왜 까치는 살아나지 않는가 - <까치의 보은> 설화에 나타난 불교적 인과와 민간적 현실

초록

This study interprets The Magpie's Repayment as a folktale situated at the intersection of Buddhist sanctity and folk reality. Buddhism holds that giving (dāna) accumulates merit (puṇya), which ripens into karmic reward (vipāka), yet leaves its realization undetermined. As Buddhism became secularized, this tension shifted into an expectation of worldly blessing, creating a gap between a doctrine demanding purity of motive and a reality anticipating reward. Assuming this gap left traces in oral narrative, the study compares The Magpie's Repayment with Sonsun-maea, The Emille Bell, and the Buddhist tale of King Śibi. Although the tale presents the magpie's rescuer as a practitioner of fearless giving (abhaya-dāna), it fractures this ethical act by introducing the slain serpent as someone's "husband." The serpent's fate is absorbed into Buddhist causality, whereas the rescuer's fate diverges between success and ruin, and the magpie dies by breaking its own skull, without transcendence. Religious causality operates only apart from everyday life; acceptance and skepticism coexist.

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