Ametsuchi no Uta
The Ametsuchi no Uta ( Japanese. あ め つ ち の 詞 , also: 天地 の 詞 "Ametsuchi song") is a pangram with the 48 sound elements of the early classical Japanese language , where voiced and unvoiced sounds are combined.
Like the Iroha and the Taini poem ( た ゐ に の 歌 ), it originated in the Heian period in the 10th century. The oldest version of the Ametsuchi song can be found in the private collection of the poet Minamoto no Shitagō ( 源 順 集 , Minamoto no Shitagō shū ), compiled in 967 . In contrast to the Iroha and Taini poem with the additional syllable ye , the Ametsuchi no Uta shows an older sound level, since the coincidence of the sounds / ye / and / e / was completed by 950 at the latest.
The Ametsuchi is therefore significant in terms of linguistic history, because it shows the adoption of the Chinese language and the development of the Japanese script. On the Ametsuchi you can see that at the time of its creation, an understanding of the sound stock of the Japanese language was already forming, without the writing being completely separated from the Chinese model. The Ametsuchi occupies an intermediate position between the sound tables of Buddhist practice and the later Iroha. While the sound tables represent an arrangement of the sound values without any semantic reference, in Ametsuchi the sounds are arranged in such a way that they form meaningful words. Unlike in Iroha, these words stay next to each other. Only with the Iroha is there an arrangement in which the sounds not only form individual meaningful words, but also, as a whole, result in a textual meaning as a poem.
text
In addition to the kana wi ( ゐ ) and we ( ゑ ), which are no longer used today, the text also includes the syllable ye ( 枝 ) that is no longer present in the Iroha and Taini poems, which were written a little later .
| Kanji | Kana | Romaji | Word meanings |
|---|---|---|---|
|
天 地 星 空 |
あ め つ ち ほ し そ ら |
Ame tsuchi hoshi sora |
The Ametsuchi also served as an arrangement scheme for thematically arranged collections of poems. For this purpose, six sections with eight waka poems each , a total of 48 waka according to the Ametsuchi's sound inventory, were put together thematically under the headings: 春 ・ 夏 ・ 秋 ・ 冬 ・ 思 ・ 恋 'Spring - Summer - Autumn - Winter - Feeling - Love' . The beginning and ending sounds of the waka, each written in one line, result in the Ametsuchi song, read from top to bottom as acrostic and telestichon .
- example
- one waka per line with one sound from the Ametsuchi song at the beginning and at the end of the poem (in the example: A-me-tsu-chi).
あらさじとうちかへすらしをやまだのなはしろみづにぬれてつくるあ
めもはるにゆきまもあをくなりにけりいまこそのべにわかなつみてめ
つくばやまさけるさくらのにほひをぞいりてをらねどよそながらみつ
ちぐさにもほころぶはなのしげきかないづらあをやぎぬひしいとすぢ
literature
- Shiro Yukawa: The disappearance of the material process. A comparative media history of the Japanese writing and printing culture . Ed .: Digital Library Thuringia. Erfurt 2010, urn : nbn: de: gbv: 547-201000039 ( dbttest.thulb.uni-jena.de [PDF; 51.6 MB ]).
- Katsuyama Yukito: 言葉 遊 び と 誦 文 の 系譜 2 (On the history of the rhetoric in the Japanese language 2) . In: 静岡 大学 人文 学部 (Ed.): 人文 論 集 . tape 60 , no. 2 , March 31, 2010, ISSN 0287-2013 , 第三 章 「あ め つ ち」 の 誦 文 と 「「 ゐ に 」の 歌 , p. 55-86 , doi : 10.14945 / 00004857 (Japanese).
Remarks
- ↑ Due to the same reading and meaning of the two Kanji uta 詞 and 歌 for 'song, poem', the spellings あ め つ ち の 歌 and 天地 の 歌 are also found .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Shiro Yukawa: The Disappearance of the Material Process. 2010, p. 116.
- ↑ Katsuyama Yukito: 第三 章 「あ め つ ち」 の 誦 文 と 「た ゐ ゐ に」 の 歌 , 2010, p. 55.
- ^ Bjarke Frellesvig: A History of the Japanese Language . Cambridge University Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-521-65320-6 , pp. 167, 206 ( limited preview in Google Book search).