Iroha

Iroha is the abbreviation for Iroha-uta ( Japanese いろは歌 or 伊呂波歌 ). It is a Japanese poem that uses all the characters ( kana ) of the mora (syllable) set of Japanese scripts or classical Japanese used in the Heian period exactly once. Like the older Ametsuchi no Uta, it is a real pangram and is also used as a classification scheme.

For today's Japanese this only applies to a limited extent, since kana like we and wi are no longer used by default and the newer n is not included in the poem.

The poem is usually written in hiragana .

origin

The author is unknown, but in general the authorship is ascribed to the Buddhist scholar Kūkai ( 空海 , 774-835), who is still venerated today under the posthumous name of Kōbō Daishi . The date of origin of the poem is now considered to be the late 10th century of the Heian period at the earliest, as it was written in the style and sound level that belonged to that time. It was only proven reliably for the year 1079, when it is contained in the Konkōmyō-Saishōō-kyō Ongi ( 金光明最勝王経音義 ) - a commentary on the pronunciation and meaning of the Kanji in the Konkōmyō-Saishōō-kyō .

The poem takes up a thought from the Buddhist Nirvana Sutra (Japanese: 大般涅槃経 , Daihatsu-Nehan-gyō ) in free translation . This is written in Chinese but spoken with Japanese pronunciation, as the sacred texts are usually read in Japanese Buddhism:

諸行無常是生滅法生滅滅已寂滅爲樂	Shogyōmujō zeshōmeppō shōmetsumetsui jakumetsuiraku	Everything is impermanent. This is the law of life and perishing. Life and decay die out, nirvana leads to bliss.

text

In the Konkōmyō-Saishōō-kyō Ongi the poem was written with Man'yōgana in 6 lines with 7 moras each and one line with 5 moras:

以呂波耳本へ止
千利奴流乎和加
餘多連曽津祢那
良牟有為能於久
耶耶万計不己衣天天
阿佐伎喩女美之
恵比毛勢須

Structurally, however, it follows the 7-5 syllable scheme of Japanese poetry with a shortened line as an exception. Today, therefore, the kana are also arranged accordingly.

Classic		Modern		Classification scheme
Hiragana	reading	Kanji and Hiragana	reading	numbers	Letters
いろはにほへと	iro ha nihoheto	色は匂へど	Iro wa nioedo	1-7	ABCDEFG
ちりぬるを	chirinuru where	散りぬるを	Chirinuru o	8-12	HIJKL
わかよたれそ	waka yo tare so	我が世誰ぞ	Waga yo tare zo	13-18	MNOPQR
つねならむ	tsune naramu	常ならん	Tsune naran	19-23	STUVW
うゐのおくやま	uwi no okuyama	有為の奥山	Ui no okuyama	24-30	XYZ –––
けふこえて	kefu koete	今日越えて	Kyō koete	31-35
あさきゆめみし	asaki yume mishi	浅き夢見じ	Asaki yume miji	36-42
ゑひもせす	wehi mo sesu	酔ひもせず	Ei mo sezu	43-47

Translation variants

The meaning of the poem, which deals with the transience of this world that the poet leaves behind, can still be grasped, but the translations differ in the details. Closely based on the Japanese text, the content is as follows:

Although the colors (of the flowers) are fragrant, they
fall off.
What is (already) constant in the course of our world!
Crossing the distant mountains of impermanence (of change),
there is no longer a shallow dream,
no more self-consciousness in intoxication.

Of course, the translation into another language cannot serve the purpose of reproducing the letters and characters that occur in the target language, especially not in the ideal way that each letter occurs only once. The meaning comes into play in the following transmission, which contains all letters of the German alphabet including the ß and umlauts, as well as all punctuation marks.

The shower of flowers falls fragrantly in
our world, what is permanent?
Far mountains of fate:
cross the river today, the Styx!
Dream webs, desolate and empty;
I'm not drunk anymore.

meaning

The poem served as an exercise text ( tenarai ) for contemporary syllabary writing. Similar to our "a), b), c) ..." it was also a counting and classification scheme in literature and reference works. This use is still found today, e.g. B. in dictionaries when listing differences in meaning, but also for numbering other things, such as the seats in the theater.

The Iroha-garuta , a card game that has been popular since the Edo period , in which proverbs or poems can be guessed, is also based on this poem. There is a cheerful interlude of the Nō theater , a Kyōgen , with this title.

The formatting language Cascading Style Sheets used for websites also supports numbering according to Iroha. However, this is not implemented by some browsers.

<ol style="list-style-type:hiragana-iroha;">
  <li>Punkt 1</li>
  <li>Punkt 2</li>
  <li>Punkt 3</li>
</ol>

Point 1
Point 2
point 3

<ol style="list-style-type:katakana-iroha;">
  <li>Punkt 1</li>
  <li>Punkt 2</li>
  <li>Punkt 3</li>
</ol>

Point 1
Point 2
point 3

literature

Nihon Bungaku Daijiten (Great Lexicon of Literature of Japan). Tokyo 1932

Martin Ramming (Ed.): Japan Handbuch . Berlin 1941

Earl Miner et al .: The Princeton Companion to Classical Japanese Literature . 2nd Edition. Princeton NJ 1983

Andrew Nathaniel Nelson: The Modern Reader's Japanese-English Dictionary . Rutland VT et al. various editions, there Appendix 7

Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (Large Dictionary of the Japanese National Language), various editions. Tokyo, ISBN 4-09-520001-4 (keywords under iroha )

Nihon Koten Bungaku Daijiten . Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo 1986

Individual evidence

↑ See literature: Ramming, Nelson, Miner

↑ First published in: Friedrich Lederer (Hrsg.): Discourse about the defensibility of a lake nation by Hayashi Shihei . Munich 2003, ISBN 3-89129-686-X , p. 76

↑ where the "distant mountains" the river of the underworld, the Styx was added

[1] See literature: Ramming, Nelson, Miner