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
Tsurezuregusa,
Hōjōki, 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） 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:
仏ノ御父浄飯王死ニ給フ時ノ話第一
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、仏ノ御父迦毘羅国ノ浄飯大王、老ニ臨テ、病ヲ受テ日来ヲ経ル間、重ク悩乱シ給フ事限リ无シ
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).
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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」 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 「
臨む」, 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 「無い」 (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」.
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Fig. 6: 今ハ限リ
ト思シテ |
今ハ限リト思シテ、御子ノ釈迦仏・難陀・孫ノ羅睺羅、甥ノ阿難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)
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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 「
思す」, 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.
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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」, 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.
