A Study on Ancient Japanese Vocabulary Used in Kunten Materials

• Published in: Nihon Gakushiin kiyō Vol. 56; no. 1; pp. 1 - 12
• Main Author: TSUKISHIMA, Hiroshi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: The Japan Academy 2001
• ISSN: 0388-0036; 2424-1903
• DOI: 10.2183/tja1948.56.1

In the early years in the 9th century, Japanese scholars began to note Japanese vocabulary on the Chinese sentences in the Buddhist sutra and in other texts written in Chinese, in order to read and understand them. The tradition of noting Japanese in this way had been carried on ever since, and considerably large number of texts with those Japanese notes have been preserved up to the present days. These texts are called“kunten materials”. Japanese words found in“kunten materials”have some formality because of the character of the contents of the original texts, which are mostly philosophical or historical. But it is supposed that scholars in the 10th century began to adopt some colloquial words as Japanese notes in some special texts. The word“TUDATUDA”, meaning “into pieces”, is one of those informal vocabularies. Most examples of this“TUDATUDA” are found in the“kunten materials”of“Nihon-shoki _??__??__??__??_”(The History of Ancient Japan) and of “Yusenkutsu _??__??__??_”(a Chinese novel written in the T'ang dynasty). The historical change of this word is observed as follows: TUDATUDA→DZUDADZUDA →ZUDAZUDA→ZUTAZUTA. Some Scholars in Edo period considered that this word was not proper for kunten. It is interesting that the final form ZUTAZUTA is even now used in our everyday language.