Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Konjaku Monogatarishū Vol. 2, Tale 1: Śuddhodana's Death #1 (part 3)

Fig. 1: 然レハ
后大臣等此ノ
思惱
フ程ニ
This part turned out to be fairly straightforward, so this post will be short.
レバ后・大臣等、此ノ事ヲ思悩おもひなやブ程ニ、仏ハ霊鷲山りょうじゅせんましまシテ、くうニ父ノ大王ノ病ニしずみテ、諸ノ人此ノ事ヲ歎キ合ヘル事ヲしりたまひテ、難陀・阿難・羅睺羅引将ひきいテ、浄飯王ノ宮ニ行キ給フ。
That being the case, while the queen, the cabinet ministers, etc. were worrying about this (fig. 1), the Buddha was at Vulture Peak, and in the emptiness, he was depressed because of his father's, the Great King's, illness (fig. 2). Knowing that many people had been lamenting this fact together (fig. 3), with Nanda, Ānanda, Rāhula, etc. leading (fig. 4), they went to King Śuddhodana's palace (fig. 5).

Fig. 6: Vulture Peak (location, image source)
Fig. 2: 佛
ハ靈鷲山
ニ在シテ
空ニ父ノ
病ニ沈テ
The first thing to note in fig. 1 is the yodan verb 「思悩ブ」, which has the same meaning as the modern verb 「思い悩む」, as stated in the Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (日本国語大辞典). In fact, it cites this particular sentence in its definition, along with another occurrence in Konjaku, so the 「ブ」 ending may be an idiosyncrasy of Konjaku.

Fig. 3: 諸
ノ人此ノ
事ヲ嘆き
合ヘル事
ヲ知給テ
Continuing on to fig. 2, we encounter Vulture Peak, the literal translation of a mountain known in Sanskrit as "गृध्रकूट" ("Gṛdhrakūṭa"). The kanji name is another meaning-based translation (意訳), since 「霊鷲」 means vulture. I couldn't find a definitive source for this definition, but that's what the Japanese Wikipedia page says, and the word for vulture written in kanji is 「禿鷲」, so the 2nd kanji match. The name comes from either (a) the shape of the peak being vulture-like (see fig. 6) or (b) the presence of many vultures there.

The verb 「在シ」 looks similar to the instance of 「ありマス」 observed last time (see fig. 2), but note that this time there is no 「マ」 in the okurigana, so it is more likely the verb 「ましま」, which is just an honorific version (尊敬語) of 「有る」 or 「居る」  so it ends up having essentially the same meaning as  「ありマス」.

The word 「くう」 has this reading because it is a Buddhist term that has the meaning of "emptiness", or "Śūnyatā" ("शून्यता" in Sanskrit). Finally, note that 「沈テ」 is a case of irregular kana usage — one would expect the 「み」 to be part of the okurigana.
Fig. 4: 難陀
阿難羅睺羅
等引將

In fig. 3, we see the phrase 「嘆キ合ヘル」. 「嘆き」 is the continuative form (連用形) of 「嘆く」, while 「合ヘ」 is the realis form (已然形) of the yodan verb 「合フ」. 「ル」 is the attributive form (連体形) of the auxiliary verb 「リ」, which takes on the resultative (結果の存続) function (i.e., "had been") here.

Fig. 5:
淨飯王ノ
宮ニ行キ
給フ
「知給テ」 is comparable to fig. 5 of the previous post in terms of missing okurigana when using the honorific auxiliary verb 「給フ」.

In fig. 4, we encounter several familiar names, followed by the phrase 「引将テ」. I wasn't sure what to make of this, but since 「引き」 is read as 「ひき」 and  「将る」 is an alternate way of writing 「ひきいる」, I decided to go with
引将ひきいテ」, with the same meaning as 「率いる」: "to lead a group". This is primarily speculation, though.

There's not much to say about fig. 5 in terms of grammar, but note how parts of the original text are quite faded/missing, particularly the first character. This is a situation in which context is very important when determining the missing characters. Fortunately, in this case it was a proper name that we had encountered before.

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