Yuhwa
Also known as: Lady Yuhwa, Buyeo-sin (the Buyeo goddess)
Mythological Narrative
The daughter of Habaek, the River Earl, who is seduced and abandoned by Haemosu, banished by her parents, sheltered by King Geumwa of East Buyeo, and there lays the egg from which Jumong hatches; later worshipped by Goguryeo as a mother goddess.
Scholarly Commentary & Evolution
## The River Earl's daughter
In the *Samguk Sagi*, King Geumwa of East Buyeo finds Yuhwa south of Mount Taebaek at Ubalsu, where her parents have banished her after her union with Haemosu. He shuts her in a room, where sunlight follows her even when she moves away from it, and she conceives. She lays an egg as large as five measures of grain. Geumwa has it thrown to dogs and pigs, which will not eat it; left on the road, where horses and cattle step around it; and in the fields, where birds cover it with their wings. He cannot break it and returns it to her, and a boy breaks out: Jumong.
## Helping her son
When Jumong must flee Geumwa's jealous sons, Yuhwa advises him on choosing the best horse. Yi Gyu-bo's poem adds that when Jumong forgets the grain seeds she has prepared, she sends them after him with a pair of doves, which he shoots down to recover the seeds, then revives.
## A worshipped mother
The *Samguk Sagi* records that Yuhwa died in East Buyeo in the fourteenth year of Jumong's reign and that Geumwa buried her with the rites of a queen dowager and built her a shrine. Chinese histories of the sixth and seventh centuries report that Goguryeo kept two shrines, one to the 'Buyeo goddess', carved in wood in the form of a woman, and one to the 'Gaodeng god', said to be their ancestor and her son; scholars identify these as Yuhwa and Jumong.
Academic Discussion & Critique
Exchange peer-reviewed hypotheses, comparative Indo-European etymologies, and archaeological field interpretations regarding Yuhwa.
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