) as observed in Kut. The descriptive data presented here were collected in the course of seventeen months following November 1978, which were spent in field research in a village of Kyonggi Province. The kut described here is the major ritual performed by mansin (the Korean shaman in Kyonggi Province), as the complex interplay between client (patient), family, relatives, guests, visitors, mansins and spirits. Enough has perhaps been said to indicate the important place of Shamanism in Korean religious life and beliefs. The kut is not only the shaman's ritual but also provides the model for conducting a wide range of 'the women's social sphere' in a Korean community. Further, it is usually performed with a special focus on disasters, wealth, fortune or fear among villagers. The Korean woman, in general, conducts herself in accordance with Confucian ethics. She is expected to show obedient attitudes and behavior to her father before marriage, to her husband after marriage and to her son after her husband's death. If the groom is the eldest son of his father, the bride will nearly always live in his natal home and be expected to serve his parents in the primary duties. Particularly, she must obey siomoni under the Confucian moral. In most cases, she experiences sijip-sari (the bride's life with the psychological hardships in the groom's family) . By marriage, the Korean woman becomes an outsider in her natal family and also in her husband's family. Her marginal position comes to be secure only when she produces a male heir to succeed the husband's family line in the genealogy and offer the ancestor cults in the next generation. A married woman in the Korean community comes to be involved in the relations among siomoni, sinui or tongso. The tongsos are obliged to cooperate frequently with each and all in daily life : preparing for the ancestor cults, a funeral or wedding ceremony, working in the field or cooking meals for the farmhands as mutual assistance in every day life. The married-sinui, except for the birthday of her parents, goes infrequently to her natal home. Rare cases, the kut causes sinui to come to her natal home. The kut is planned on one's death, sickness, accident, failure or loss, or as a crisis in social relationships. The women, who take part in the kut, can easily belong to 'the women's social sphere' based on the uncertain status of the Korean wife, or different kinds of achieved relationships between them and the client. For the Korean wife, that is to say, the achieved relationship by marriage, is more important than the ascribed one. The siomoni and tongso occupy the same status as an additional member of her husband's father's family. Under such situations, the siomoni has already established the achieved status and occupies position of the seniority in her husband's family. The Korean wife considers the tongso as her rivals for the achieved relationships in her husband's father's family. In 'the women's social sphere', there is the tongso relationship such as the relation between sisters, relaxing the antagonism and conflict between the siomoni and the myonuri.

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The conclusion of my previous paper was that the religious sects of the South should be studied in the depth and the length of Vietnamese history and culture. Here, I have tried to decipher the symbolic geography embedded in the myths and the traditions of the primordial kingdoms and to compare it with the symbolic geography of the western Mekong Delta. The first section is a structural study of the myths described in the first volume of the Earlier Annals (Naoki Ky) of the Comprehensive History of Great Viet (Dai Viet Su Ky Toan Thu) . Descriptions of the first ideal kingdom Van Lang were divided into three parts. The first is about the first king Hung who established the administration. The second is about the child hero who repelled the invader in the time of the sixth Hung king. The third is about the water and the mountain spirits who took charge of the animals and the products of their regions. The first king Hung was born from the union of mountain and water and of China and Vietnam. If a king impairs the cosmological harmony of mountain and water the international harmony will be broken, and vice-versa. The transitional period from one dynasty to the next is the flood (international and cosmological) . The last king of the mythico-historical independent Vietnam was An Duong, who exposed himself to the attack of a Chinese Trieiu Da (m.) by heavily depending on the Golden Turtle (w.). An Duong ran southward into Nghe An and, holding a rhinoceros horn which would give security against drowning, he entered into the east sea with the Golden Turtle. This means the myth had made him accept the mountain element and secured the primordial couple which would give birth to the Vietnamese independent king. The Sea is another mythical world. According to the tradition, An Duong entered into this world from Mo Da Son (Mt. Night) whose image of the night suggests that this mountain was the entrance to another world situated outside-south of Vietnam proper. The second section focuses on these themes. It is shown that the western Mekong region near Chau Doc and the Seven Mountains was divided into three parts. Around Chau Doc Mt. Sam and along the Bassac River was a peopled region and belongs to the present, and everyday life was secured by the goddess of Mt. Sam. Between this area and the Seven Mountains lies the swamp area which belongs to the transitional period from the present to the ideal future. The tradition connects the swamp with the dangerous crocodile which will cause a flood when the Time comes. At the same time the swamp area will be a battlefield of the nations (international flood) . The seven mountains is the Future. The ideal king will be born there. The next theme is the union of water and mountain. Sacred places which have the two elements are androgynous mothers. But at the beginning of the occupation by Historic China, An Duong went outside-south with the primordial union of the two elements. The principle of Mother went with him. The Seven Mountains is this kind of outside mother. It is said that the living Buddha ordered his disciples to plant five magical charms around the Seven Mountains, the mountains being the center. But the central Charm, situated at the foot of Mt. Cam and next to a well, was absent from the quadrilateral formed by the four other charms. The mountains themselves were also absent. The center-mother-future king were symbolically in Cambodia. This center-in-the-outside-south-mountain theme reappears in Nghe An. The shrine of An Duong faces the west and in the west there is Mt. Kim Nhan. The two are symmetrical, one near the sea-outside, the other near the mountain people.

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In the serialized reports the writer gave in this journal's previous issues entitled "Studies on Ise Shrine, Part I-III, the contention is that what we conceive of as typically Japanese festivities observed and conducted in the Shrine were actually very much influenced by the old Chinese philosophical thinking of "Cosmic Dual Forces and Five Natural Elements' as envisioned in the enshrining of AMATERASU, the Imperial ancestral goddess in the Ise Shrine. She was the incarnation of the Chinese cosmic god of Tai-Yi, the mythical identification of the North Star and to the Geku goddess, the outer Shrine, the enshrining of the Big Dipper. While festivals observed at Ise Shrine are Imperial Household rituals, the thought of Cosmic Dual Forces and Five Natural Elements was also widely and forcefully applied and practiced in the public domain such as in the festivities, seasonal change customs and in conjurations to avoid ill omens and calamities. The present report is a study of such phenomena. According to ancient Chinese philosphy. CHAOS was the one and only absolute being in the primordial age. Out of this CHAOS, the light, clear and clean Yang (陽) atmosphere rose to form the Heavens while the dark, heavy and murky Yin (陰) atmosphere descended to form the land. Since the two poles of Yin (陰) and Yang (陽) are the spinoff from the same maternal substance, the CHAOS, their roots are identical and therefore, they would attract one another, mingle and react, and as a result, would produce the five natural elements of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. Every phenomenon was categorized into one of these five natural elements. The colours, directions, seasons, times, virtues, sounds and the kinds of living creatures to such natural phenomena as thunder, wind and so forth were all conformed into one of these five natural elements. To illustrate, the wood spirit symbolizes the Spring of the seasons, blue is its colour, East is its direction, and Morning in time, while the Fire spirit symbolizes Summer, Red, South and Noon, and Metal, Autumn, White, West and Evening respectively. There was another thought regarding these five Natural Elements which was reactionary in its function:one was continuity and amity, while the other was conflict and struggle. Continuity and amity will bear Fire from the Wood while Fire will bear Earth and the Earth, the Metal and the Metal bears Water while Water bears Wood. This is the plus or positive factor relation. The conflict and struggle are negative or minus relation in which the Wood overcomes Earth, and Earth the Water and Water the Fire and Fire the Metal, with Metal overcoming the Wood. These two opposing and reactionary functions serve to guarantee the perpetuation of all living matter. What the Chinese emphasized most was the smooth transition of the four seasons. They believed that people should actively participate and assist the natural transition of seasons and to this end the ancient Chinese emperors wore blue clothes and blue jewels to meet the Wood spirit on the first day of Spring (calendar date) and walked out to the East suburb to personally welcome the Spring. By the same token. in summer they wore red clothes and red jewels and walked out to the South suburb. Thus, by personally greeting the four seasons, they encouraged the natural transition of the seasons. For the Japanese, a race dependent on rice crops, they too would seek a regulated transition of the four seasons and the principle practiced in China would be utilized and practiced.

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Generally speaking, there are found many variations in the ethnoculture of the region of the Miyako Islands, which are relatively small. The variations in the cult system are so remarkable that one example in a village might never allow a conjecture as to the religious manners in another village. However, there has not been any study to synthesize them. Therefore. I would like to try some comparison of the cults in the twenty-one main villages of the Miyako Islands, based on my own research and data. Comparing many villages where variations exist requires a standard of comparison in addition to finding common factors. First of all, one should generalize the traditional cult system. In each village it consists of the following three units : 1. Cults concerning the entire village. 2. Cults concerning a special group within a village. 3. Cults as YAA or each individual (YAA=IE) . The second unit is further divided into three parts by each group's characteristics. I intend to deal only with the first unit in this thesis, so I have rearranged my data. I have described a village as a religious group with four indispensable elements. And I constructed a model of the village cult system in order to compare the elements of the human-system as one of them. This model, based on the role of the castes and their participation in the rituals, is organized by an L.C.M. for each village systm. In addition, this model will provide a common basis for comparing individuals, since it can decide each Kamiyaku (religious functioner) and the castes' positions in the system. This consists of the following ten classifications : A. 1) priestess ; 2) sub-priest or sub-priestess ; 3) special kamiyaku ; 4) attending kamiyaku ; 5) specified kamiyaku. B. 1) preparator (attending) ; 2) preparator (not attending) . C. 1) a group like priestesses : 2) a group like preparators : 3) a group like attendants. For A_1 I made a detailed comparison of each village with the result that three types have been determined, with the main factor being the combining of names of kamiyaku and the addition of individual attributes. They are as follows : 1. Tsukasa Yuzasu type (2 persons). 2. Mizununusu type (3-4 persons). 3. Tsukasa type (1 person). Since these types are fundamental and form a sort of core, at least three kinds of religious activity patterns are thought to exist in the Miyako Islands. Secondly, it is based on two kinds of their term of service (one is until death, the other is retirement) , and on a taboo which is imposed on kamiyaku that has led to four kinds of functional types as attributes for kamiyaku , that is kamiyaku (classification A1) actually differ greatly from each other in regard to its concept. That difference was never modified by such factors as modernization, and may be seen as a difference of the value system of the people. This is conjecture, and it is quite necessary to make further investigation. As for the above functional types, adding a detailed explanation is essential, therefore the following are explained as briefly as possible : 1. Always united with gods and symbol of the village cult. 2. Occasionally united with gods. 3. Always mediating between gods and men. 4. Occasionally acting as a mediator between gods and men. The above two kinds of typology are not always equivalent to the regional type in the Miyako Islands. For instance, the above typology cannot divide the region into two parts (or four parts) such as north and south. This problem must be solved some day. I was able to deal with only a small part of the village cult in this thesis.

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