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Three Divine Odes with Anecdotes (Khitan Codex) was found and copied in Manchuria in 1905 by Hirosuke Hamana (known as Kanyu Hamana), who was in military duties for Russo-Japanese war. According to him it had been a treasure in some imperial mound in the area but had temporarily taken shelter in the temple he visited that year. He had it copied and after returning to his country, he struggled for interpretation and he included the text (with his interpretation) as a supplement for his book published in 1926. The Codex tells about 3 old divine odes found by Khitan in the 10th century and includes documents related to the Odes. (The 3 Divine Odes are in Sections 43-45 below.) Actually the Codex is untitled. So it is referred to in several ways like "契丹古伝 Kit-tan-ko-den（Khitan Old Record)" or "神頌叙伝 Shin-sho-jo-den (Divine Odes with Anecdotes)". All rights reserved. Do not copy or publish pages in this website without permission. |
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| Pronunciation of Non-chinese words are noted in SPS Notation. |
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| Note: "West tribe" does not mean "Westerner" in the modern sense. |
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Throughout Sections 22-23, Zhou dynasty is blamed for ruining its former ruler, Shang dynasty's King Zhou (or Di Xin). "To point the (pole) weapons down" (in the last sentence of Section 23) is a famous phrase in 史記([Shiji] or Records of the Grand Historian) used to discribe Shang Dynasty's defeat in the Battle of Muye. | |||
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| Possibly Mishukito was located somewhere around Liaoning province. (Somewhat controversial.) |
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Why release this now?[under construction] As for Divine Ode #3, you can find similar passages in Account of "韓 (Han)" in the "烏丸鮮卑東夷傳 (Biographies of the Wuhuan, Xianbei, and Dongyi)", Volume 30 of the "魏書 (Book of Wei)" of "三国志 (the Records of the Three Kingdoms [Sanguozhi])" c. 297.A.D. It says that some of the 'chiefs' under the control of the court of "辰王(the King of Jin)"*1 (or probably should be understood as not the chiefs but 'the King of Jin' himself) had the title: "臣雲遣支報安邪踧支濆臣離兒不例拘邪秦支廉" ("Si-u-ku Si-fu. A-ya-si-si Fi-si-ri-ni-fu-ru. Ka-ya-su-si-ra" - in SPS notation. [Of course, academic letter-by-letter reading based on Chinese or Korean pronunciations may somewhat differ from above. For example, Mark E. Byington (Harvard University) proposes Korean-pronunciation based reading like: "Sin Un’gyŏnjibo Anya Ch’ukchi Pun Sin Iaburye Kuya Chinji Yŭm" (see Byington 2009).] Anyway, the title conspicuously resembles this Codex's Divine Ode #3 "Si-u-ku Si-fu. A-ya-si-ki Fi-ji-ri-ni-si-fu-ru. Ka-ra-su-be-si-ra. *snip*" which possibly venerates Shin-so (Divine Ancestor) i.e. Sun Grandson "Si-u-ku Si-fu Su-sa-na Mi-ko" in Section 3. (Note: the title's "su-si-ra" may correspond to "Su-sa-na" in Shin-so's name.) The king's state, State of "辰(Jin)" which appears in the "Records of the Three Kingdoms" is the same as the State of 辰 (Shin) in section 37 of the Codex you are reading. So the king should be related to A-me-si-u Clan or Fi-mi-si-u Clan in the same chapter. About the King's long title above in the "Records of the Three Kingdoms", scholars splits it into several parts and regard each part as combination of a polity name and its chief's title. （Byington does also.）But this Codex suggests it's not true. It should be viewed as a unit, comprising one Ode. |
| Notes: (all of them concerning the long title in the Records of the Three Kingdoms)
*1 interpretation of this passage is controversial. Many scholars even think that the title holders are just chiefs of some polities unrelated to the King of Jin. and that (whether or not the chiefs have connection with the king of Jin,) each chief holds a short and different title, for example, Si-u-ku-si-fu for the chief of one polity and A-ya-si-si for the chief of another, etc.*3 But in my view, the King of Jin (who reigned in the palace located in the polity of 月支) also had the title 'Chinji'(chief) of the polity of 月支. So the title holder should be the King of Jin himself, considering brilliance of the title. Thus, the passsage in the 'Records of the Three Kingdoms' can be interpreted as: The King of Jin governs at the polity of 月支. [As for the title of] Chinji*2[ , ] [as the "月支 polity"'s chief is also the Jin King,] [there they] sometimes add the (special) title of ...Si-u-ku Si-fu. A-ya-si-si Fi-si-ri-ni-fu-ru. Ka-ya-su-si-ra. *2 Chinji here is interpreted by scholars as "some person with Chinji title" who "adds(加) another title to himself (controversial)". In my view, not the Chinji person but the title "Chinji" itself. Therefore, the situation is different from the case some title is "added(=awarded or bestowed)" to someone by some superior power. (Takeda 1996:5 insists that "add(加)" has to be interpreted as it means being bestowed by an upper-class leader, but it is not necessarily the case with this passage.) *3 Before that "title-splitting" theories appeared, the long title name had long been deemed as nonsensical. As for the "title-splitting" theories, one of the oldest can be seen in Shiratori 1912 , where he insisted that the title holder was a great chieftain of Mahan Area (while Jin King was a KING of Mahan Area), and that the great chieftan held various titles of various areas (combined into a long title name). But the most popular "title-splitting" theory in the present day is the one asserted in Yi Pyong-do (1936), where he insisted that the expression "special titles" came from misunderstanding of the author of Records of Three Kingdoms and that in fact it was just a list of polity rulers' titles each of which precedented by polity name and that those rulers were in position somewhat independent from Jin King. Yi's theory came to be known better as it was later included in the Volume I of "Han'guksa (Korean History)" Series, which was published in 1959 based on research funded by Rockefeller Foundation. |
| On the other hand, for the long title name in the Records of the Three Kingdoms, John R. Bentley (professor of Japanese at Northern Illinois University)
in his recent book (Bentley 2020)
proposes reading according to Later Han Chinese reconstruction
like:
"*Gin-wun-khianɁ-ke-pouh-Ɂɑn-ja- tsuk-ke-bun-gin-liɑi- ńe-pu-liaj -kou-ya-dzin-ke-liem" , which he analyzes as it is based on the reconstructed pre-Old-Japanese form like: "*gin-wu n -ka n gepo-a n ya *suke-bu n ki-nə-riai *nepuria-koyazi-nə-kerem". Bentley regards this title name as that of *Dźɨn King (Jin King) and also he assumes the long name is a string of attributive clauses (like Native American chiefs who had names such as “He who guards the gate of sunset"). In those two respects his idea is far better than other scholars'. But Divine Ode #3 in the webpage you're reading implies that his "tentative" interpretation of attributive clauses is somewhat experimental and rather hard to agree. For example, he regards the first word Gin as a loan word from a Chinese word meaning "seer", which probably is not true. Also, the last word kerem is deemed as "drill" (related to Japanese "kiri"), implicating some part of the King's own body. Extremely doubtful. Also, Bentley relates "anya" with the Japanese word "oya" meaning "parent", but in my view, if you seek for the word closest to "anya" from Japanese words, it should be rather "aya" which is the stem of the word "ayashi", an adjective meaning "suspicious" in modern usage but in ancient times "(spiritually) wonderful" (partially close to Hamana's interpretation). |
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Note: Bentley's reading for the letters 臣 (being read as "gin" in 臣雲 and 濆臣離) and 支 (read as "ke" in 支報 and 秦支廉) is shown as pronunciations of later Han Dynasty.
but presumably they are pronunciations a little before that era.
and possibly the source was actually notated a little newer pronunciation basis (Sin or dzin for 臣, si or tsi for 支).
but one exception is "支" in "安邪踧支".
In Divine Ode #3, it's notated "岐" and should be pronounced like "ki", not "si". Possibly 支 here is a scribal error or abbreviation of 岐. High possibility of some confusion. （Such speculation cannot be done without comparison with Divine Ode #3.) |
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By the way, the word (in the original text i.e. the Records of Three Kingdoms) for "special title" is "優呼".
It is interpreted as a descriptive expression "special title" by many people including Hamana.
But possibly it should be understood as not "special title" but a part of the long title name itself, like "... sometimes[( accurately "perhaps" rather than "sometimes")*4] add the title of Yu-kwo Si-u-ku Si-fu . . ." (instead of "sometimes add the special title(s), the title(s) of Si--u-ku Si-fu . . .") (actually, the word meaning "title" is expressed by another word - "號" in the text.) Though Divine Ode #3 is not capped by such word like "優呼(Yu-kwo)", if you have enough prudence you can understand that such capping may occur (cf. "A-me-mi" capping Susanamiko's name in Section 3). Shiratori (1912) also thinks "優呼" is a part of the long title name (though he splits the long name out after all). Mikami (1966) also includes "優呼" in the title name but does not split it and attributes the whole title to the King of Jin. (In that point I agree with him.) |
| *4 In my view, adequate translation for the word "或"(interpreted by Byingyon as "sometimes") is "maybe" or "perhaps" rather than "sometimes" ---the latter translation possibly comes from the notion that the title holder(s) is/are not Jin king but some polity'/polities' chieftain(s). My one is based on the presumption that Jin King's title had not been authorized by Chinese (Wei) Government at that time. |
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My theory is based on the assumption that Jin King in the Records of Three Kingdoms was also the "月支 polity"'s chief.
On the contrary, there is a strong assertion that Jin King and Wolchi-polity's chinji (in the Records of Three Kingdoms) are never identical
(see Takeda 1995:18,24).
It is based on the annotation in 翰苑Han yuan (The Garden of Writing)*5 (written in Tang era in China) that says: (目)支國置官亦多曰臣智 (Many of the officeholders that Mokchi(Wolchi) Polity established are also called 臣智("chinji").) The sentence is introduced as citation from 魏略 Weilüe, a lost book also known as it is often cited in the Records of three Kingdoms. As the sentence cannnot be found even in the Records of three Kingdoms, there are two ways of views about it. The first one is that the sentence is a summing-up of the combination of the two sentences corressponding to the texts in the Records of three Kingdoms, which discribes the Wolchi-Polity's Shinji as mysterious titlename holder; Second thoery is that the 翰苑Han yuan's sentence is not related to those two sentences but simply giving us new information. Second one seems to come from the notion that holders of mysterious titles are just chiefs of some polities related to neither the King of Jin nor Wolchi(Mokchi) Polity. Such notion will be wrong according to my interpretation I have already shown above. So, first theory is acceptable, but still, if you adopt the first one, it seems to lead us to the conclusion that the titleholder(s) are just subordinate(s) of the King of Jin as asserted in Takeda 1995. Nevertheless, I think, Jin king himself can be the titleholder for following reasons. You should be aware that citations in the annotations attached to Han yuan 翰苑 (annotator shoule be 雍公叡) often obtain inaccuracy. You can find numbers of abbreviations there. Furthermore, the original text is sometimes rewritten by the annotator with his own style (see Jeong 2010:129). And in such situation it is most likely that the annotator summarized the the two sentences in 魏略Weilüe according to his self-complacent interpretation. 'Two sentences', I mean, are supposed similar to the two sentences in Sanguozhi(the Records of the Three Kingdoms) that is: 臣智或加, 優呼臣雲遣支報安邪踧支濆臣離兒不例拘邪秦支廉之号。 其官有魏率善邑君 ,歸義侯, 中郎將, 都尉, 伯長。 "Chinji sometimes add the (special) title(s) of etc,etc......." "Among the(=Jin King's or Wolchi Polity's) offices(官) are Wei's Fief Lord Comforming to the Good, Allied Marquis, Leader of Court Gentlemen, and Leader of One Hundred." As written above, the first sentence is controversial and hard to grasp at a glance. Therefore, the annotator, who must have had to process enormous amount of notes through citing various documents, was liable to make inaccurate interpretation, for example: "Those that sometimes add (the title of) Chinji are special title(holder)s as Si-u-ku Si-fu, A-ya Si-si, Fi-si-ri-ni Fu-ru and Ka-ya Su-si-ra." "Among THEM are (the counterparts of) the officeholders (who are called) Wei's Fief Lord Comforming to the Good, Allied Marquis, Leader of Court Gentlemen, and Leader of One Hundred." Of course such reading is quite inaccurate, acrobatic or unnatural and therefore unacceptable, but considering the characteristics of Han yuan 翰苑, you cannot say such a misinterpretation is beyond expectation. (The misinterpretation above is based on a (wrong) concept that Chinese-style titles like 魏率善邑君 correspond to the local titlenames like 臣雲遣支報, and that 臣智 in 臣智或加 is an object word to the verb 加('add'), resulting in the interpreration that those titleholders were also called 臣智.) And I think, when the annotator made such misreading, he was very likely to summarize(*6) those two sentences into: (目)支國置官亦多曰臣智 (Many of the officeholders that Mokchi(Wolchi) Polity established are also called 臣智("chinji").) as you can find in the texts of Han yuan's annotations. Without such considerarion, it may be true that Mokchi(Wolchi) Polity had many subordinates who were called generally 臣智("chinji") (or one subordinate with chinji title that also holds the long title, as asserted in Takeda 1995), which may lead to the conclusion that Jin king in Mokchi Polity was not identical to the Polity's 臣智 who held the mysterious title. But actually, it is probable that Han yuan annotator misread the difficult passage in 魏略Weilüe and made wrong summarization. So it should be inadequate that Takeda ignored such probablity and easily relied on the annotators' discription. |
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*5 翰苑 Han yuan (Garden of writing) was composed in 660 by Zhang Chujin 張楚金, and annotations were added in the same or near period by Yong Gongrui 雍公叡. But it disappeared in China. The name of the book is found in Nihonkoku genzai sho mokuroku (List of books presently extant in Japan State), a Heian-period listing of Chinese texts that had been imported to Japan. At present remains only volume 30, preserved in Kyushu Japan. *6 That theory may sound new in that it was the citator who tried summarizing, but as Han yuan 翰苑 is an miscellaneous composition especially convenient for young learners who study how to write beautiful sentences, the annotator very likely hesitated to cite enigmatic texts without summmarizing. |
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References:
Byington, Mark E. (2009): "The Account of Han in the Sanguozhi: An Annotated Translation". in Byington, Mark E. (ed.), Early Korea 2: The Samhan Period in Korean History. Early Korea Project, Korea Institute, Harvard University. ISBN 10: 097958003X; 13: 9780979580031 Bentley, John R. (2020): The Birth of Japanese Historiography. Routledge, pp.20-21. ISBN 10: 0367407310; 13: 9780367407315 Shiratori, K. (1912). "漢の朝鮮四郡疆域考 (An Attempt to the Boundaries and the Names of the "Four Provinces" in Korea of the Han Dynasty [i.e. Study on the boundaries of Han Dynasty's four commanderies in Korea])". in 東洋學報Toyo Gakuho, 2 (2). http://id.nii.ac.jp/1629/00003894/ Yi, Pyong-do (1936). "三韓問題의新考察3 (New Consideration on Samhan Problems 3) -辰國及三韓考 (Study on Jin State and Samhan)". in 震檀學報Chindan hakbo, Vol.4 https://lccn.loc.gov/78648122 Mikami, T. (1966). 古代東北アジア史研究 (Kodai tohoku Ajia shi kenkyu [A Study of the Ancient History in Northeast Asia]) , p.104. 吉川弘文館 (Yoshikawa Kobunkan) https://lccn.loc.gov/79815061 Takeda, Yukio.(1995). "三韓社会における辰王と辰智（上） (Sankan Shakai ni okeru Sin-ou to Shinchi (Chin-wang and Sinji in Sam-han Society (1) ))". in 朝鮮文化研究Chosen Bunka Kenkyu 2. https://irdb.nii.ac.jp/en/00926/0005217923 Takeda, Yukio.(1996). "三韓社会における辰王と辰智（下） (Sankan Shakai ni okeru Sin-ou to Shinchi (Chin-wang and Sinji in Sam-han Society (2) ))". in 朝鮮文化研究Chosen Bunka Kenkyu 3. https://irdb.nii.ac.jp/en/00926/0005217933 Jeong, Dongjun.(鄭東俊)(2010). "『翰苑』百済伝所引の『括地志』の史料的性格について (On the historiographical character of Kuodizhi quoted in Hanyuan Baekje-zhuan)". in 東洋學報Toyo Gakuho, 92 (2). http://id.nii.ac.jp/1629/00006251/ |
| Section 46 | ||||
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Maybe this codex is unfinished because it lacks the title and explanations about some important words. Presumably its compiling was interrupted before the supposed completion date above. |