Founder of the Onyang Bang clan (clan tradition); said to have been a Tang Hanlin academician
| Era | 신라(7세기, 전승) |
| Clan | 온양 방씨 |
Bang Ji (方智) is honored as founder by the Onyang Bang and other Korean Bang lineages. His courtesy name is given as Cheongyeong and his pen names as Wolbong or Hwacheon. Most of what follows comes from the clan genealogy, the origin stele erected by the clan and newspaper series on Korean surnames; it is clan tradition and is not separately confirmed in official histories such as the Samguk Sagi.
According to clan tradition, Bang Ji was a 134th-generation descendant of Fang Lei, the progenitor of the Chinese Fang surname (one newspaper series calls him the second son of Jungang of the 133rd generation), and served as a Hanlin academician in Tang China. In 669 he came to Silla as a cultural envoy of the Silla-Tang alliance and, with Seol Chong, explained the Nine Classics in the Korean language and laid the foundations of Confucian learning; the clan calls him the "literary ancestor of Eastern Confucianism." At the Silla court's urging he married a woman of the Jang clan and settled at Gayu-hyeon, described as the Sangju area of North Gyeongsang (some place it at Sanyang-myeon, Mungyeong), so his descendants are said to have first used Sangju as their seat.
A copy of a 1774 instruction from the Ministry of Rites kept by the clan reportedly says that "there was at first no Bang surname in the East, until the imperial-court man Bang Ji came as a Hanlin academician, revived learning and explained the classics in the local tongue," and orders that his descendants be exempt from miscellaneous labor. The 1758 Border Defense Council discussion behind it, on reducing the service burden of naturalized families, is recorded in the Bibyeonsa Deungnok.
Records of the generations after him are lost, so the Onyang Bang count their generations from Bang Un, enfeoffed as Lord of Onsu in early Goryeo. How many generations separated the two is unclear; sources variously call Bang Un a "close descendant" or a "sixth-generation descendant."
His grave is said to be at Bonggye-ri, Dudong-myeon, Ulju County, Ulsan, where descendants hold a rite each year on the third day of the tenth lunar month.
The genealogy links the mid-founder Bang Un to him as a descendant, and the Onyang Bang and the related Sangju and Gunwi Bang honor him as founder.