Collected Essays 5: The Origin of Seol

By Kim Dong-ryul · Original publication: December 25, 2024

English translation · Original: https://gujoron.com/xe/notice/1665251

Seol, the Korean New Year, is sal, and sal names a physical object. It is the same element found in nait-sal, a year of age; hwa-sal, an arrow; chang-sal, window bars; bit-sal, comb teeth; mun-sal, door latticework; sat-dae, a pole; and sal-dae, a rod. It was used for counting.

There are also bit-sal, rays of light; buchae-sal, fan ribs; hong-sal, the red spikes of a ceremonial gate; gan-sal, partitions; jak-sal, a harpoon; bakwi-sal, wheel spokes; jeoul-sal, a scale beam; haet-sal, sunlight; badi-sal, loom reeds; daet-sal, bamboo strips; and mul-sal, a current. There are sat, a reed mat, and sat-gat, a conical hat.

Original image 1: https://gujoron.com/xe/files/attach/images/160/251/665/001/Tally_marks.jpg

Tally marks used in Europe. Sal or sat refers to these strokes or sticks. They were called sat (sal) and were probably made from reeds or bamboo.

The puzzle is solved. I have been on a roll lately. After resolving the dakdoritang issue and the Silla gold-crown question—the claim that the crowns were too small to fit over a head and therefore were not headwear—I have now solved the origin of seol. Three home runs in succession.

According to my etymological research, every word has a concrete action behind it. Modern people think abstractly; ancient people did not. Folk etymologies are false because they contain a logical argument, purpose, intention, or story. If it sounds plausible, it is a fabrication.

You can see this with dogs: they cannot think abstractly, yet humans speak to them expecting abstract understanding. Would a dog understand such words? We are addicted to abstraction. Dogs easily grasp other dogs' intentions, while humans fail to notice them.

Why, for example, is hwang (黃, yellow) called hwang? The color comes from sulfur, which is yellow. “White” comes from flour. Color is an abstract concept to us, but to ancient people it was a particular material. The dan (丹) of dancheong, traditional painted decoration, is mercury sulfide; cheong (靑) is copper pigment, azurite.

“Red” is the rust formed when iron corrodes. Rust was used as red pigment. The word for black comes from soot, the substance scraped from the bottom of a hearth, also called charcoal soot. Ancient people communicated intuitively through concrete actions and materials.

What, then, is seol? There is a physical object called seol. Wonderful! This is where an exclamation of admiration should come. I previously offered several interpretations of seol; I withdraw them. Seol is a counting rod, a sandae. It was called sat, which changed into sal and seol.

This follows the pattern in which a final s becomes l: bat/foot → bal, but → pil, Buddha → Bulta, Viet Nam → Wollam. It occurs widely. Final l in Sino-Korean words was usually s. Chinese speakers have difficulty pronouncing a final l. Middle Chinese may have differed, and traces remain in Hakka.

“Shot” means shooting but originally referred to an arrow. Ssari, bush clover, is wood used to make arrows. Bamboo did not grow in Goguryeo, so arrows were made from bush clover. Sat-dae → sal-dae is another s-to-l pattern; sat-dae-jil means pointing a pole or finger accusingly. The element remains in window bars, door latticework, and comb teeth.

Before seda meant the abstraction “to count,” there was a concrete object. Ancient people had no numerals, so the skill of laying out rods was called counting. Tribal people who cannot count use a stacking method: arranging objects on the ground in a shape that makes their quantity roughly apparent.

Modern counting: give ten apples and receive ten persimmons.

Tribal counting: pile up ten apples, then pile up ten persimmons in the same shape.

White traders deceived people using this stacking method with paper money. When trading for Inuit furs, the Inuit stacked the furs and the traders gave them paper. The Inuit could not know its monetary value. The important point is that stacking worked perfectly well between tribal people themselves.

A man proposing marriage piles gifts outside the woman's gate. If a rival builds a higher pile, he loses. One sal, a year of age, is one sat-dae: one counting stick. “Adding a year” means putting another rod into the counting container, not an abstract duration of one year.

Because we have ten fingers, we assume early humans could count to ten. But tribal people knew one and two and treated three onward as “many.” Korean numerals preserve traces: hana, dul, set; net (one-three), daseot (two-three), yeoseot (three-three); ilgop (ten-minus-three), yeodeol (ten-minus-two), ahop (ten-minus-one).

These are traces of moving from base three to base ten. Older forms of seven, eight, and nine were ilgobae, yeodeolbae, and ahobae. Their recurring final b means subtraction. All three start with a vowel and end in b. The final s in four, five, and six preserves the base-three system.

There were numbers only up to three before the change to decimal counting. English and French also retain traces of moving uncertainly from base three or four to base twelve and back to base ten. Ancient people counted to divide things, so they favored twelve, which divides readily.

Sari, a spring tide, means a full tide: the day of a strong current and the highest incoming water. It completes one cycle of tidal change counted with rods. Jogeum, the lowest high tide, is the bottom mark on a scale. Mankeum may be understood as “many marks.” In stacking, a mark on a measuring rod indicates a pile's height and therefore its price.

Sarida: to arrange rope or thread neatly so it will not tangle. It has the same basis as counting.

Sari: a portion of noodles coiled into one bowl's serving.

Ssata, to stack: to pile counting rods using the stacking method.

Seda, to count: to count the rods.

The shared meaning in a spring tide's sari, a portion of noodles, and coiling rope is measuring an exact amount. A sari of ramen is one full serving. One sal of age is also a full measure: one year's portion filled completely, like a serving of noodles.

Seol: the full measure of 365 days represented by one sat or sal.

Sari: one full bowl of noodles.

Achi-seol: “up to here” makes one sal.

Achi-seol, also called kkachi-seol, can be read through -kkaji, “up to.” It marks the limit of a sal. Kkaji means an end. Interpreting it as a “little New Year” is wrong. We speak of “eating” age because comb-like tally marks were made: meogida, to feed or apply, leads to maegida, to mark or assign.

Thinking of Seol as the day one becomes a year older is highly abstract. There was a concrete object called sal used for counting. With no numerals, people had to arrange counting rods clearly and show them. Our abstraction-addicted way of thinking gets it all wrong.

The stacking method sets goods on the ground, measures their height with a stick, and determines their price. Because marks are cut into the stick, price is called geum, a mark or line. Jogeum and mankeum can be seen as derivatives. The i (齒, tooth) in imgeum, isageum, or itgeum, titles for a ruler, may have been a tally mark indicating rank.

Kim Dae-mun wrote that King Yuri took the throne because biting a rice cake revealed that he had more teeth, but this is hard to believe. At a kurultai, the person commanding the most subordinate lords becomes king. The branches of Baekje's Seven-Branched Sword and the 出-shaped uprights of Silla crowns represent teeth: marks indicating subordinate lords.

The mud wall of Samgang Tavern in Yecheon still bears comb-like tally marks recording credit. Drawing such marks would have been called sal. Seol is the day everyone makes a sal at once. Ancient people who could not count had to share their memory, so everyone had to add a year at the same time.