KURENAI : Kyoto University Researc

The Japanese studies of Andreas MOller ( 1630-1694)
are as summarized in the following table. The only likely candidates for Muller's Chinese
source are thus the three dictionaries of the Zihai group. 40
"SJ" Zihiii HC HG,HX HZ
#26 rl rl "?g ~l rl
#33 IJl\ IJl\ ~ JJll tJll
#36 g g iHi
'~" ~
#39 x x fliT x M
#42 ..
.. ~
iHi
,~,
•
~
The iroha on plate [6] is however not the only thing Muller derived from his Chinese
source, as there are also the examples of Japanese words on plate [5] (cf #15b)- excluding
the five taken from the Meakensian manuscript, of course. In direct proximity of the iroha
all dictionaries listed above further contain a glossary of Ryukylian, the entries of which
take exactly the same form as what we find reproduced in "SJ": A Chinese word is given,
followed by its RylikyUan counterpart in a Chinese transcription.
The headwords of Muller are the same as those of all the dictionaries and are thus of no
interest here - he merely omits a stroke by accident in two cases, thus writing Jl\ for correct
Jll. and 3:.~ for intended :=E.::fi. The Chinese transcriptions of the Rylikyuan words are
likewise mostly the same in all sources, with two exceptions: 4 1
"SJ" Zihiii HC,HX, HZ
± )E.R JE.R fElt
W-1 ?f ,~ Jf ,~ IJJ_ 3f f.!§ t;y_
The only discrepancy between Muller and all Chinese dictionaries is that he has ff ,~ for
yama 'mountain', whereas the glossaries all add t;y_ for =nu 'nominative'. 42 Otherwise we
again arrive at exactly the same conclusion as before, namely that the Zihai group comprises
the closest candidates, whereas the others are inconceivable as Muller's source. Now while
Bayer was working with a HT, there are in fact good reasons however to believe that Muller
40
Bold frames mark deviations from "SJ". "Zihat' represents the entire Zihai group here.
4 1
HG is excluded here as the present author did not yet have a chance to inspect a copy of this work.
The preceding table relied on the reproduction ofHG 's iroha found in Kanmura (20 I 0: 120).
42
One possible reason for the omission of the last character might be space constraints, as most boxes
on plate [5] have room for little more than two characters unless they are of rather limiited complexity. It
might also have been omitted on purpose as the usual form yama, without any following syllable, is found
in Collado. Cf. immediately below.
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