• Lingua Humanitatis
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• v.8
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• pp.199-221
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• 2006

The writing systems of the Silla dynasty, the Kugyol(口訣), had influenced the earlier states of Japanes Kunten(假片) during the 8th century. Japanese developed their own writing system, Kunten(訓点) after the 9th century. The Silla Kugyol was inscribed by Gagpil(角筆), a kind of ancient stylus, which seems to be originated in China and India. There are two main streams of Asian script culture. One is from China: a brush-pen culture for East asian calligraphy, named Seoye(書藝) or Seodo(書道). The other is from India: a tusk-pen culture for inscribing Buddha's words. In Korean peninsular, we can find the traces from Buddist texts inscribed by the Gagpil, a tusk-pen. We can find new writing system in the books of the Silla, penod, Panbilyanglon(判比量論), Hwaeommuneuiyogyol(華嚴文義要訣) etc. The scripts inscribed by gagpil was a totally phonetic system with dots and lines etc., like Hangul strokes was invented by I king Sejong 800 years later. The old system was used until 15th century before the invention of Hangul scripts.