Re: Senmyoo terms (was: [PMJS] Where's Waldo?)
Alexander Vovin
>
>
> Some minor cavils and quibbles. Ooms seems irksomely taken with his translation of "Yamato neko" as "root child" of Yamato, a meaning which as far as I know not even Motoori Norinaga suggested, although it may appear somewhere in his immense commentary. Sansom didn't attempt a translation of the term, and Herbert Zachert rendered it as "Das Liebe Kind von Yamatos", more or less what Maruyama says in his _Jodaigo Jiten_.
I trust that Ooms is right. Here is what speaks, imho, in his favor:
Yamato2 neko1 appears in Senmyoo as:
a) 倭根子 19 times
b) 大和根子 once
c) 和根子 once
d) 養徳根子 once
In all these cases we have the consistent spelling 根子. Both 根 and 子
can be used as kungana signs /ne/ and /ko1/, but even if we imagine
that they are used as kungana and not semantographically, what word do
they render? Not a 'cat', I guess (:-). For some time I was toying
with idea that neko1 here might be representing a loan from Korean
(cf. MK neks 'soul'), but I can see no real evidence supporting this.
Thus, Ooms idea is really attractive. Btw, Maruyama's Joodaigo jiten
is hopelessly outdated and is not really trustworthy as a source of
information.
>In fact, the essential vocabulary of the senmyou – "akitsumikami",
"kiyoki akaki", "kamuroki kamuromi no >mikoto", even "sumera" or
"sumeroki" are far from being decoded by the new linguists working on
Old Japanese >and Proto-Old Japanese. Ooms' theories on the Daoist
shades of this terminology are interesting, but by no >means the last
word.
Aki1 t-u mi1-kami2 is quite transparent: 'clear copula-attr.
Hon.prefix-deity'. It may seem baffling if viewed from the prism of
Classical Japanese, where t-u is not present except in obsolete
compounds, but it is attested in Old Japanese. Hence 'manifested
deity', which, imho, is a good translation equivalent.
Nothing mysterious about ki1yo1ki1 akaki1 (Senmyoo 5). First of all,
it is not a term, but two different words: 'clear' and 'bright' which
also occur in the reverse order akaki1 kiyo1ki1 (Senmyoo 1). And there
are plenty of cases in Senmyoo when they do not occur together
(Senmyoo 1 and 5 are the only cases), but appear separately.
kamuro1(?)ki1 and kamuro1(?)mi1 (possibly rather kami2ro1(?)ki1 and
kami2ro1(?)mi2) are also rather transparent: 'divine male' and 'divine
female', consisting of kami2 ~ kamu- 'deity', copula ro1 of the Korean
pedigree (the only difficulty here is that we do not know for sure
whether we have ro1 or ro2 here, although ro1 is more likely, as it
appears in older text, and is also supported by form kami2ruki1 and
kami2rumi2 that can be only derived from ro1 forms), and bound nouns
-ki1 'male' and -mi1 'female' also found in Izana-N-ki1 and Izana-mi1
etc.
It is only sume1 'imperial'? 'divine'? that really presents a problem,
although there also may be a likely solution.
It would be interesting to know who are the 'new linguists'?
Supposedly opposed to 'old'? (:-)
Best wishes,
--
============
Alexander Vovin
Interim Chair and Professor (2008-2010)
Department of the Japanese Language and Literature
University of Bochum, Germany
Professor of East Asian Languages (on leave 2008-2010)
Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures
University of Hawai'i at Manoa, USA
========================
iustitiam magni facite, infirmos protegite
Ross Bender
If Vovin will vouch for "root child" I suppose it's good enough for me. The term is certainly important to Ooms' argument which contrasts the "neko" emperors with the "ame" emperors.
Considerably rarer in the senmyoo is the phrase "Takama no hara ni kamuzumarimasu sumera ga mutsu kamuroki kamuromi no mikoto". Of course "kamuroki kamuromi" refer to male and female deities, the question being whether they mean specifically Izanagi and Izanami. Norinaga seems to say that the term may signify not only these two generative kami but also ALL the male and female imperial ancestral deities down to Amaterasu.
I mention "akitsumikami" and "kiyoki akaki" since Ooms gives such great emphasis to these terms as evidencing Daoist provenance. Sansom was the first to translate the former as "manifest deity", based on Norinaga, but certainly neither give any credit to the Chinese for originating the locution. "Kiyoki akaki" or the reverse is the manner in which loyal retainers are to serve, and is common in the edicts. Is this Daoist language? Disloyal retainers, for example in the Naramaro plot, are characterized as "kitanaki" or worse -- again, if Ooms is correct in his "Purity" chapter, this stuff all came from continental systems of thought, which I would say is not proven. Ooms, giving himself an out, says that the whole matter is probably unprovable.
Norinaga of course frequently argues that the ancient language was corrupted by Chinese writing, but that the foundational language is that of the kami. It seems to me that we're still debating that some centuries later.
A question which is currently occupying me is whether the difference between the senmyoo and the Chinese-language choku and shou is one partly of the medium being the message. There certainly is a stark contrast between the theological content and vocabulary of Senmyoo #19 and the following choku announcing the change in calendar.
Ross Bender
http://rossbender.org
> -------Original Message-------
> From: Alexander Vovin <sasha...@gmail.com>
> Subject: [PMJS] Re: Senmyoo terms (was: [PMJS] Where's Waldo?)
> Sent: 06 Nov '08 17:57
>
> On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 4:55 AM, Ross Bender <rossb...@rossbender.org> wrote:
> >
>
> >
> > Some minor cavils and quibbles. Ooms seems irksomely taken with his translation of "Yamato neko" as "root child" of Yamato, a meaning which as far as I know not even Motoori Norinaga suggested, although it may appear somewhere in his immense commentary. Sansom didn't attempt a translation of the term, and Herbert Zachert rendered it as "Das Liebe Kind von Yamatos", more or less what Maruyama says in his _Jodaigo Jiten_.
>
> I trust that Ooms is right. Here is what speaks, imho, in his favor:
>
> Yamato2 neko1 appears in Senmyoo as:
>
> b) once
> c) once
> d) once
>
> In all these cases we have the consistent spelling . Both and
> that they are used as kungana and not semantographically, what word do
> they render? Not a 'cat', I guess (:-). For some time I was toying
> with idea that neko1 here might be representing a loan from Korean
> (cf. MK neks 'soul'), but I can see no real evidence supporting this.
> Thus, Ooms idea is really attractive. Btw, Maruyama's Joodaigo jiten
> is hopelessly outdated and is not really trustworthy as a source of
> information.
>