KURENAI : Kyoto University Researc

The Japanese studies of Andreas MOller ( 1630-1694)
Meister's work, which has a charm of its own for sure, but simply to say that the pioneering
efforts of Muller deserve far more attention than they have hitherto attracted.
Likewise unmentioned in previous scholarship is the fact that Muller was probably
the first to present lexical items from Rylikyiian to the scholarly world in the West, albeit
without being aware of himself doing so. 72 The poverty of materials at his disposal and
especially the fact that RyUkyuan was even less known than Japanese at his time are certainly
sufficient to explain and pardon the error committed by his confusion of the languages.
In fact, the Ryukyuan glossary in Yinyim zihai was even considered to be Japanese, not
Rylikyiian, by contemporary scholars in Japan, such as Matsushita Kenrin t~ r Jil.,# (1637-
1703) who expresses this view in his Ishi5 Nihon-den ~Wl 1=1 *1ii (1693: B.VII/38b). And
a century later, Morishima Chiiry6 ~~cp~ (1754-1810) likewise informs the readers of
his Ryiikyiidan ~*~ ( 1790: 39) at the beginning of the brief section on the RyUkyi:ian
language, that the words recorded in the Zhongshiin chuanxin lu cp U1 ~1~ ~ (1721) were
ignored by him, as he considered them to be Japanese throughout. -
In other words: Muller
is hardly to blame for confusing the two closely related languages. At best it is surprising
to find this fact remaining unnoticed up until the present day.
Muller's general impact on later scholars is difficult to measure, though some indicators
do indeed exist. Engelbert Kaempfer for instance expresses his keen interest in his works
in a letter to Zacharias Goeze [Gotze] (1662-1729) dated 1696 (# 156 in Haberland 2001:
526-530), and there is hardly a single one among the 19th century Orientalists who is not
72
William Adams (1564-1620) and his log-book, in which a number of Ryiikyiian words, phrases and
names are recorded, would be earlier, but remai_ned in manuscript form until the early 20th century.
- 125 -