The general bon-puri, of which there are twelve, involve deities who are worshipped throughout the island, such as the goddess of childbirth or Gangnim the psychopomp.
The village-shrine bon-puri number more than seventy, and center on patron gods of specific communities.
There is a small group of bon-puri narratives which are no longer performed by shamans and which do not clearly belong to one of the three above.
Bon-puri is a compound of the Sino-Korean noun bon, meaning "origin," and puri, the nominalized form of the verb pulda "to narrate."
Many bon-puri works explicitly state that the reason for the performance is to delight the gods and encourage their greater participation in the ritual, as in the following excerpt from the Chogong bon-puri:[2] 귀신은 본을 풀민 신나락하는 법이옵고생인은 본 풀민 백년원수 지는 법이웨다.By telling a god's origins, one makes the god giddy with delight By telling a person's origins, one makes an enemy for a hundred years.
By contrast, the venerated gods are exemplary beings, and to recount their deeds is to make their excellence known and thereby win their favor in the ritual.
[3] Shamans sing bon-puri while seated before and facing the sacrificial altar, and turn their back to the people.
The ethnologist Chang Chu Keun cites one example of a Chogong bon-puri performance which was interrupted ten times by more experienced shamans, who repeatedly disputed the details given in the recitation and ultimately demanded that the performing shaman name the man who taught him.
본산국데레 과광성 신풀어사옵소서... 일뢰또한집 어멍국은 웃손당 백주님, 아바님은 알손당 소천국 하르바님, 하나 두개 시개 늬개 다서 여ᄉᆞ 일고차 아들입니다.
[5] The genre is also characterized by formulaic phrases often involving parallelism or repetition, which are found identically in many different works.
For instance, many village-shrine bon-puri include the following sentence word-to-word in their conclusions, describing how the protagonist became a god that governs the lives of the villagers:[8] 안음 버은 금책에, 좀이 버은 금붓대, 삼천장 베릿돌에 일만장의 먹을 ᄀᆞᆯ려... ᄆᆞ을의 장적 호적 문세를 찾이.
[b] Another stylistic feature of the bon-puri is the use of the emphatic present-tense in key moments of the narrative, marked by the verb-final suffix -go(na).
[9] The impression that the mythical past is being reenacted is strengthened by the use of long stretches of directly quoted dialogue, unbroken by narration.
[11] Many bon-puri conclude by explaining the mythical reasons for specific facets of Jeju ritual life.
For village-shrine bon-puri, the very last sentence is typically a formulaic invocation such as the following:[12] 어진 한집님전 축하올립니다.
[34] The ancestral bon-puri are dedicated to the patron gods of families and occupations, who are often not actually perceived as ancestors.