1 The Origins of Our Translation and Its Title
This book was conceived during the spring term of academic year 2010–2011 when I taught my graduate seminar on “Questions of Language, Writing, and Linguistic Thought in the History of the ‘Chinese Character Cultural Sphere
In hindsight, this was a foolhardy undertaking: the contents of the book are quite technical and complex, demanding deep expertise in East Asian intellectual and religious history; the early history of Buddhism and written language in China, Japan and Korea; East Asian historical linguistics; the history of reading and writing across the sinographic sphere; Sinitic poetry and its reception throughout the same region; etc. Thus, Professor Kin was entirely justified in his initially skeptical reaction to my proposal to proceed with an English translation of the book, and the inherent difficulty of the book goes a long way toward explaining why it has taken ten years to complete.
All translations require translators to make difficult decisions about word choice and terminology, but this project has been especially challenging because of the relative dearth of English-language publications treating these phenomena in a broadly comparative way, and because of the concomitant lack of a well-established and agreed upon terminology.2 Professor Kin’s book was published with the Japanese title Kanbun to higashi Ajia: Kundoku no bunkaken, one possible translation of which would be “Classical Chinese and East Asia: The Cultural Sphere of Reading by Gloss.” That is, J. kanbun
But we have chosen to give the title a number of slightly different twists in English and have opted instead for “Literary Sinitic and East Asia: A Cultural Sphere of Vernacular Reading.” The reasons are as follows. First of all, “Literary Sinitic.” Rationales for the term “Literary Sinitic” in preference to “Classical Chinese” or “Literary Chinese” can be found in Mair (1994 and 2004), where the reasons given are primarily linguistic and philological. That is, Mair uses “Sinitic” as a precise and politically neutral rendering of hanyu
Thus, we use “Literary Sinitic” to refer to what is called kanbun in Japanese, hanmun in Korean, and hán văn in Vietnamese, and to what in modern Mandarin Chinese is typically called wenyan(wen)
It can be objected that the term “Sinitic” indexes “China” just as much as the term “Chinese” does, and etymologically speaking, this is true. Our point is not to deny the centrality of China, Chinese civilization or Chinese writing in the development of literacy, writing and literature in the regions encompassed by the Sinographic Cosmopolis.6 But the term “Sinitic” does nonetheless take us all at least one cautious step back from the unfortunate imprecision of “Chinese.” It can also be objected that many of the texts composed in what we are calling “Literary Sinitic” are less than “literary” or bellelettristic and/or are infused with vernacular elements (whether Sinitic or otherwise), but here the point is that the authors of texts written in what is variously called wenyan(wen), hanmun, kanbun or hán văn were nonetheless striving to write in Literary Sinitic. And anybody, whether a speaker of a variety of Vernacular Sinitic or not, was capable of writing substandard Literary Sinitic. “Literary Sinitic” comes with all the imprecision of these equivalents in Mandarin, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese, but we need a blanket term for the entire region that avoids the term “Chinese.”7
Now let us turn to the term kundoku and problems with its translation. Perhaps the most fundamental problem with the term—both in much modern Japanese research about the phenomenon and in most of the research in non-Japanese languages that carry over the term intact from Japanese as a kind of technical term—is its lack of precision. That is, when researchers, Japanese or otherwise, write about “kundoku,” it is not always clear whether they are talking about text- or sentence-level (kanbun) kundoku, or about word- or character- (sinographic) level kun’yomi: “kundoku” typically does duty for both of these across a wide swath of research. A more linguistically fine-tuned approach to kundoku-type reading practices, therefore, would need to answer a number of questions, starting with: Is the practice restricted to individual graphs or words, or does it apply to longer texts? Are written glosses involved, and if so, what kinds? Is a knowledge of the source language required, and if so, on what levels and to what extent? Do these reading practices involve translation? Etc.8
An additional problem with using the term “kundoku” untranslated is that it rather unjustly privileges Japanese as somehow the unique or originary case for these sorts of reading practices, a conceit that Kin Bunkyō’s book dispels once and for all. With these caveats in mind, then, let us turn to the question of how to render “kundoku” in English. Lurie (2011: 5) describes kundoku-type reading practices as “reading by gloss,” and Whitman (2011: 1) similarly uses “glossing” “… in a somewhat extended sense to refer to a process where a text in one language is prepared (annotated, marked) to be read in another” (Whitman 2011: 1). Kin Bunkyō himself adopts a very liberal attitude as to what counts as kundoku, but in any case we render “kundoku
Finally, the question of the uniqueness of East Asian vernacular reading techniques in the history of world writing. To Professor Kin’s eternal credit, his book shatters the all-too-common conceit among many speakers and scholars of Japanese that kundoku is and always has been somehow unique to Japan. Instead, Professor Kin not only demonstrates a wide range of vernacular reading phenomena attested in earlier periods of Korean (building on the pioneering work of Nam P’unghyŏn and Kobayashi Yoshinori, among others) and Old Uighur (based on the equally pioneering publications of Shōgaito Masahiro), but also stretches the notion of “vernacular reading/kundoku” to include Khitan and Vietnamese, as well as textual genres like zhijie
But when Professor Kin writes in Chapter 1 that “Except for the case of reading Literary Sinitic via kundoku in Japan, there are no examples, at least in today’s world, of reading a foreign language text by adding marks to change word order and thereby convert the text into one’s native language,” his qualifications of “at least in today’s world” and “by adding marks” are important ones, and readers are left potentially with the impression that vernacular reading—even if confined today to Japan—was nonetheless a phenomenon unique to the sinographic sphere. Moreover, readers are left to ponder whether vernacular reading was possible without adding marks. But there are indeed parallel vernacular and/or glossed reading phenomena attested elsewhere in the world: King (2007) and Whitman (2011) reference some of the glossed reading techniques from medieval Europe,9 and there are fascinating parallels from multiple languages of the ancient Middle East. Thus, our English-language sub-title reads, “A Cultural Sphere of Vernacular Reading …” rather than “The Cultural Sphere …” so as to encourage thinking about other such cultural spheres in world history.
2 Ancient Middle Eastern Parallels to East Asian Vernacular Reading Phenomena
Although Professor Kin must have been well aware of the ancient Middle Eastern parallels to kundoku, he makes no mention of them in his book. To have done so would no doubt have complicated the work even further, but the typological and terminological parallels between ancient Middle Eastern vernacular reading phenomena and those in the sinographic sphere deserve closer attention, if for no other reason perhaps than to help us sharpen our appreciation of the similarities and differences between the two. As an additional attempt at clarifying the gamut of attested cases of vernacular reading techniques around the world along with some of the terminology that has been proposed to describe it, the pages below summarize some of the key research to date on kundoku-type phenomena in the (mostly ancient) Middle East, although I cannot pretend to any authoritative expertise in this area.
2.1 Allography, Garshuni, and Garshunography
One of the first terms one encounters in the scholarly literature about vernacular reading and cases where a “foreign” writing system is used to write a vernacular is “allography,” built on Greek allo- “other” plus graphé “representation by means of lines; drawing; writing.” French scholar Chatonnet (2015: 16) defines “allographie” as “cases where a language with its own writing system is written down deliberately—and in precise and limited contexts—using another writing system borrowed from a different tradition.”10 Mengozzi (2010: 297) notes that the term “Garshuni,” used originally to refer to Arabic texts written in Syriac script, has also been used to label cases whereby the East-Syriac script was used to write languages like Armenian, Kurdish, Malayalam, Persian, or Turkish, and Kiraz (2014: 65) goes so far as to propose that all such cases where “a community makes a deliberate choice” to write in another script different from their own be designated as “garshunography” rather than “allography,” which latter term he deems inappropriate because of its established linguistic usage to designate (ortho)graphic variation. At any rate, “allography” is clearly not relevant to East Asian vernacular reading practices, because while different East Asian linguistic communities may have deliberately chosen to deploy sinographs and Literary Sinitic, they nonetheless had no “choice,” because they had no indigenous writing system prior to contact with sinography. Chinese writing was the only game in town, as it were, at least for Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese in ancient times.
2.2 Alloglottography
An etymologically similar term to “allography” is “alloglottography,” defined by Coulmas (1996: 8) as “the practice of using one language in writing and another in reading, known from situations of restricted literacy.” On the very next page, Coulmas refers to Japanese kundoku kanbun (“Chinese texts read in the kundoku method”) as an example of alloglottography, but this is not entirely congruent with the original use of the term. The term “alloglottography” was coined by Ilya Gershevitch (1979) in his famous paper on the use of Elamite in Achaemenid chanceries, where he showed on the basis of a detailed analysis of the great inscription of Darius on Mount Behistun that Achaemenid Elamite was a medium for transmitting texts that were conceived and dictated in Old Iranian languages, to be read out and understood as Old Iranian texts. In a restatement of the phenomenon, Rubio (2007: 33) defines alloglottography as “… writing a text in a language different from the language in which it is intended to be read …,” and writes with respect to Darius: “This means that the Great King uttered the words in Old Persian, but the scribes wrote them down in Elamite and read them back to him (as the inscription says) in Old Persian” (ibid.: 39).
In a footnote to his original article, Gershevitch describes how he also entertained using the terms “xenography,” “disglottography,” or “dysglottography” for the same phenomenon, but goes on to clarify that “the essence of what I mean is not that an alien (‘xeno’) ‘graphy’ is used, but that an alien ‘glotta’ is used for the ‘graphy’ of one’s own ‘glotta.’” In their recent discussion of Sumerograms and Akkadograms in Hittite and the terminology used to describe them, Kudrinski and Yakubovich (2016: 56) bemoan the “highly poetic style” of Gershevitch’s original exposition and his failure to offer up a more formal definition of alloglottography, preferring instead the definition in Langslow (2002: 44–45): “the use of one language (L1) to represent an utterance in another language (L2) […] in such a way that the original utterance in L2 can be accurately and unambiguously recovered from the document in L1.”11 Under such a formal definition, Japanese kanbun kundoku would indeed qualify as a form of alloglottography, but the question remains as to what formal devices, say, the Achaemenid scribes used to make possible the unambiguous recovery of Old Persian from the written Elamite text.
2.3 From Ideography to Logography to Heterography and Heterograms
Just as the notion of “ideogram” and “ideography” has come in for sustained criticism in discussions of Chinese writing in recent decades (see Unger 1990 and 2004 for discussion and relevant bibliography), the same terms have been used in the scholarly literature on cuneiform writing in ancient Mesopotamia, but have come under scrutiny since at least Gelb (1963: 35), who criticized the use of “ideogram” in that field. Kudrinski and Yakubovich (2016: 54) argue strongly for the use of “logogram” in cuneiform studies, and note that this term is now “ubiquitous in contemporary Hittitological literature.” But as a cover term for the various types of logogram found in ancient Middle Eastern writing systems, they suggest “heterogram.” And if those of us working in the sinographic sphere were to follow the example of our colleagues in cuneiform studies, we should probably be referring to “Chinese characters” not as “sinographs” but as “sino-grams,” a term in fact used by Haruta Seirō, a Japanese specialist in Middle Iranian languages (see Haruta 2006).
How, then, can we define “heterogram?” Kiraz (2014: 68) gives the following definition: “A heterogram is a word (or morpheme) that is spelled exactly as it would be spelled in its source language, but is intended to be read in the target language … (This is not to be confused with alloglottography where the entire text is written in one language but read in another.)” Putting to one side the phonographic and alphabetic bias of Kiraz’s appeal to “spelling,” which is clearly not relevant to sinographs, under such a definition “heterography” would be the unaltered use of graphic representations of morphemes or words from language A to write words or morphemes in language B. This still begs the question of how such heterograms are to be read or vocalized in language B, but in any case the term “heterography” as used in ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform studies and Middle Iranian studies is quite different from the definition given in Coulmas (1996: 202): “a differentiation in spelling which distinguishes different meanings of homophonous words or phrase.” Examples of this Coulmasian heterography as the antonym of homograph(y) would be the differentiation (“different writing” = hetero-graphy) of English right, rite, write, and wright (Kiraz 2014: 68), whereas examples from English approximating kundoku-type heterography would be the different readings of “2” in “20 = twenty,” “20ies = twenties,” “2 = two” and “2nd = second” or of “X” in “Xmas = Christmas and “Xing = crossing” (from Busse 2013: 92).12
2.4 Ancient Middle Eastern Parallels with East Asia
Parallels between ancient Middle Eastern heterography and Japanese vernacular reading practices were noted already more than 150 years ago by French Orientalist and Japanologist Léon de Rosny (1837–1914). In a letter to Assyriologist Julius Oppert (1825–1905) published in Revue Orientale, Léon de Rosny (1864: 269) pointed out two parallels between “Anarian” (Sumerian) cuneiform and the use of Chinese writing in Japan: “the polyphony of certain signs” and the use of “phonetic complements alongside certain ideograms for recall of the corresponding word in the spoken language.” For Rosny (ibid.: 271), the fact that both Anarian cuneiform and Japanese writing are “a mixture of ideographic signs and phonetic signs” and that ideographic signs, whether in Assyrian or Japanese, “express neither a letter nor any sound, but an idea—an abstraction created by the sound by which this idea is rendered in thus and such language,” counted as a “remarkable coincidence.” “But,” explains Rosny, after a survey of sumerograms and sinographs for “heart,” “hand,” and “surveyed field,” “nothing in these signs brought to mind how one said the words “heart,” “hand,” and “surveyed field” in China or Babylon”—hence the need to develop phonetic complements. He goes on to point out that this feature of “Chinese ideographic writing” had led to the point where “the Japanese, the Cochinchinese [Vietnamese], Koreans, Cantonese, and Fujianese were able to adopt it “without having to renounce their national language.”13
It should come as no surprise that some of the first twentieth-century scholars to pick up again on these similarities were Japanese. An early case in point is Kōno (1980), and Japanese scholars of writing in the ancient Middle East still hark back to this paper and the parallels noted there. Kōno wrote:
We [Japanese] not only use two different kinds of scripts [Chinese kanji logograms and Japanese kana syllabograms] side by side, but also read kanji in an extremely complex way using not only their on [Chinese(-like)] values but also their kun [Japanese] values. This practice is similar to that of the Assyro-Babylonian cuneiform, which was borrowed from Sumerians. Such a practice thus seems too old-looking for the second half of the twentieth century, and its complexity is unparalleled today. We struggle with this complexity day by day, but this struggle provides us with golden opportunities for contemplating the essence of writing.
Quoted from Ikeda 2007: 1
Haruta (2006: 172) specifically refers to “heterographic writing systems” as “kun-reading systems,” while Ikeda (2007) and Ikeda (2013) both make explicit comparisons between Japanese kundoku and early Akkadian cuneiform.14 Based on his comparison, Ikeda (2007: 9) outlines the following typology of what he calls “kunogenesis”:
Monographic and monosyllabic (e.g. <2> for the syllable /tu/ as in “ta2”);
Monographic and polysyllabic (e.g. <0> for the syllables /zero/ as in “0x”);
Polygraphic and monosyllabic (e.g. <10> for the syllables /ten/ as in “10der”);
Polygraphic and polysyllabic (e.g. <40> for the syllables /forti/ as in “40fy”).
Ikeda (2007: n. 15) goes on to note that “partial kun … can also be segmental, but segmental kunogenesis has been excluded from the discussion, because it is attested neither in early Japanese nor in early Akkadian.” This is an unfortunate omission, because as Professor Kin’s discussion of Silla hyangga and hyangch’al orthography in the book translated here shows, Old Korean had precisely this kind of segmental kun readings.
Another observer was certainly Russian linguist Igor Mikhailovich Diakonoff. In his reminiscences of an exchange of ideas with Diakonoff about his (then) forthcoming paper on alloglottography, Ilya Gershevitch (1982: 99) cites a letter from Diakonoff in which the latter writes: “However, the Aramaic-Iranian system is not unique in grammatological history, cf. Akkadian with its Sumerograms and Akkadograms, or Korean and Japanese with their Chinese pictographic spellings.”15 Two years later, Miguel Civil, in his study of “bilingualism in logographically written languages” with a focus on Sumerian in Ebla, begins his article with a foray into Old Japanese so as to emphasize the point that “the language in which a text is written is not necessarily the language in which the same text is read” (1984: 75–76). Unfortunately, he muddles language and script and his example is the Man’yōshū, where there can be no doubt that the poems are in Japanese, and that the language of writing and reading were the same.16 In any case, the parallels between Japanese kundoku (albeit focusing primarily on word-level kun’yomi) and ancient Middle Eastern heterography have been remarked upon in passing for some years now, but remain insufficiently studied.
2.5 Aramaic mfāraš, Middle Persian uzvārišn
2.5.1 Aramaic mfāraš
The oldest descriptions of how ancient Middle Eastern alloglottography or vernacular reading might have worked in practice are both fascinating and instructive for the student of vernacular reading practices in the sinographic sphere. The oldest such records pertain to Achaemenid times and a stash of letters in Aramaic, some on papyrus and some on leather, that survives from the correspondence of an Achaemenid prince called Aršāma concerning his landholdings in Egypt. As de Blois describes it, “These include one letter from a person with a Persian name to Aršāma, and several from Aršāma to various persons in Egypt, some of whom had Persian, some Egyptian names. The question inevitably arises why two Persians, one of them a member of the royal family, the other an official of the Persian administration in Egypt, should communicate with one another not in their own native tongue, nor even in a language spoken in Egypt, but in Aramaic. The only plausible answer is that the sender dictated his message in Persian, a scribe translated it ad hoc and wrote it down into Aramaic, and that a second scribe retranslated it ex tempore into Persian …” (de Blois 2007: 1194). This notion of an Achaemenid scribe reading off in Persian (or some other language) a text written in Aramaic was famously imagined by Polotsky (1932: 273), who suggested that Achaemenid chancery practices were predicated on the twinned assumptions of a) monolingualism in writing practice and b) multilingualism of the scribe. The texts produced were translated directly “vom Blatt weg” (“off the sheet; impromptu”) in the language of the addressee. Sundermann (1985: 105) elaborates that this form of ex tempore translation of the Aramaic text into Persian was referred to in Aramaic as mpāraš [sic], a term meaning something like “interpret.” Moreover, “‘[R]eading’ for the otherwise illiterate Persian aristocrats consisted of consulting their literate servants, as the Old Persian word pati-psa- for ‘read’ suggests; according to I. Gershevitch, this must have meant ‘ask for the return of, and re-citing, words previously spoken and/or heard.’” Greenfield (2008: 707–708) provides more details on the practice and related terms:
… the document was dictated by the king or by an official to the scribe, who then wrote the text in Aramaic; the addressee’s scribe read the letter in the recipient’s native tongue. It is clear, from various internal indications, that the sepīru “scribe” combined in his function the tasks of both secretary and translator. Although most recipients would be Persian, the missive might be received by a Lydian, a Greek, a Choresmian or a resident of Gandhara. The use of many Old Persian terms in these texts facilitated their being understood. This mode of reading is what is meant by the term mĕphārash in Ezra 4.18, the equivalent of Iranian uzvārišn. The reading of these texts aloud is referred to in Ezra 4.18, Esther 6.1 and Darius, Behistun 70.
Let us pursue now this last reference to Ezra 4.18. The King James Bible reads, “The letter which ye sent unto us hath been plainly read before me” while the New International Version reads, “The letter you sent us has been read and translated in my presence.”17 Numerous other English translations exist. The context is a series of petitions to different Achaemenid kings from Jewish and Samaritan leaders in Palestine, and the replies of the kings; the language and style are similar to the Aršāma letters found in Egypt. “One of these is a letter from Artaxerxes I to the Samaritan, beginning (after the greeting) with the words (Ezra 4.18) ‘the letter which you sent to us was read before me mfāraš.’ The meaning of mfāraš was long forgotten (the Septuagint, for example, leaves it without translation), but it has plausibly been argued (Schaeder 1930: 1–14; Polotsky 1932), that it means ‘interpreted, translated’ or more precisely ‘translated ex tempore’” (de Blois 2007: 1195). With respect to this word mfāraš, F.F. Bruce (1950: 52) writes that it “was actually employed as a technical term in the diplomatic service of the Persian Empire to denote the procedure when an official read an Aramaic document straight off in the vernacular language of the particular province concerned.”
2.5.2 Middle Persian uzvārišn
The system of mfāraš seen above was called uzvārišn in Pahlavi, and a description of it survives in Arabic by An-Nadim in his Fihrist (10th century CE), where he quotes the following account by Ibn al-Muqaffa’ (8th century CE):
They also have an alphabet, called zuvārišn [sic],18 which they can write with the letters together or separated—there are some 1000 words—for the purpose of distinguishing words with more than one meaning [in Pahlavi script]. For example, if one wants to write [Persian] gōšt—which in Arabic is lahm [“meat”]—, then one writes BSRʾ [actually BSLYʾ = Aramaic bisrā], but reads it gōšt…. If one wants to write [Persian] nān—which in Arabic is khubz (“bread”)—, then one writes [Aramaic] lahmā, but reads nān …; and so on in all cases, except for cases when a substitute is not necessary: then they write like they speak.19
An-Nadim’s account is unclear as to whether uzvārišn referred to the individual heterograms or to the practice of heterography itself, but Skalmowski (2004: 295) goes on to explain that uzvārišn almost certainly means “explanation/ interpretation” and adds: “An important argument for accepting this meaning is the fact that the term uzvārišn was used by Zoroastrians in post-Sasanian times as an equivalent of Arabic tafsīr ‘commentary’…” In this context, the ancient Korean practice of sŏktok kugyŏl
Modern-day scholars have sometimes referred to these Aramaeograms in Middle Persian as “masks.” Here is a description from de Blois (2007: 1195):
… the quasi-Aramaic graphemes are masks for Middle Persian words, which are interspersed with phonetically (or pseudo-phonetically) spelt Persian words and with purely Persian grammatical elements attached to the quasi-Aramaic words. Thus, the Sasanian royal title “king of kings” is written MLK’N MLK’. Although this clearly involves the Aramaic word malkā [king] the phrase is not Aramaic. Instead, it stands for Middle Persian šāh-ān šāh; MLK’ is merely an “ideogram” for šāh, while –N is a “phonetic” spelling of the Persian plural suffix ān.
As Haruta (2013: 781) notes, scholars today typically transliterate heterograms like these with CAPS (a convention I have followed with sinographs in the translation of Professor Kin’s book). Another account, from Skjaervø (1996: 517–520):
They still wrote Aramaic words, however, but these became mere symbols (sometimes called “Semitic masks”) for the corresponding Iranian words … Thus they would write mlk’ for Parth., MPers. šāh, Sogd. əxšēwanē “king.” These Semitic “masks” were until recently called “ideograms,” but today heterogram or Aramaogram is the more common term.
2.6 The Parallels
What, then, are the parallels between cuneiform or Middle Persian heterography and East Asian vernacular reading? To give but a simple example, the Sumerian sign LUGAL was used to designate “king” in Sumerian, Akkadian and Hittite texts (Kudrinski and Yakubovich 2016: 53). A parallel would be the use of the sinograph
2.7 The Differences
One of the greatest differences between the ancient Middle East and the sinographic sphere—at least insofar as ancient Korea and Japan are concerned—concerns the sociolinguistic environment in which writing arose. Most accounts of heterography in the ancient Middle East are predicated on the assumptions that multiple languages were in contact and furthermore that multiple writing systems of heterogeneous origins were in use. Thus, scholars of ancient Mesopotamia and Middle Persian frequently appeal to language contact and language shift models to explain changes in scribal practices. For example, Kudrinski and Yakubovich (2016: 58) write of “the mismatch between the shift from language A to language B in oral communication and the preservation of A in writing in the same community, which is accompanied by the imperfect learning of the written variety of A by the speakers of B.” For them, both alloglottography and heterographic spellings “imply the ongoing or completed native language shift in a particular epigraphic community,” but “the former predates the language shift in writing, whereas the second must follow it” (ibid.). But the optimism of Yakubovich (2008: 205) about the prospects of contact linguistics for providing solutions to questions of the development of alloglottography and heterography in the ancient Middle East do not carry over to ancient Japan and Korea, where sinography—writing in “sinograms”—was the only form of writing ever known in the region in the earliest period. Moreover, although we can certainly imagine some form of multilingualism in ancient times on the Korean Peninsula, it was nothing remotely as robust as the multilingualism of the ancient Middle East, and certainly bilingualism in any local peninsular language with any form of spoken Sinitic would have been extremely limited, both in terms of population and in terms of duration. And even by then the gulf between spoken Sinitic and written/Literary Sinitic was significant.
Another difference concerns vernacular readings (“kun” readings) vs. indigenized or domesticated autochthono-xenic readings (to coin a monstrous term—i.e., readings of logograms corresponding to Sino-Japanese “on” readings of sinographs in Japanese). That is, whereas scholars of Akkadian, Hittite, and Middle Persian have been consumed with unraveling the secrets of heterography in their region and revealing the ways in which these were used to “mask” local/vernacular (as opposed to, say, original Sumerian or Aramaic) words and morphemes, and whereas even Japanese experts in the languages of the ancient Middle East have similarly focused on the parallels between Japanese kundoku (or at least word-level kun’yomi) and Middle Eastern heterography, few scholars seem to dwell on the processes by which heterograms, or even entire repertoires of them, are domesticated as loanwords, giving rise in the sinographic sphere to Sino-Japanese, Sino-Korean, Sino-Uighur, and Sino-Vietnamese systems of Sino-Xenic vocalizations for sinographs. So when a scholar of Middle Iranian transcribes Aramaeograms in CAPS, the assumption today seems to be that the heterograms were all read in, say, vernacular Pahlavi. When we do the same with a Literary Sinitic text from ancient Japan equipped with reading glosses, we sometimes do not know whether Japanese readers at the time would have read the sinographs in a Sino-Japanese pronunciation or in the vernacular, but we do know that both options were available. In the case of Middle Persian, a debate has raged for some decades as to whether the Aramaic elements in the texts are genuine loanwords and part of the lexicon, a position held by Lentz (1975) and Skalmowski (2004), but rejected already in Salemann (1895) and Schaeder (1930). The problem is that there is a pointed lack of Aramaic loanwords in New Persian, a direct descendant of Middle Persian, as well as in the Armenian, Syrian, and Greek sources dependent on Middle Persian. Additionally, in cases where parallel versions of the same passage or text exist in both heterographic and “phonetic” writing, the latter sorts of texts show no Aramaisms.22
The only vaguely similar case I have seen of development of a kind of “on” (Aramaeo-Persian?) reading is that of modern-day Zoroastrians in India, who “came to be convinced that both the Middle Persian and the Aramaic morphemes in Pahlavi religious texts were to be phonetically pronounced” some thousand years after the texts were written (Yakubovich 2008: 206). In essence, in a case like this where the heterograms are alphabetically (or at least abjadically or consonantally) rendered, this is a kind of reading pronunciation on steroids and still quite different from the Sino-Xenic systems that arose in East Asia on the basis of Middle Chinese and which, paradoxically, may have helped anchor and solidify the vernaculars against assimilation to Chinese (see Itō 2013 and 2014 for argumentation along these lines).
Ikeda and Yamada (2017: 162) outline other, more technical, differences between ancient Middle Eastern heterography and Japanese kundoku: “First, Akkadian phonograms are generally polyphonic, while Japanese phonograms are not. Second, in the Japanese text, you could easily tell the difference between the logograms and the phonograms … Moreover, phonograms cannot be used as logograms, and vice versa. In the Akkadian writing system, on the other hand, most characters can be used both as a logogram and as a phonogram. Finally, phonetic complements are obligatory in today’s Japanese orthography, while they are optional in Akkadian. However, these particular traits of the Japanese writing system did not exist in its early stage, that is, in the eighth century CE.” Much the same can be said, mutatis mutandis, about ancient Korean kugyŏl.
3 From Heterography to Heterolexia?
The terms “heterogram” and “heterography,” while versatile and useful enough, seemingly for both ancient Middle Eastern and sinographic contexts, are nonetheless not perfect. Kudrinski and Yakubovich present strong arguments for “heterogram” over other terms used in the past for cuneiform studies, but as Skjaervø (1995: 302–303) has noted, confusion or lack of clarity around the origin and function of heterograms in Iranian texts as opposed to their function in Aramaic texts is a perennial problem, and I would add that this needs to be guarded against when studying other languages and scripts too. Kudrinski and Yakubovich (2016: 55) offer up a reformatted definition of “heterogram” as follows:
… a sign or combination of signs that reproduce in writing a segment of A as a part of a text composed in B where A and B are two distinct languages and one can reasonably assume that the segment in question did not exist in the spoken language B.
But here we see another confusion—that between language and script, and in any case, we also run up against the problem seen above of assumptions of multilingualism, language contact, and multiple scribal traditions that do not pertain to the ancient sinographic sphere. Kudrinski and Yakubovich themselves concede that “Unfortunately, the practice of writing Hittite without resorting to Sumero- and Akkadograms appears to be non-existent” (another difference from, say, Heian period Japanese, where Japanese could be written without recourse to sinographs, though the hiragana and katakana syllabograms derive from man’yōgana and thus ultimately from sinographs, and texts were rarely, if ever, 100% in syllabograms), making it difficult to find parallel test cases. But when they claim in defense of the term “heterogram” that its etymology “does not impose a reference to the way one reads specific texts” (2016: 55), this seems to me to capture the essence of our terminological conundrum.
Because philologists and scholars of writing and its history have been so consumed with writing and writing systems, all our terms are weighted toward -grams, -graphs, and –graphies. With all this graphological heavy lifting we risk losing sight of the act of reading and of the many and varied ways to read in complex logographic writing systems. In the case of “sinograms” in East Asia (even in the case of Sinitic languages themselves), the more interesting question is always, “how were they read?” At the risk of clogging up our terminological repertoire further, I would suggest something like “heterolexia” (by analogy with “dyslexia,” even though etymologically this word is unorthodox) as a counterpoint to “heterography” and as a partial synonym for “vernacular reading.”
4 Editorial Conventions
4.1 Romanization
For Japanese, we use Revised Hepburn. The object particle
4.2 Citations
Like most Japanese works of this nature, Professor Kin’s original book does not give page numbers for citations. Wherever possible, we have endeavoured to provide these.
4.3 Sinographs and Footnotes
Following the conventions in Handel (2019), sinographs are rendered in PMingLiU (Proportional Ming Light Unicode) when the context is Chinese, in MS Mincho when the context is Japanese, and in Batang when the context is Korean. In contexts that span more than one civilization, PMingLiU is used. The editor has operated with the assumption that, all things being equal, readers need access to both sinographs and the originals of literary texts cited and translated; this we have provided in the footnotes. Thus, unless otherwise noted, all of the footnotes in the translation have been supplied or enhanced by the editor.
5 And Finally, about the Author: Kin Bunkyō a.k.a. Kim Mun’gyŏng
Professor Kin Bunkyō
Professor Kin is a world-renowned scholar in the field of Chinese literature; with his rare erudition in all three of the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean literary traditions, he is uniquely qualified to write on the history of vernacular reading in the sinographic sphere. His research contributions since the 1970s have touched many different fields, including: Cantonese folk lyrics (Inaba, Kin, and Watanabe 1995); translations into Japanese and studies of Jin Yong’s highly popular martial arts fiction (Jin Yong 1999; Kin 2010d); studies of Classical Chinese fiction (Kin 2002c); annotated editions of medieval Korea’s two most popular manuals of spoken Chinese that Professor Kin has led with an international team of scholars (Kin et al. 2002 on the Nogŏltae
But as the partial but nonetheless extensive listing of Professor Kin’s publications at the end of this preface shows, Professor Kin’s greatest love has been Chinese drama, and Yuan dynasty drama in particular. One of his very first publications was a long article on Yuan dynasty playwright Bai Renfu
More than any other work, Professor Kin has dedicated more than two decades to Dong Jieyuan’s Xixiangji zhugongdiao, beginning with his monograph in 1998 (Kin 1998b), and extending to the articles on style and linguistic artistry in the play in Kin (2010e) and Kin (2011h), and his lone publication in English on the elapse of time and seasons in the play (Kin 2005b, 2006, in two different versions and venues). His article on the illustrations in the Hongzhi edition of the Xixiangji (Kin 2014g) continues his longstanding interest in the broader theme of the Story of the Western Wing.
In addition to these solo-authored projects on Yuan dynasty (and later) Chinese drama, Professor Kin has also worked tirelessly with Japanese and Chinese colleagues to uncover, edit, and publish numerous Yuan plays—especially rare editions held in Japan. Akamatsu, Inoue, and Kin (2007) and Akamatsu, Kin, and Komatsu (2011) are one representative series; Li and Kin (2004) is an in-depth study and annotated edition of Handan meng ji
In sum, Professor Kin, through his research expertise in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, and his deep experience with a wide variety of sinographic texts infused with “vernacular” elements (be they Chinese, Japanese, or Korean), is the ideal scholar to have undertaken a book like this. The enormity of his topic and the erudition it requires can be judged from the more recent volume edited by Nakamura Shunsaku on virtually the same topic (Nakamura 2014), which required an authorial team of twenty-one scholars to cover much the same ground. I sincerely hope our translation will spur more interest in and galvanize more comparative research on vernacular reading phenomena in East Asia and beyond. And I also hope this preface will encourage more colleagues to explore the many other contributions of Professor Kin, which deserve so richly to be appreciated more widely outside of East Asia.
Ross King
Vancouver, British Columbia
Bibliography
Works Cited (I): General
Blom, Alderik. 2017. Glossing the Psalms: The Emergence of the Written Vernaculars in Western Europe from the Seventh to the Twelfth Centuries. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH.
Bruce, F. F. 1950. The Books and the Parchments: Some Chapters on the Transmission of the Bible. London: Pickering & Inglis.
Busse, Anja. 2013. “Hittite scribal habits: Sumerograms and phonetic complements in Hittite cuneiform.” In Studies in Language Change: Scribes as Agents of Language Change, edited by Esther-Miriam Wagner, Ben Outhwaite, and Bettina Beinhoff, 85–96. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.
Chatonnet, Françoise Briquel. 2015. “Un cas d’allographie: le garshuni.” In Écriture et communication, edited by Dominique Briquel and Françoise Briquel Chatonnet, 66–75. Paris: Éd. du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques. Electronic resource available at: http://cths.fr/ed/edition.php?id=6954#.
Civil, Miguel. 1984. “Bilingualism in Logographically Written Languages: Sumerian in Ebla.” In Il Bilinguismo a Ebla: Atti Del Convegno Internazionale (Napoli, 19–22 Aprile, 1982), edited by Luigi Cagni, 75–97. Napoli: Istituto universitario orientale, Dipartimento di studi asiatici.
Coulmas, Florian. 1996. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
de Blois, Francois. 2007. “Translation in the ancient Iranian world.” In Translation: An International Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, edited by Harald Kittel, Armin Paul Frank, Norbert Greiner, Theo Hermans, Werner Koller, José Lambert, and Fritz Paul, 1194–1198. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Den Heijer, Johannes, Andrea Schmidt, and Tamara Pataridze (eds.). 2014. Scripts beyond Borders: A Survey of Allographic Traditions in the Euro-Mediterranean World. Louvain/Paris: Peeters.
Diakonoff, I. M. 1986. “O geterografii i ee meste v istorii razvitiia pis’ma (Mesopotamiia i Iran)” [On Heterography and its Place in the History of the Development of Writing (Mesopotamia and Iran)]. Peredneaziatskii sbornik 4: 4–18.
Ding, Picus S. 2015. “Chinese Influence on Vietnamese: A Sinospheric Tale.” In Language Empires in Comparative Perspective, edited by Christel Stolz, 55–75. Berlin/München/Boston: Mouton deGruyter.
Durkin-Meisterernst, D. 2004. “HUZWĀREŠ.” Encyclopedia Iranica, online edition: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/huzwares.
Fraleigh, Matthew. 2016. Plucking Chrysanthemums: Narushima Ryūhoku and Sinitic Literary Traditions in Modern Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center.
Frellesvig, Bjarke, and John Whitman (eds.). 2008. Proto-Japanese: Issues and Prospects. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Pub. Co.
Gelb, Ignace J. 1963. A Study of Writing (revised ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gershevitch, Ilya. 1979. “The alloglottography of Old Persian.” Transactions of the Philological Society 77, no. 1: 114–190
Gershevitch, Ilya. 1982. “Diakonoff on Writing, with an Appendix by Darius.” In Societies and Languages of the Ancient Near East: Studies in Honour of I. M. Diakonoff, edited by J. N. Postgate. Warminster, 99–109. Warminster: England: Aris & Phillips Ltd.
Greenfield, J. C. 2008. “Aramaic in the Achaemienian Empire.” In The Cambridge History of Iran, volume 2: The Median and Achaemeanian Periods, edited by Ilya Gershevitch, 698–713. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Handel, Zev. 2019. Sinography: How the Chinese Script has been Adapted to Write Other Languages. Boston and Leiden: Brill.
Haruta, Seiro. 1992. “Formation of Verbal logograms (Aramaeograms) in Parthian.” Orient 28: 17–36.
Haruta Seiro. 2006. “Sekai no kun’yomi hyōki” [Heterographic Writing Systems in the World]. Tōkai daigaku kiyō (bungakubu) 86: 19(172)–43(196).
Haruta, Seiro. 2013. “Aramaic, Parthian, and Middle Persian.” In The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Iran, edited by D. T. Potts, 779–794. New York: Oxford University Press.
Henning, Walter Bruno. 1945. “Sogdian Tales.” BSOAS 11: 465–487.
Henning, Walter Bruno. 1958. “Mitteliranisch.” In B. Spuler (ed.), Iranistik. 1. Linguistik, edited by B. Spuler, 20–130. Handbuch der Orientalistik. 1, 4. Leiden: Brill.
Humbach, Helmut. 1969. Die aramäische Inschrift von Taxila. Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literature, Geistes- und sozialwisseschaftliche Klasse 1. Wiesbaden.
Humbach, Helmut. 1973. “Beobachtungen zur Überlieferungsgeschichte des Awesta.” Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft 31 (1973): 109–122.
Ikeda, Jun. 2007. “Early Japanese and Early Akkadian writing systems: A contrastive survey of ‘Kunogenesis.’” Paper presented at the conference, “Origins of Early Writing Systems,” Peking University, Beijing, October 6.
Ikeda, Jun. 2013. “Japanese Logosyllabic Writing: A Comparison with Cuneiform Writing.” Paper presented at the conference, “Cultures and Societies in the Middle Euphrates and Habur Areas in the Second Millennium BC,” University of Tsukuba, Japan, December 5–7.
Ikeda, Jun, and Yamada, Shigeo. 2017. “The World’s Oldest Writing in Mesopotamia and the Japanese writing system.” In Ancient West Asian Civilization: Geoenvironment and Society in the Pre-Islamic Middle East, edited by Akira Tsuneki, Shigeo Yamada, and Ken-ichiro Hisada, 157–163. Singapore: Springer.
Itō Hideto. 2013. “Chōsen hantō ni okeru gengo sesshoku: Chūgokuatsu e no taisho to shite no taikō Chūgokuka” [Language Contact on the Korean Peninsula: Counter-Sinicization as a Countermeasure against Pressure from China]. Gogaku kenkyūjo ronshū 18: 55–93.
Itō Hideto. 2014. “Kan-Kan gengo sesshokushi shotan: Taikō Chūgokuka no kanten kara” [A Preliminary Study of the History of Korean-Chinese Language Contact: from the Perspective of Counter-Sinicization]. Paper delivered at the conference, “Hundok/kundoku and Vernacularization,” The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, July 2.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 1988. “Kanji bunkaken no kundoku genshō” [Phenomenon of Vernacular Reading in the Chinese Character Cultural Sphere]. In Wakan hikaku bungaku kenkyū no shomondai, edited by Wakan hikaku bungakkai, 175–204. Wakan hikaku bungaku sōsho 8. Tōkyō: Kyūko Shoin.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2010. Kanbun to higashi Ajia: kundoku no bunkaken [Literary Sinitic and East Asia: a cultural sphere of vernacular reading]. Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten.
King, Ross. 2007. “Korean kugyŏl Writing and the Problem of Vernacularization in the Sinitic Sphere.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Boston, March 23.
King, Ross. 2015. “Ditching Diglossia: Describing Ecologies of the Spoken and Inscribed in Pre-modern Korea.” Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies 15, no. 1: 1–19.
King, Ross (ed.). Forthcoming. Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in the World of Wen: Reading Sheldon Pollock from the Sinographic Cosmopolis. Leiden: Brill.
King, Ross and Christina Laffin. 2020. “Editor’s Preface: Saitō Mareshi, the ‘Literary Sinitic Context,’ and Literary Modernity in the Former Sinographic Cosmopolis.” In Kanbunmyaku: The Literary Sinitic Context and the Birth of Modern Japanese Language and Literature, by Saitō Mareshi (edited by Ross King and Christina Laffin and translated by Sean Bussell, Matthieu Felt, Alexey Lushchenko, Caleb Park, Si Nae Park, and Scott Wells), vii–xxx. Leiden: Brill.
Kiraz, George A. 2014. “Garshunography: Terminology and some Formal Properties of Writing One Language in the Script of Another.” In Scripts Beyond Borders: A Survey of Allographic Traditions in the Euro-Mediterranean World, edited by Den Heijer, Johannes, Andrea Schmidt and Tamara Pataridze, 65–73. Louvain/Paris: Peeters.
Klíma, Otakar. 1968. “Avesta. Ancient Persian Inscriptions. Middle Persian Literature.” In History of Iranian Literature, edited by Jan Rypka, 1–68. Dördrecht, Holland: D. Reidel.
Kobayashi, Yoshinori 小林芳規. 2007. “Tracing the Spread of Kakuhitsu Glossing of Chinese Texts in East Asia.” Translated by John Whitman. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Chicago, IL, March 23.
Kōno Rokurō. 1980 [1957]. “Kojiki ni okeru kanji shiyō” [Usage of sinographs in the Kojiki]. In Kōno Rokurō chosakushū [Collected Works of Rokurō Kōno], by Kōno Rokurō, 3: 3–53. Tōkyō: Heibonsha. Originally published in Takeda Yukichi (1957): 155–206.
Kōno Rokurō, Chino Eiichi, and Nishida Tatsuo (eds.). 2001. Sekai moji jiten [Dictionary of the World’s Writing Systems]. Tōkyō: Sanseidō.
Kornicki, Peter Francis. 2018. Languages, Scripts, and Chinese Texts in East Asia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kudrinski, Maksim, and Ilya Yakubovich. 2016. “Sumerograms and Akkadograms in Hittite: Ideograms, Logograms, Allograms, or Heterograms?” Altorientalische Forschungen 43, no. 1–2: 53–66.
Langslow, D. R. 2002. “Approaching Bilingualism in Corpus Languages.” In Bilingualism in Ancient Society: Language Contact and the Written Text, edited by J. N. Adams et al., 23–51. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lanselle, Rainier and Barbara Bisetto (eds.). Forthcoming. Intralingual Translation, Language Shifting and the Rise of Vernaculars in East Asian Classical and Premodern Cultures.
Lentz, Wolfgang. 1975. “Mitteliranische ‘Ideographie’ im Lichte von Erfahrungen mit Sprachkontakten” [Middle Iranian ‘ideography’ in the light of experiences with language contact]. In XIX. Deutscher Orientalistentag vom 28. September bis 4. Oktober 1975 in Freiburg im Breisgau, edited by Wolfgang Voigt, 1061–1083. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag.
Lurie, David B. 2011. Realms of Literacy: Early Japan and the History of Writing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center.
Mair, Victor H. 1994. “Buddhism and the Rise of the Written Vernacular in East Asia: The Making of National Languages.” Journal of Asian Studies 53, no. 3: 707–751.
Mair, Victor H. 2004. Review of Sinitic Grammar: Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives, edited by Hilary Chappell. Sino-Platonic Papers 145 (Reviews XI): 8–14.
Mengozzi, Alessandro. 2010. “The History of Garshuni as a Writing System: Evidence from the Rabbula Codex.” In CAMSEMUD 2007: Proceedings of the 13th Italian Meeting of Afro-Asiatic Linguistics, Held in Udine, May 21–24, 2007, edited by Frederick Mario Fales and Giulia Francesca Grassi, 297–304. Padova: S.A.R.G.O.N.
Nakamura Shunsaku (ed.). 2014. Kundoku kara minaosu Higashi Ajia [East Asia Seen Anew from the Perspective of kundoku]. Tōkyō: Tōkyō Daiguku Shuppanbu.
Nam, Pung-hyun. 2007. “Korean Kugyŏl (口訣) Markings and their Interpretation.” Translated by Ross King. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Chicago, IL, March 23.
Phan, John. 2013. “Chữ Nôm and the Taming of the South: A Bilingual Defense for Vernacular Writing in the Chỉ Nam Ngọc Âm Giải Nghῖa.” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 8, no. 1: 1–33.
Pollock, Sheldon. 1998. “The cosmopolitan vernacular.” Journal of Asian Studies 57, no. 1: 6–37.
Pollock, Sheldon. 2000. “Cosmopolitan and vernacular in history.” Public Culture 12, no. 3: 591–625.
Pollock, Sheldon. 2006. The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Polotsky, H. J. 1932. “Aramäisch PRŠ und das ‘Huzvaresch.’” Le Muséon: Revue d’études orientales 45: 273–283.
Robinson, Fred C. 1973. “Syntactical glosses in Latin manuscripts of Anglo-Saxon provenance.” Speculum 48, no. 3: 443–475.
Rosny, Léon de. 1864. “Lettre a M. Oppert sur quelques particularités des inscriptions cunéiformes anariennes.” Revue orientale 9, no. 53: 269–276.
Rosny, Léon de. 1876. “Sur le système de formation de l’écriture cunéiforme.” In Congrès international des orientalistes. Compte-rendu de la première session[,] Paris –1873. Tome deuxième: 165–177, (comment by [Julien] Duchateau 177–178).
Rubio, G. 2007. “Writing in Another Tongue: Alloglottography and Scribal Antiquarianism in the Ancient Near East.” In Margins of Writing, Origins of Cultures (OIS 2) (2nd printing), edited by Seth L. Sanders, 33–70. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.
Salemann, Carl. 1895. “Mittelpersisch.” In Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie, edited by Wilhelm Geiger et al., 249–332. Strassburg: K. J. Trübner.
Schaeder, H. H. 1930. Iranische Beiträge I. Halle (Saale): Niemeyer.
Shaked, Shaul. 2003. “Between Iranian and Aramaic: Iranian Words Concerning Food in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, with Some Notes on the Aramaic Heterograms in Iranian.” Irano-Judaica 5: 120–137.
Skalmowski, Wojciech. 2004. Studies in Iranian Linguistics and Philology. Krakow: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellonskiego.
Skjaervø, Prods Oktor. 1995. “Aramaic in Iran.” Aram 7: 283–318.
Skjaervø, Prods Oktor. 1996. “Aramaic Scripts for Iranian Languages.” In The World’s Writing Systems, edited by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, 515–535. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sundermann, Werner. 1985. “Schriftsysteme und Alphabete im alten Iran.” Altorientalische Forschungen 12: 101–113.
Takeda Yukichi (ed.). 1957. Kojiki taisei [Kojiki Compendium], volume 3: Gengo mojihen [Language and Script]. Tōkyō: Heibonsha.
Unger, J. Marshall. 1990. “The Very Idea: The Notion of Ideogram in China and Japan.” Monumenta Nipponica 45, no. 4: 391–411.
Unger, J. Marshall. 2004. Ideogram: Chinese Characters and the Myth of Disembodied Meaning. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
Wells, W. Scott. 2011. “From Center to Periphery: The Demotion of Literary Sinitic and the Beginnings of hanmunkwa—Korea, 1876–1910.” MA thesis, The University of British Columbia.
Whitman, John. 2011. “The Ubiquity of the Gloss.” Scripta 3: 1–27.
Whitman, John, Miyoung Oh, Jinho Park, Valerio Luigi Alberizzi, Masayuki Tsukimoto, Teiji Kosukegawa, and Tomokazu Takada. 2010. “Toward an International Vocabulary for Research on Vernacular Readings of Chinese Texts (漢文訓讀 Hanwen Xundu).” Scripta 2: 61–83.
Wixted, John Timothy. 2013. Review of Realms of Literacy: Early Japan and the History of Writing, David B. Lurie, Monumenta Nipponica. 68, no. 1: 89–94.
Wixted, John Timothy. 2018. “‘Literary Sinitic’ and ‘Latin’ as Transregional Languages: With Implications for Terminology Regarding ‘Kanbun.’” Sino-Platonic Papers 276: 1–14.
Yakubovich, Ilya. 2008. Review of Margins of Writing, Origins of Cultures, edited by Seth L. Sanders. Journal of Indo-European Studies 36, no. 1–2: 203–211.
Works Cited (II): Partial Listing of Works by Kin Bunkyō
Akamatsu Norihiko 赤松紀彦, Inoue Taizan 井上泰山, and Kin Bunkyō. 2007. Genkan zatsugeki no kenkyū. Sandatsusaku 三奪槊 Kieifu氣英布 Saishokumu西蜀夢 Tantōkai [Studies in Yuan-Period Drama Texts. Sanduoshuo, Qi Ying Bu, Xishu Meng, Dandao Hui]. Tōkyō: Kyūko Shoin.
Akamatsu Norihiko 赤松紀彦, Kin Bunkyō, and Komatsu Ken. 2011. Genkan zatsugeki no kenkyū 2. Hen’yarō 貶夜郎 , Kaishisui介子推 [Studies in Yuan-Period Drama Texts. Bian Yelang, Jie Zhitui]. Tōkyō: Kyūko Shoin.
Huang Shizhong 黃仕忠, Qiao Xiuyan 喬秀岩, Kin Bunkyō, et al. (editors). 2006–. Riben suocang xijian Zhongguo xiqu wenxian congkan [Compendium of Rare Chinese Drama Texts Held in Japan]. 18 vols. Guilin: Guangxi Chifan Daxue Chubanshe.
Inaba Akiko 稻葉明子, Kin Bunkyō, and Watanabe Kōji 渡辺浩司, compilers. 1995. Mokugyosho mokuroku 木魚書目錄: Kanton sesshō bungaku kenkyū: [The Muyushu Mulu: A Study of Cantonese Folk Lyrics Books]. Tōkyō: Kōbun Shuppan.
Jin Yong 金庸. 1999. Shachō eiyūden [Eagle-Shooting Heroes]. 5 vols. Translated by Okazaki Yumi 岡崎由美 and Kin Bunkyō. Tōkyō: Tokuma Shoten.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 1976. “Haku Jinpo 白仁甫 no bungaku” [Literature of Bai Renfu]. Chūgoku bungakuhō 26: 1–43.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 1980. “Shōsetsu ‘Ri Wa Den’ 李娃傳 no gekika: ‘Kyokukō chi’ 曲江池 to ‘Shūju ki’ 繍襦記” [The Dramatization of the Novella “Li Wa zhuan:” “Qujiang Pond” and “The Embroidered Jacket”]. Chūgoku bungakuhō 32: 74–115.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 1988. “Kanji bunkaken no kundoku genshō” [The Phenomenon of Vernacular Reading in the Chinese Character Cultural Sphere]. In Wakan hikaku bungaku kenkyū no shomondai, edited by Wakan hikaku bungakkai, 175–204. Wakan hikaku bungaku sōsho 8. Tōkyō: Kyūko Shoin.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 1989. “Taiwan gendaiha bungaku no kishu Wang Wenxing o yomu” [Reading the Standard-Bearer of Taiwanese Modernist Literature, Wang Wenxing]. Geibun kenkyū 54: 236–265.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 1993. Sangokushi no sekai [The World of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms]. Tōkyō: Tōhō Shoten.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 1994a. “Kanji bunkaken no moji to seikatsu” [Script and Daily Life in the Sinographic Sphere]. Shigaku 63, no. 3: 73(293)–79(299).
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 1994b. “Kōkōroku孝行録 to Nijūshi Kō二十四孝 sairon” [Reconsideration of the Xiaoxing lu and the Ershisi xiao]. Geibun kenkyū 65: 269–328.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 1995. “‘Ō Shōkun Henbun 王昭君變文 kō” [Study of the “Wang Zhaojun Bianwen”]. Chūgoku bungakuhō 50: 81–96.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 1997. “Chūgoku minkan bungaku to shinwa densetsu kenkyū: Tonkōbon ‘Zenkan Ryūke Taishiden (hen) 前漢劉家太子伝(変)’ o rei to shite” [Chinese Popular Literature and Mythological Studies: The Case of Dunhuang “Qian Han Liu Jia Tai-zi zhuan (bian)”]. Shigaku 66, no. 4: 119–135.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 1998a. “Chūgoku mokurokugakushijō ni okeru Shibu no igi: Rikuchō ki mokuroku no saikentō” [Significance of the Shibu 子部 in the History of Chinese Bibliography: A Reconsideration of the Six Dynasties Catalogues]. Shidō bunko ronshū 33: 171–206.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 1998b. Tō kaigen seishōki shokyūchō kenkyū [Study of Dong Jieyuan’s Xixiangji zhugongdiao]. Tōkyō: Kyūko Shoin.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 1999. “Nijūshi kō ni tsuite” [Concerning the Twenty- Four Paragons of Filial Piety]. Tokushima daigaku kokugo kokubungaku 12: 1–8.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2002a. “Mindai Banreki nenkan no sanjin山人 no katsudō” [Activities of the Shanren in the Wanli Era of the Ming]. Tōyōshi kenkyū 61, no. 2: 257–277.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2002b. “Higashi Ajia ni okeru taishi junan setsuwa to ōken shinwa” [Tales of Crown Prince Hardships in East Asia and Myths of Kingship]. Jinbun gakuhō 86: 213–223.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2002c. “Wanming xiaoshuo, leishu zuojia Tō Shibaku 邓志漠 shengping chutan” [Preliminary Study of the Life of Deng Zhimo: A Late Ming Author of Fiction and Encyclopedias]. In Mingdai xiaoshuo mianmianguan: Mingdai xiaoshuo guoji xueshu yantaohui lunwenji [Aspects of Ming Fiction: Proceedings of an International Academic Conference on Ming Dynasty Fiction], edited by Kow Mei-Kao 辜美高 and Huang Lin 黄霖, 318–329. Shanghai: Xuelin Chubanshe.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2004a. “Genkyoku chū no Chō Bekko 張撇古 ni tsuite” [Character Zhang Biegu in Yuan Dramas]. Geibun kenkyū 87: 162–184.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2004b. “Genkyoku no joseizō” [Image of Women in Yuan Drama]. Chūgoku 21 20: 69–86.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2005a. Sangokushi no sekai: Gokan sangoku jidai [World of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms: The Three Kingdoms Period of the Late Han]. Tōkyō: Kōdansha.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2005b. “Elapse of Time and Seasons in Dong Jieyuan Xixiangji.” Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko 63: 1–27. See also Kin (2006).
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2006. “Elapse of time and seasons in Dongjieyuan Xixiangji.” In Love, hatred, and other passions: questions and themes on emotions in Chinese civilization, edited by Paolo Santangelo and Donatella Guida, 229–240. Leiden & Boston: Brill.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2008. “Tonkō henbun no buntai” [Literary Style in Dunhuang Bianwen Transformation Texts]. Tōhō gakuhō 72: 243–265.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2010a. “Butten kan’yaku no kundoku oyobi bukkyō bungaku ni ataeta eikyō” [Kundoku in Chinese Translations of Buddhist Sutras and its Influence on Buddhist Literature]. Bukkyō bungaku 34: 175–182.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2010b. “17 segi huban Han-Il kan ŭi mugi milsu sagŏn e taehaesŏ” [Concerning a Case of Arms Smuggling between Korea and Japan in the Late 17th Century]. Kojŏn kwa haesŏk 8: 249–273.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2010c. “Kanbun bunkaken no teishō” [In Defense of the Literary Sinitic Cultural Sphere]. In Kanbun bunkaken no setsuwa sekai [World of Setsuwa in the Literary Sinitic Cultural Sphere], edited by Komine Kazuaki 小峯和明, 12–26. Chūsei bungaku to Rinsetsu shogaku, vol. I. Tōkyō: Chikurinsha.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2010d. “Jin Yong no bukyō shōsetsu to tōdai Chūgoku shakaishugi bunka” [Martial Arts Fiction of Jin Yong and the Culture of Contemporary Chinese Socialism]. In Chūgoku shakaishugi no kenkyū [Research on Chinese Socialism], edited by Yoshikawa Yoshihiro, 245–263. Kyoto: Kyōto Daigaku Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyūjo.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2010e. “Dong Jieyuan Xixiangji zhugongdiao no kōsei to gengo hyōgen ni tsuite” [Some Remarks Concerning the Composition, Style and Language of Dong Jieyuan’s Xixiangji zhugongdiao]. Tōhō gakuhō 85: 339–362.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2011a. “Gengo shigen to shite no kanji · kanbun” [Sinographs and Literary Sinitic as Linguistic Resource]. Bungaku 12, no. 3: 39–51.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2011b. “Kan-Nichi no kanbun kundoku (shakudoku) to kan’yaku butten oyobi sono gengokan to sekaikan” [Worldviews and Language Ideologies of Japanese and Korean Vernacular Reading Practices and Literary Sinitic Translations of the Buddhist Canon]. Inmun kwahak 94: 19–38.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2011c. “Nik-Kan kanji ・kanbun kyōiku no hikaku” [Comparison of Japanese and Korean Education in Sinographs and Literary Sinitic]. Kanji kanbun kyōiku 53: 9–16.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2011d. Samgukchi ŭi segye: yŏksa ŭi imyŏn ŭl poda [World of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms: The Inside Historical Story]. Translated by Song Wanbŏm, Sin Hyŏnsŭng, and Chŏn Sŏnggon. Seoul: Sŏnggyun’gwan Taehakkyo Ch’ulp’anbu.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2011e. “Xihu zai ZhongRiHan: Lütan fengjing zhuanyi zai dongya wenxue zhong de yiyi” [West Lake in China, Japan, and Korea: A Brief Discussion of the Landscape Transfer and its Significance in East Asian Literature]. In Dongya wenhua yixiang zhi xingsu 東亞文化意象之形塑 [Shaping of Imagery in East Asian Culture], edited by Shi Shouqian 石守謙 and Liao Zhaoheng 廖肇亨 , 141–166. Taipei: Yunchen Wenhua.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2011f. “Mindai Sanguozhi yanyi tekisuto no tokuchō: Chūgoku Kokka Toshokan zō nishu no Tō Hin’in-bon Sanguozhi zhuan o rei to shite” [Characteristic Features of the Ming Dynasty Text of the Sanguozhi yanyi: Based on the Example of Two Tang Binyin 湯賓尹 Editions Held by the National Library of China]. In Higashi Ajia shoshigaku e no shōtai [Invitation to East Asian Codicology], vol. 2, edited by Ōsawa Akihiro 大澤顕浩, 81–96. Tōkyō: Tōhō Shoten.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2011g. Nō to kyōgeki: Nit-Chū hikaku engekiron [Nō and Beijing Opera: Comparative Sino-Japanese Drama]. Kizugawa-shi: Kokusai Kōtō Kenkyūjo.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2011h. “Shilun Dong Jieyuan Xixiangji zhugongdiao zhi yuyan yishu fengge” [Concerning the Nature of the Linguistic Artistry of Dong Jieyuan’s Xixiangji zhugongdiao]. Guoji hanxue yanjiu tongxun 3: 91–107.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2012a. Ri Haku: Hyōhaku no shijin sono yume to genjitsu [Li Bai: The Dreams and Reality of a Wandering Poet]. Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2012b. “Sanjin山人 to shite to no To Ho 杜甫” [Du Fu as a shanren]. Chūgoku bungakuhō 83: 141–159.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2012c. “Shinhakken no Chōsen dōkatsuji-bon Sanguozhi tongsu yanyi ni tsuite” [Concerning a Newly Discovered Korean Copper Movable Type Edition of the Sanguozhi tongsu yanyi]. In Hayashida Shinnosuke 林田慎 之助 hakushi sanju kinen: Sangokushi ronshū [Commemorative Volume in Honor of Dr. Hayashida Shinnosuke’s Eightieth Birthday: A Collection of Theses on the Sanguozhi], edited by Sangokushi gakkai, 369–386. Tōkyō: Kyūko shoin.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2012d. Mito kōmon man’yū kō [Study of “漫遊” in Mito kōmon]. Tōkyō: Kōdansha.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2013a. “Kōrai jidai kango kyōkasho Pak T’ongsa no seiritsu nendai ni tsuite” [Concerning the Dating of the Completion of the Koryŏ-era Textbook of Spoken Chinese, Pak T’ongsa]. Geibun (Keiō Gijuku Daigaku Bungakubu) 105: 63–75.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2013b. “Samgukchi wa tongasia ŭi kukche kwan’gye” [The Sanguozhi and East Asian International Relations]. In Samgukchi Tongi chŏn ŭi segye [World of the Sanguozhi, “Dongyi zhuan”], edited by Kwŏn Inhan and Kim Kyŏngho, 251–264. Seoul: Sŏnggyun’gwan taehakkyo Ch’ulp’anbu.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2013c. “Nanbeichao weijing Fameijin jing法沒盡經 suojian Śākya pai sansheng zhi Zhongguo zhi shuo shitan” [Essay on the Claim Found in the Northern and Southern Dynasties Apocryphal Sutra, Fameijin jing, that Śākyamuni Sent Three Sages to China]. In Wenxue jingdian de chuanbo yu quanshi [Spread and Interpretation of Literary Classics], edited by Lin Meiyi and Cai Yingjun, 183–202. Taipei: Zhongyang Yanjiuyuan.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2013d. “Towards Comparative Research on ‘Written Prayers’ (Yuanwen/ Ganmon) in China and Japan.” Acta Asiatica: Bulletin of the Institute of Eastern Culture 105: 3–14.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2014a. Sanguozhi de shijie: Hou Han, Sanguo shidai [World of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms: The Three Kingdoms Period of the Late Han]. Translated by He Xiaoyi 何晓毅 and Liang Lei 梁蕾. Guilin: Guangxi Shifan Daxue Chubanshe.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2014b. “Higashi Ajia no Mito Kōmon: Nitchūchō no tabisuru hīrō no nazo o toku” [Mito Kōmon in East Asia: Unraveling the Mystery of a Traveling Hero in China, Japan and Korea]. Tagen bunka 3: 1–20.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2014c. “Pyŏnhwa Pisamunch’ŏn sinang ŭi Ilbon esŏ ŭi suyong kwa tosi chŏnsŏl” [Acceptance of the Legends of Vaiśravaṇa in Japan and the Urban Myth]. Pulgyo hakpo 67: 118–137.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2014d. Genkan zatsugeki no kenkyū 3. Hanchō keisho 范張鶏黍 [Studies in Yuan-Period Drama Texts. Fan zhang jishu]. Tōkyō: Kyūko Shoin.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2014e. “Chōsen enkōshi ga mita Shinchō no engeki: Higashi Ajia no shiten kara” [Qing Dynasty Drama as Seen by Chosŏn Embassies to China: From the Perspective of East Asia]. In Shinchō kyūtei engeki bunka no kenkyū [Study of the Culture of Court Theatre during the Qing Dynasty], edited by Isobe Akira, 595–612. Tōkyō: Bensei Shuppan.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2014f. “Chaoxian yanxingshi yu tongxinshi suojian Zhongguo he Riben de huju” [Chinese and Japanese Drama as Seen by Korean Embassies to China and Japan]. In Yŏnhaengsa wa t’ongsinsa: yŏnhaeng, t’ongsin sahaeng e kwanhan han-chung-il samguk ŭi kukche wŏk’ŭshop [Chosŏn Embassies to China and Japan: A Tri-national China-Japan-Korea Workshop on Embassies to China and Japan], edited by Chŏng Kwang and Fujimoto Yukio, 223–256, 436–464, 603–622 (in Chinese, Japanese and Korean). Seoul: Pangmunsa.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2014g. “Hongzhi-ben Xixiangji no sashie ni tsuite” [Concerning the Illustrations in the Hongzhi Edition of the Xixiangji]. In Chūgoku koten bungaku to sōga bunka [Chinese Classical Literature and the Culture of Illustration], edited by Takimoto Hiroyuki 瀧本弘之 and Ōtsuka Hidetaka 大塚秀高, 103–114. Tōkyō: Bensei Shuppan.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2015a. Fujitsuka Chikashi hakushi ihin tenjikai mokuroku, kaidai [Introductory Essay on and Catalogue of the Exhibition of the Nachlass of Dr. Fujitsuka Chikashi]. Kyoto: Kyōdai Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyūjo.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2015b. “18 · 19 seiki Chōsen enkōshi no Shin-Chō ni okeru kōryū: Fujitsuka Chikashi 藤塚鄰 hakase ihin no shōkai o tsūjite” [Qing-Chosŏn Intercourse of Chosŏn Embassies to China in the 18th and 19th Centuries: Through an Introduction to the Nachlass of Dr. Fujitsuka Chikashi]. Nihon chūgoku gakkai 67: 180–191.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2015c. “Shanren kao: Dongya jinshi zhishifenzi de lingyi xingtai” [Study of the shanren: Another Type of Modern East Asian Intellectual]. Zhongguo wenxue xuebao 6: 65–78.
Kin Bunkyō (Kim Mun’gyŏng) 金文京. 2015d. “Kanshi kara mita Fukuzawa Yukichi no jinseikan” [Fukuzawa Yukichi’s View of Life, Based on his Sinitic Poetry]. Fukuzawa nenkan 42: 63–82.
Kin Bunkyō and Chin Chaegyo (translators). 2013. 18 segi Ilbon chisigin Chosŏn ŭl yŏtpoda: P’yŏng’urok [An 18th-Century Japanese Intellectual’s Glimpses of Korea: The Heigūroku]. Seoul: Sŏnggyun’gwan Taehakkyo Ch’ulp’anbu.
Kin Bunkyō, Gen Yukiko 玄幸子, Satō Haruhiko 佐藤晴彦, and Chŏng Kwang 鄭光. 2002. Rōkitsudai 老乞大 : Chōsen chūsei no Chūgokugo kaiwa dokuhon [Nogŏltae: A Chinese Language Conversation Chrestomathy from Medieval Korea]. Tōkyō: Heibonsha.
Kin Bunkyō and Hamada Maya 濱田麻矢. 2001. “Nihon bōmei go no Ko Ransei 胡蘭成: Yasuda Yojūrō 保田與重郎 to no kankei o chūshin ni” [Hu Lancheng after he Fled to Japan: With a Focus on his Relationship with Yasuda Yojūrō]. Mimei 19: 87–105.
Kin Bunkyō and Takahashi Satoshi 高橋智. 2009. Keiō gijuku toshokan zō “Shirō tanbo tō yonshu 四郎探母等四種 :” Genten to kaidai [Copy of Yang Silang Visits his Mother: Four Plays Held by Keiō Gijuku Library: Original Text and Bibliographic Essay]. [Sendai-shi]: Tokubetsu suishin kenkyū shinchō kyūtei engeki bunka no kenkyūhan.
Li Xiao 李曉 and Kin Bunkyō. 2004. Handan meng ji 邯鄲夢記 jiaozhu [Annotated Edition of Handan meng ji]. Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe.
Needless to say, the seminar and Korean Studies Laboratory Grant were inspired by the seminal works of Sheldon Pollock on questions of “cosmopolitan and vernacular” and his call for more comparative work on and theorization of processes of vernacularization around the world (see Pollock 1998, 2000 and 2006). King (forthcoming) is a collection of essays engaging critically with Pollock’s ideas from the perspective of the Sinographic Cosmopolis.
But see Whitman et al. (2010) for a bold attempt at proposing an “international vocabulary” for research in this field.
With thanks to Victor Mair (p.c.) for discussion on this section.
For a useful discussion of the history of the term hanmun and other designations for sinographs and Literary Sinitic in pre-twentieth century Korea, see Wells (2011: 19–32).
See Phan (2013: 1) for these terms. Ding (2015: 60) cites another Vietnamese term for sinographs, chữ nho 𡨸
See King (2015) for a defense of the term “Sinographic Cosmopolis” as well as further discussion of related terminological issues. King and Laffin (2020) also discuss these questions with reference to additional recent scholarship not cited here.
See Wixted (2018) for spirited complaints about the term “Literary Sinitic” and a rehearsal of his ongoing advocacy of the term “Sino-Japanese” to refer to kanbun and “Sino-Korean” to refer to hanmun. His discussion of medieval Latinity is stimulating, but unpersuasive.
With thanks to Sven Osterkamp for assistance with this paragraph.
See, for example, Robinson (1973) for examples of word-order glossing in Latin texts from Anglo-Saxon England, and more recently Blom (2017), for a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of research on glossing practices in medieval Western Europe.
The original reads: “les cas où une langue qui dispose de sa propre écriture est notée intentionnellement—et dans des contextes précis et limités—dans un autre système graphique, emprunté à une tradition différente.”
Shaked (2003: 121) makes a similar observation about the Aramaic version of the Behistun inscription, the Arsham documents, and some recently discovered documents on leather from fourth-century Afghanistan: “The type of writing involved here is one in which a text written in one language so closely follows the style and sequence of words of a source text in a different language as to make it theoretically possible to transfer the text from the one language to the other according to fixed and rigid rules.” This is precisely the case with East Asian vernacular reading techniques like those in ancient Korea and Japan.
“Approximating” because whereas Kiraz couches his discussion in terms of a source language vs. target language, with numerals it is not necessarily clear what the source language would be. In this regard, examples like “e.g.” = “for example,” “i.e.” for “that is” or “&” for “and” are more apt, given the tie to a source language (Latin). In fact, the ampersand actually has two readings (“A & B” and “&c.”), where we see both a vernacular (English) and cosmopolitan reading (Latin), respectively, analogous to Japanese kun vs. on readings. With thanks to Sven Osterkamp and Scott Wells.
Twelve years later, Rosny (1876) revisits the “astonishing analogy” between Japanese and cuneiform writing in more detail, addressing (among other questions): “ideographic writing adopted by peoples speaking different languages” (cf. op.cit., 168, where he opines, “These two systems of writing therefore have realized, to a certain extent, for the civilizations at the heart of which they were employed, a sort of universal writing.”); “Can an ideographic sign be read in multiple ways in the same language?” (he answers in the affirmative on the basis of Japanese, and urges his colleagues in cuneiform studies to open their minds to this possibility in their languages); “Phonetic writing drawn from ideographic signs” (in which he cites the example of Man’yōgana in Japanese); “Simultaneous deployment of ideographic and syllabic signs” (discussing phonetic complements); and “Purely alphabetic writing” (where he chides students of cuneiform for lacking the ability to imagine the intermingling of different kinds of written sign in one and the same writing system and urges them to attend to the Japanese case for comparative purposes).
Though here we should note that what is being talked about is more word-level kun’yomi than text-level (kanbun) kundoku. For their part, experts on languages that use cuneiform point out that too little in the way of extended texts has been found to address the extent to which text-level (kanbun) kundoku-type vernacular reading technologies might have existed in the ancient Near East.
The same wording surfaces in Russian in Diakonoff (1986: 5).
With thanks to Sven Osterkamp, who notes that the “diacritics” or kunten marks that Civil references are not found in the Man’yōshū or its time of compilation.
Cited from
More precisely, “zwārašn,” i.e., zwʾršn for uzwārišn. See Durkin-Meisterernst (2004).
My translation of the German version from Schaeder (1930: 4), as cited in Skalmowski (2004: 289), and adapted with help from Durkin-Meisterernst (2004).
Cf. also David Lurie’s comments on the way in which Japanese kundoku and medieval European gloss reading of Latin texts suggest a “collapse of reading and translation” (Lurie 2011: 360).
See Unger (2004) for an exposé of the “ideographic myth” and the widespread belief that sinographs carry pure, language-less meaning.
See Durkin-Meisterernst (2004), citing Humbach (1973: 121). Durkin-Meisterernst also cites the case of the Sogdian “Tale of the Pearl-borer” (from Henning [1945]), “of which two copies exist, one in Sogdian script, with the usual sprinkling of heterograms, and one in Manichean script without any,” as demonstrating the entirely graphic nature of the heterograms.