Manpasikjeok

In 682, King Sinmun of Silla received word that a small mountain was floating back and forth in the East Sea toward Gameunsa Temple. On it grew a bamboo that split in two by day and became one by night.

When the king sailed to the mountain a dragon appeared and offered him a black jade belt. The dragon said that bamboo makes sound only when joined, and that King Munmu, now a dragon of the sea, and Kim Yusin, now a god of heaven, had joined their hearts to send this treasure. The king cut the bamboo, made a flute and stored it in the Cheonjon storehouse of Wolseong.

When this flute was played, enemy armies withdrew, illness was cured, rain came in drought and skies cleared in floods, the wind died and the waves grew calm. So it was named Manpasikjeok, the flute that puts ten thousand waves to rest.

The photograph shows a shakuhachi, a nineteenth-century Japanese vertical bamboo flute. The thick root end and nodes recall the bamboo in the story of Manpasikjeok that sounds only when joined.