Sunday, November 25, 2012

Konjaku Monogatarishū Vol. 2, Tale 1: Śuddhodana's Death #1 (part 2)

Continuing the story of Śuddhodana's death from last time:

Fig. 1: 此ノ由シ
佛ノ御許ニ告
奉ラムト為ルニ
此ノ由シ仏ノ御許みもとつげたてまつラムトルニ、仏ノありマス所ハ舎衛国しゃえこくなり迦毘羅衛国かぴらえこくヨリ五十由旬ゆじゅんノ間ナレバ、使ノ行カム程ニ浄飯王ハしにたまひヌベシ
For this reason, in order to reveal [his imminent death] to the Buddha (fig. 1), [who] lived in the Country of Śrāvastī (fig. 2), [Śuddhodana] was going to send a messenger (fig. 5), but since [Śrāvastī] was 50 yojana from the Country of Kapilavastu (fig. 3), King Śuddhodana would no doubt have died while [the messenger] was en route (fig. 5).
Fig. 2: 佛ノ在マス
所ハ舍
衛國也
In fig. 1, we encounter the word 「御許」, meaning "(his) side", where "his" in this context refers to the Buddha. As noted in the linked dictionary entry, it is an archaism and honorific language (尊敬語).

Also of importance is the phrase 「告奉ラムト為ルニ」. I wasn't entirely sure about the furigana here, but I assumed that 「告」 was used as a noun meaning "revelation" (which is just the kanji's meaning by itself).  Edit: from Chris's suggestion in the comments, this is more likely the verb 「告ぐ」 ― it is equivalent to the modern Japanese 「告げる」.

That would make 「奉ラム」 the humble verb 「奉ル」 in the imperfective form (未然形), followed by the auxiliary verb 「ム」 in the predicative form (終止形), which indicates intention (意志). 「ト」 is a case particle that, when it precedes the verb 「ル」, indicates that whatever comes before it is the result of a change. It is comparable to 「に」 in modern Japanese. Finally, 「ニ」 is another case particle that indicates the purpose of an action, and is comparable to 「のために」 in modern Japanese.

Edit: from Matt's comment below (and the context of what comes next in the tale), the messenger is not actually sent, meaning that the correct reading is 「ル」. In this case, 「ト」 is a citational (引用) case particle that indicates that what precedes it is the content of the following verb's action. 「為ル」 is the sahen (サ変) verb 「」, which has an irregular conjugation, with 「為ル」 being the predicative form (連体形). The verb is in the predicative form because that is required by the following conjunctive particle 「ニ」, which has the meaning of concession ("despite the fact that"/"even though").

Continuing on to fig. 2, note the verb 「在マス」. I sort of guessed here, since the standard way of writing 「います」  in my classical Japanese dictionary is 「坐す」. It fits grammatically, since the attributive form (連体形), which has to be used when preceding a noun (such as 「所」), of 「坐す」 is also 「坐す」 when using the yodan conjugation of that verb. Edit: as indicated by Chris in the comments, this is more likely read as 「あります」, which can be used for both animate and inanimate objects in classical Japanese. This can be broken down as the rahen (ラ変) verb 「在リ」 in the continuative form (連用形) followed by the honorific suffix 「ます」. Whereas 「ます」 is used in modern Japanese in polite speech (丁寧語), it also has the archaic function of indicating "respect for those affected by the action" (look at the entry for the auxiliary verb).

According to Wikipedia, the kanji name 「舎衛」 for Śrāvastī is an abbreviation of ateji, such as 「室羅伐悉底」, although I'm not clear on where either of the kanji used in the abbreviation came from (perhaps they are unrelated and used just for their phonetic value as well). As will be seen in fig. 3, however, 「衛」 can be used in other place names as well, when placed before 「国」. Thus, it may not actually be a part of the ateji, even though that's what the Wikipedia article seems to indicate. Edit: as Matt explained in the comments, 「舎衛」 is an abbreviation of 「舎衛城しゃえいじょう」. Although 「衛」 doesn't make much sense as an ateji with the modern Japanese reading, it fits the Mandarin ("wèi") and Vietnamese ("vệ"/"về") readings a little better.

There are also meaning-based translations of Śrāvastī, such as 「聞者」, which is based on the Sanskrit root "śrāvas" ("श्रवस्"), which means "hearing" or "fame". As mentioned in the Google Books link, this is cognate to the Latin "cluo" and the Ancient Greek "kleos" ("κλέος"), the latter being a theme encountered in Greek works such as the Iliad and the Odyssey. The common ancestor of the cognates is the Proto-Indo-European word "*ḱléwos".

Fig. 2 ends with the archaic copula 「」. Note how the similarities between it and the hiragana 「や」 can be seen in its calligraphed form in the original text. Indeed, 「也」 is the kanji from which 「や」 is derived, and 「や」 is a possible reading of 「也」, one that I have encountered most often in kanbun texts.

Fig. 3: 迦毗羅衛国
ヨリ五十由旬ノ間
ナレハ
In fig. 3, we see Kapilavastu referred to as 「迦毘羅衛国」, which I briefly brought up earlier. I'm not sure why this pattern of inserting 「衛」 before 「国」 exists ― 「衛」 means "defense" or "protection", so there's no apparent connection to the meaning "country" or "nation". Edit: we can see the phonetic similarities between Śrāvastī and Kapilavastu in their shared /vaC/ syllable, which is why 「衛」 is used in both names.

The case particle 「ヨリ」 is used here to indicate the point of origin (起点), and is analogous to the modern Japanese 「から」.

「ナレバ」, at the end of fig. 3, is the copular auxiliary verb 「なり」 in its perfective form (已然形), followed by the conjunctive particle 「ば」, which takes on the function of providing a causal logical connection ("since"). This is analogous to 「ので」 in modern Japanese. Also, note how the kana 「ナレハ」 are written in the original text ― the third kana is written to the left of the first two, just as was seen in the previous post in figs. 6 and 8. Matt suggested in the comments for that post that this pattern might be unique to 「テ」, but it turns out that it actually isn't. Also, a similar occurrence can be observed with 「シ」 in fig. 5 of this post.

We also encounter the yojana ("योजन" in Sanskrit; 「由旬」 in Japanese), a Vedic measure of distance for which the exact metric equivalent is unknown, but is estimated by scholars to be 6 to 15 kilometers. I tested this estimate by measuring the distance between where Śrāvastī and Kapilavastu are believed to be located, based on evidence discovered through archaeological digs. Their respective latitudinal/longitudinal coordinates are:
The haversine formula can then be used to approximate the ground distance between two sets of latitude/longitude coordinates. R is the radius of the Earth (6367.5 km).


I also used Daft Logic's Google Maps Distance Calculator to visualize/confirm this calculation:

Fig. 4: the distance between Kapilavastu (on the right) and Śrāvastī  (on the left).
Note how they are on different sides of the (modern) India-Nepal border.
According to the prior estimates of 6 to 15 kilometers per yojana, 50 yojana would be a distance of 300 to 750 km, so there is a significant discrepancy between Konjaku's use of the unit and the distance a yojana is currently believed to represent. According to Konjaku, 1 yojana would be ~2 km. There are numerous possible reasons for this difference, but the most likely ones are that the distance was originally calculated incorrectly or that it was somehow changed in the course of various translations/retellings of the story as it progressed from India to Japan.

Fig. 5: 使ノ行
カム程ニ淨飯
王ハ死給ヌ
ベシ
Returning to the story, you can see that the portion of the text in fig. 5 was split into two separate clauses in the English translation.

In this context, 「使」 is a noun that takes on the meaning of "messenger", or "emissary".

「行カム」 can be broken down as the yodan verb 「行く」 in the imperfective form (未然形) followed by the auxiliary verb 「ム」 in the attributive form (連体形). In this context, 「ム」 has the function of speculation/conjecture about the future (推量).

The most confusing part of fig. 5 was the ending ― 「死給ヌベシ」. I decided to rewrite this as 「死ニ給フベシ」 because the okurigana 「ヌ」 didn't fit 「給」, but it fit the verb 「死ヌ」 perfectly. The auxiliary verb 「ベシ」 is used here to conjecture with confidence (確信推量), as in "would no doubt". Note how this reinforces the conjectural nature of the clause in fig. 5, a meaning that was originally introduced by the 「ム」 in 「行カム」.

「ベシ」 is expected to be preceded by a verb in its predicative form (終止形). Therefore, if 「給」 were simply left out, the sentence would make perfect grammatical sense, since the predicative form of 「死ヌ」 is just 「死ヌ」. However, the presence of 「給」 and the subject of the clause being Śuddhodana suggests that an honorific is necessary/appropriate here. The grammatically correct way to do that using the verb 「給フ」 would be to change 「死ヌ」 to the continuative form (連用形), which is 「死ニ」, then use 「給フ」 in the predicative form, which is still 「給フ」.

Edit: as suggested by Chris, this phrase can be better explained with irregular okurigana usage. If you assume that 「死」 is read as 「しに」, the continuative form (連用形) of the verb 「死ヌ」 and that 「給」 is read as 「たまひ」, the continuative form of 「給フ」, then it makes grammatical sense as-is. The 「ヌ」 that follows is an auxiliary verb that can indicate either perfection (完了) or certainty (確信) ― I think it has a little of both meanings here. You can see the "no doubt" aspect of the meaning in the translation, as well as the fact that it "would" have happened ― perfection (already happened).

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Konjaku Monogatarishū Vol. 2, Tale 1: Śuddhodana's Death #1 (part 1)

I'll be using a slightly different format for Konjaku than I have been using for Umegoyomi. Konjaku is written in a style known as wakan konkōbun (和漢混淆文), or "mingled Japanese and Chinese writing". It is defined on Wikipedia as "Sino-Japanese composition written with Japanese syntax and mixed on'yomi and kun'yomi readings". As indicated on the linked Japanese Wikipedia page, Konjaku is one of the most famous early examples of wakan konkōbun, while later examples include TsurezuregusaHōjōki, and Heike Monogatari.

There are also some other quirks that make the text more difficult to understand from just a transcription of the scans, so a modified transcription will be more prominently displayed. Also, there are a few things I've learned through the Umegoyomi translations about the whole process, so hopefully this approach will be more transparent.

The main changes in the modified transcription will be:
  • Any traditional characters (旧字体) will be changed to simplified characters (新字体). The traditional forms will still be used in the figures and their captions.
  • Any kana that lack dakuten or handakuten will have them added. As noted on Wikipedia, these diacritics were not considered standard until the Tokugawa era, hundreds of years after this manuscript was produced. Edit: as suggested by yudantaiteki on the RtK Forums, dakuten usage can be more accurately characterized as having gradually developed over time, and there are cases in which they can be found in Heian-era writings. Konjaku doesn't appear to be one of them, though.
  • The replacement of certain Chinese grammatical patterns with their Japanese equivalents. This will become more apparent after starting to read the translations.
  • HTML furigana will be frequently added to parts of the text. The irregular furigana usage, frequent use of Indian names written in ateji (in the case of this tale, the kanji transcriptions were originally created by the Chinese), lack of furigana in the original work (unlike Umegoyomi), and continual use of obscure terms makes this quite useful. Furigana should render correctly by default on the latest versions of Chrome and IE; for Firefox, there's the extension HTML Ruby, but many reviews claim it will cause serious performance issues when you have lots of tabs open (an issue I've run into myself). Similarly, there's an Opera add-on; it worked for me in my brief testing, but I don't have extensive experience with it (however, Opera's add-ons are architected quite differently from Firefox's extensions, so there being performance issues with the Opera add-on as well isn't a foregone conclusion).
I'm starting with the very first tale in the Indian (天竺てんじく) part of Konjaku that is available in the Suzuka Manuscript. The first volume is missing (at least from Kyoto University's scans), so this will be tale 1 from volume 2 of the collection.

Fig. 1: 佛御父
淨飯王死給時
話第一
First up is the title of the tale:
仏ノ御父おとう浄飯王じょうぼんおう死ニたまフ時ノ話第一
 The story of when the Buddha's father, King Śuddhodana, died, part 1 (fig. 1)
So the first thing you're probably wondering is where all those okurigana in the modified transcription came from. The truth is that I don't really know. They're not in the original text, but they're in the transcription from Kyoto University, and certainly make sense here.

One might think that the lack of kanji indicates that the title is actually in Classical Chinese, which certainly could be the case. However, from my experience with kanbun, it would be very rare for a string of characters that long to be in the same order in both Japanese and Chinese, given their wildly differing grammars. My theory is that all kana are omitted, but the kanji are in the Japanese order. Therefore, the reader is required to supply the kana by himself. The Heian nobility was certainly obsessed with all things Chinese, so such a title would have made the text look more sophisticated.

The verb 「給フ」, pronounced 「たもう」, is an honorific supplementary verb suffixed to verbs to show respect towards the subject of the sentence ― King Śuddhodana, in this case. Note that 「給フ」 requires the preceding verb to be in the continuative form (連用形). This is likely how it was determined that the okurigana for 「死」 should be 「ニ」. The use of katakana, rather than hiragana, is explained below.

Fig. 2: 今昔
佛ノ御父
迦毗羅国
ノ淨飯王
One interesting thing here is that Śuddhodana's name doesn't appear to be written using ateji, unlike many of the other names we will encounter. In modern-day Mandarin and Cantonese, the pronunciations of 「浄飯」 are "jìng fàn" and "zeng6 fang6", respectively. Even looking at the meaning ("clean" and "food"/"rice"), doesn't yield much useful information.

Edit: Matt's comment below has cleared this up. "Śuddhodana" in Sanskrit is "शुद्धोधन", which can be broken down as "śuddha" ("शुद्ध"), meaning "pure", and "odana" ("ओदन"), meaning "rice" or "food". This fits the meaning of the kanji 「浄飯」, so this can be considered an 「意訳」, or meaning-based translation.
今ハ昔、仏ノ御父迦毘羅かびら国ノ浄飯大王、ろうのぞみテ、病ヲうけ日来にちらいヲ経ル間、重ク悩乱のうらんシ給フ事限リ
Once upon a time, the Buddha's father, the Great King Śuddhodana of the country of Kapilavastu (fig. 2), was confronted with old age, suffering from disease while some days passed and worrying things weighed heavily upon him, with no limit (fig. 3).
Fig. 3: 老ニ
臨テ病ヲ受
テ日来ヲ經ル
間重ク悩乱シ
給フ事无限シ
First of all, we are encountering the use of kana in the original text for the first time. Note how only katakana are used, and how they are (often) set to the right side of the text and are in smaller print than the kanji. This was quite common in the Heian era, when hiragana were considered feminine, and therefore inappropriate for men to use (Edit: also suggested by yudantaiteki, it's more that the male-dominated areas of writing used katakana. Men could also write in styles that used hiragana, like waka). Since these works are of foreign origin (an area of literature that was, at that time, male-dominated), it makes sense that only katakana are used. Moreover, katakana were originally devised by Buddhist monks, and this work consists of many Buddhist tales.

Obviously, there is no actual 「ハ」 between the first and second characters in fig. 2. The decision to add a 「 ハ」 (the modern particle 「は」) was made by me. Clearly, 「今昔こんじゃく」 can have the same meaning as 「今ハ昔」 (and it does), but this makes it easier to read/understand.

Our first example of ateji also appears in fig. 2, with 「迦毘羅」, which has a reading clearly created from the Japanese pronunciation of the first half of "Kapilavastu".

Edit: as explained by a commenter below, the primary Japanese reading of 「迦毘羅」 is "kabira", and not "kapira", as listed here, despite the original word having a "p". This is probably because the "name of the city must have entered China with a Prakrit or non-Indic source, which voiced the medial stop". However, according to this page, it appears that "kapira" is a valid alternate reading. This is interesting, considering that the modern readings of 「毘」 in Mandarin and Cantonese are pi2 and pei3, respectively.

There are several interesting things to note about fig. 3. First is the verb 「臨テ」. This kanji is encountered in verb form in modern Japanese as 「のぞむ」, meaning "to look out on" or "to confront". As is often seen, the meanings stick to the kanji much longer than the readings do, which change with the frequent shifts that occur in any spoken language. I chose to assign the reading 「み」 based on the fact that (a) it fits the okurigana, where 「のぞ」 does not, and that (b) it is still used as a reading for names, or nanori (名乗り). I have noticed that nanori sometimes preserve archaic kanji readings. Edit: as Matt as suggested in the comments, it's more likely that 「臨テ」 is read as 「のぞみて」. This is indeed a grammatically valid construction, and is equivalent to 「望んで」 in modern Japanese, which is just a minor sound shift.

Also of note is the irregular okurigana for 「受」 ― this is something encountered previously in Umegoyomi, but it'll probably come up much more often with an older text like Konjaku.

The word 「日来」 has two possible readings ― 「にちらい」 and 「じつらい」. In fact, as suggested in this comment, when Konjaku was originally written, such words may have actually been pronounced in Chinese. Since both have the same meaning, I just went with the first one listed. Edit: as Matt has suggested in the comments below, the meaning is likely 「日頃」, and not 「ふだん」. In classical Japanese, the phrase 「日頃を経る」 means "some (i.e., a few) days pass".

Note how the kana right after 「悩乱」 looks much more like the hiragana 「し」 than it looks like the katakana 「シ」 (Edit: yudantaiteki, in that same post, said that in his experience, this way of writing 「シ」 is standard). One downside of these Kyoto University scans is that the quality isn't that high ― zooming in doesn't help much, given their low resolution. In any case, it appears that in the top left corner of that kana, there are two strokes, as seen in 「シ」, so I selected the katakana version. Moreover, it would be rather odd to see a random hiragana interspersed in a Heian text, even though we've seen that semi-arbitrary switching back and forth is quite commonplace in Umegoyomi.

Fig. 4: 无限
(just an
example, not
from the text)
At the end of fig. 3, we encounter the first example of rewriting a Chinese grammatical pattern into its Japanese equivalent. One might think from looking at the original manuscript that the kanji 无」 should actually be 「元」, but the overlain version of the text provided by Kyoto University has it clearly marked as 「无」. The differences in the handwritten versions of the two kanji are certainly minimal.

Whereas the original text says 「无限シ」, if there were kunten ("guiding marks for rendering Chinese into Japanese") included, they would likely indicate that this should be read as 「限り无し」. This is also how it is transcribed on Kyoto University's site, albeit as 「限り無し」. 无」 is just an alternate kanji for 「無」, which can be seen in 「い」 (although it is usually left in kana form in modern Japanese in in this context). I chose to leave it as 「无」, to reduce the number of unnecessary changes.


The proper method in kanbun of indicating the way such a pattern should be read can be seen in fig. 4. The use of a kaeriten (the 「㆑」 symbol on the left side of the figure) between the two kanji indicates those two kanji should be reversed when being read in Japanese. The hiragana are the readings of the kanji, and the katakana are their okurigana. Thus, we get the 「限リ无シ」 for the kakikudashibun (書き下し文) - the equivalent text when rewritten in classical Japanese.

Fig. 5: 身ヲ迫ル事
油ヲ押スカ如シ
The way this pattern was written at the end of fig. 3 is probably just one of the idiosyncrasies of wakan konkōbun. As Chinese grammatical patterns go, this is a fairly simple one, so it was probably assumed that readers would be able to parse the text without the aid of a kaeriten or complete okurigana.
身ヲ迫ル事油ヲ押スガ如シ
Compelling the body [to do anything] was like pressing oil (fig. 5).
This was an odd sentence because although it was short and the grammar was straightfoward, the meaning eluded me. It appears to be some sort of figure of speech I'm not aware of, so I could use some help here.

There is one other interesting point ― we see the first example in Konjaku of how the addition of dakuten to the text is left up to the reader. That is, the 「ガ」 is left as 「カ」.
Fig. 6: 今ハ限リ
ト思シテ
 

今ハ限リトおぼシテ、御子おこノ釈迦仏・難陀なんだ・孫ノ羅睺羅らごら、甥ノ阿難あなん等ヲ見ズシテ死ナム事ヲ歎キ給ヘリ
Thinking that now [he had reached his] limit (fig. 6), [Śuddhodana] lamented that he would probably die without [first] seeing his sons the Buddha and Nanda, his grandson Rāhula (fig. 7), his nephew Ānanda, etc. (fig. 8)
Fig. 7: 御子ノ
釋迦佛難陀
孫ノ羅睺羅
The first point of interest in fig. 6 is 「思シテ」 ― it comes from the verb 「おぼ」, which is just a polite form of 「思う」. In fact, the modern Japanese translation given is just 「お思いになる」.

Another thing to note is how the last two kana are not vertically aligned, as would be expected. This is a little reminiscent of togaki, which we saw in Umegoyomi, but I think that it might also have been to make the kana fit into the space of one kanji, so they don't stand out that much or waste space on what might have been expensive paper.

Fig. 8: 甥ノ阿難
等ヲフ見スシテ
死ナム事ヲ
歎キ給ヘリ
Fig. 7 is full of name ateji. First we have another name for the Buddha, 「釈迦しゃか」, which comes from his Sanskrit name Śākyamuni ("शाक्यमुनि"), meaning "Sage of the Śākyas", where the Śākyas were the tribe that the Buddha was born into.

We see similar ateji for the Buddha's half-brother (Nanda, or 「難陀」), the Buddha's son (Rāhula, or 「羅睺羅」), and for the Buddha's cousin (Ānanda, or 「阿難」). The kanji for Rāhula are particularly interesting, for two reasons. First, 「羅睺羅」 is often written as 「羅ご羅」, including in the Kyoto University transcription and in the title of his Japanese Wikipedia page. For whatever reason, use of the kanji 「睺」 is not very common/popular. Second, notice how the first and third kanji are the same ― once again, there's clearly no meaning to be drawn from the kanji (which, in other contexts, can mean "gauze" or "net for catching birds").

In fig. 8, there's another Chinese grammatical pattern ― 「不見スシテ」, which is how it is in the original text. This time, interestingly enough, it is dealt with in the opposite way ― it is overdefined, rather than part of the interpretation being left up to the reader.

The Chinese grammatical pattern 「不見」 simply indicates negation of the kanji 「見」, and would be written in premodern Japanese as 「見ズ」, which is exactly what we see in fig. 8, with 「見スシテ」 (remember that insertion of dakuten is left up to the reader). What's interesting is that both the kanji 「不」 and the okurigana 「ス」 are included, when just one would have sufficed.

We once again see the placement of multiple kana (this time, three of them: 「スシテ」) in the space for one kanji.

Also of interest here is the verb 「死ナム」, which can be parsed as the imperfective form (未然形) of the verb 「死ヌ」 (which is 「死ナ」), followed by the auxiliary verb 「ム」, in its attributive form (連体形), which is also 「ム」. The auxiliary verb takes on the meaning of appropriateness ― i.e., "should not die". Edit: as Matt pointed out in the comments, in this context, 「ム」 more likely has the meaning of "was apparently going to". He defined this as the "hypothetical" meaning of 「ム」, but I see another "hypothetical" meaning for 「ム」 in my textbook, used for "If..." sentences. It would be more appropriate to define this as being speculation/conjecture about the future (推量).

The verb 「給フ」 is seen here in the perfective form (已然形), as 「給ヘ」, followed by 「リ」, which is an auxiliary verb with the perfective function ― it indicates the completion of an action or process.

Monday, November 5, 2012

Introduction to Konjaku Monogatarishū (今昔物語集)

I've decided to mix in some translation/analysis posts on another work that I've had (brief) exposure to: Konjaku Monogatarishū (今昔物語集), or Compilation of Stories from the Past, a collection of Buddhist and secular tales written and collated towards the end of the Heian period (794-1185). Other than my prior exposure to it, one reason why I selected Konjaku is because, in many ways, it can be contrasted with Shunshoku Umegoyomi. The latter was written in the late Edo period, while the policy of sakoku was still in effect. It can thus be seen primarily as the product of an introverted Japan, one that shunned external influence. This juxtaposes very nicely with Konjaku, which consists of more than 1000 stories, including ones from India (天竺てんじく), China (震旦しんたん), and Japan (本朝ほんちょう). Moreover, the presence of a strong Buddhist influence on many of the stories is a clear sign of foreign source material. Finally, the large difference in time periods between the two works (1100s vs. 1830s) allows us to compare and contrast premodern Japanese from different eras and perhaps trace some of its evolution.

Fig. 1: An example
of the poor quality
of the text in the
Suzuka Manuscript

(from vol. 2,
tale 2, page 1)
One practical similarity that Konjaku has with Umegoyomi is that high quality scans of it are freely available online, this time from Kyoto University. The version that Kyoto University has made available is the Suzuka Manuscript (鈴鹿家旧蔵本). According to Wikipedia, this is the oldest extant copy of Konjaku, dating back 700 to 800 years. Unlike Umegoyomi, however, a kanji/kana transcription in a print typeface is provided alongside the scanned copy. This will prove very useful, as Konjaku does not contain any furigana and is quite kanji-dense. Moreover, whereas the copy of Umegoyomi I've been referring to is a woodblock print that imitates handwritten Japanese of the late Edo period (and is thus slightly easier to read than actual handwriting), the Suzuka Manuscript is handwritten and of poor legibility in many places (see fig. 1). I can't imagine I would get very far trying to read such a work in just its original, handwritten form. My plan at the moment is to translate one or two stories from each of the 3 sections of Konjaku.

Regarding the name, although 「今昔」 literally means "present and past", and not just "past", it is actually a reference to the opening line of many of the tales in the compilation, which starts with the phrase 「今は昔」 ("it is now a long time ago...", or more idiomatically: "once upon a time..."). The phrase is written as 「今昔」 in Chinese, and was co-opted as the title for the collection. Throughout Konjaku, I expect we will see numerous other signs of this strong Sinitic influence.

List of Translations:

Vol. 2:
  1. Tale 1: Śuddhodana's Death #1 (part 1)
  2. Tale 1: Śuddhodana's Death #1 (part 2)
  3. Tale 1: Śuddhodana's Death #1 (part 3)
  4. Tale 1: Śuddhodana's Death #1 (part 4)
  5. Tale 1: Śuddhodana's Death #1 (part 5)
  6. Tale 1: Śuddhodana's Death #1 (part 6)
  7. Tale 1: Śuddhodana's Death #1 (part 7)
  8. Tale 1: Śuddhodana's Death #1 (part 8)
  9. Tale 1: Śuddhodana's Death #1 (part 9)

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Shunshoku Umegoyomi Vol. 1: Kihei-don (part 2)

Fig. 1: それを何
の角のと言て。
Continuing the discussion from last time about Kihei:

"And it just won't end, the wife is constantly quarreling [with Kihei] (fig. 2) about this and that (fig. 1)."
Fig. 2: 三日
にあげず内

はもめが絶や
アしませんは。
The first thing to note in fig. 1 is the irregular furigana for 「角」, which is normally read by itself as 「かど」 ("corner"/"edge"), 「かく」 ("angle", among other things), or 「つの」 ("horn"). I took it here to mean "corner", since it fits the context and (sort of) fits the furigana. "Angle" might make sense too, but that feels like a Meiji-era repurposing of the kanji (though I have no etymological information at the moment to back this up).

Edit: as Matt points out in the comments, 「何の角の」 is probably the same as the modern 「何の彼の」, which just means "this or that".

Edit: after changing 「ないしやう」 in fig. 2 to mean "wife", I'm not really sure if "in every corner" makes sense. Perhaps it means "in every way"?

Fig. 2 starts off with the phrase「三日にあげず」, which just means "constantly"/"frequently".

I had difficulty deciphering the second kanji in 「ないしやう」. Since in the previous post, Yonehachi and Tanjirou were discussing Yonehachi's household, the most likely choice seemed to be 「内所ないしょ」 ("kitchen"), despite the absence of a long vowel in the modern version. We've previously seen weird ways of writing 「所」 (such as in fig. 3 of this post), so that's my (tentative) choice.

Fig. 3: 私も
全体おま
はんの。
Edit: as explained by Chris in the comments below, the second kanji in 「ないしやう」 is actually 「證」, the traditional form of 「証」. 「内証」 does technically mean "secret" or "one's circumstances (esp. fiscal)", but as Chris indicated, there's an older meaning of "wife". Or as listed in Koujien, 「妻または妾」: "a wife or concubine".

「もめ」 is of course 「揉め」 ("quarrel"/"dispute").

「絶やアしません」 seems to be some sort of colloquial version of 「絶えません」 where 「絶える」 has been nominalized to 「絶」, with the interjection 「やア」 between the noun and the verb 「する」, likely for emphasis.

Fig. 4: 養子に行
しつたときから。
"Since you went to [become a] son-in-law (fig. 4), I've also really (fig. 3) been thinking about wanting to leave to change houses (fig. 5) and so my feelings have been troubled, but (fig. 6) because [Kihei] is that kind of ill-tempered [person] (fig. 7), [he's] being stubborn and [says he] won't let me leave (fig. 8)."

Fig. 5: 住かへ
に出たいと
思つて。
Note the unusual presence of (what seems to be) a sokuon between 「し」 and 「た」. Given the context, it would make more sense to have the past tense of 「する」, 「した」, where 「しつた」 is.

Edit: as Matt suggested in the comments, the kanji before 「しつた」 is 「行」, not 「何」. The calligraphed version of 「行」 is similar to that observed in fig. 2 of this post. As for the meaning, 「行しつた」 → (convert to modern kana orthography) 「行しった」 → (convert to modern okurigana) 「行かしった」 → (convert from dialectal variant to standard version) 「行かしゃった」. At this point, we just have the honorific past tense of 「行く」.

Fig. 6: 氣をもんで居ました
けれども。
The use of the 「かへ」 pattern in fig. 5 is reminiscent of previous posts, such as this one (see fig. 4). As explained in that post, it can be viewed as grammatically equivalent to 「か」.

Edit: another correction: 「住かへ」 is actually just the same as 「住み替え」 ("to change houses"), not a colloquial variant of 「住か」. This is something I should've picked up on, since the particle 「に」 doesn't make sense here if it were just a noun ― it would've been 「を」, or maybe 「は」.

The first kanji in fig. 6 seems to be 「氣」, but it's not entirely clear from the kuzushiji. The meaning and the top radical of the kanji certainly fit, but it's possible that it could be a variant version of 「氣」, with a radical other than 「米」 in the bottom left.

Fig. 7: どうも
あゝいふ意地
わるだから。
「もんで」 is 「揉む」 in the continuative form (連用形), and here has the meaning "to be troubled about"/"to worry over".

In fig. 7, note the writing of 「意地悪」 ("unkind"/"ill-tempered") as 「意地わる」. This is known as mazegaki, and is stated on Wikipedia as having "originated with modern reforms" (that is, the orthographic reforms that occurred starting with the Meiji period).

Fig. 8: ゑこぢ
になつて出す
めへと。
There is a comprehension problem with mazegaki because "in some respects it makes the text more difficult to read, as it is not clear that the hiragana are part of a content word, and not okurigana or performing a grammatical function (inflection or particles)". It's very interesting to see that this practice existed, at least to some degree, even during the late Edo period.

The word 「ゑこぢ」, in fig. 8, is the same as the modern word 「意固地えこじ」 ("obstinate" or "stubborn").

Finally, the word 「出すめへ」 can be understood as the grammatical equivalent of 「出すまい」 ("won't let [me] leave"), as explained for 「知れめへ」 in fig. 1 of this post.