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Updated: May 23, 2025
To be able to adapt the Chinese ideographs skilfully to the purposes of written Japanese was a feat achieved by comparatively few. Much richer, however, is the realm of poetry. The compiler's name is not known certainly; he is believed to have been either Tachibana no Moroe or Otomo no Yakamochi. Old manuscripts and popular memory were the sources, and the verselets total 4496, in twenty volumes.
The latter is described by a series of ideographs, "herd" and "to prosper." Is there perhaps a reference to cows giving birth to calves in this month, the early spring? For another, but improbable, explanation, see Babylonian and Oriental Record, iv. 37. Lotz, Quaestiones de Historia Sabbati, pp. 27-29. Sin, Shamash, and Ramman. See pp. 108, 163.
These references indicate that the use of the ideographs was known in Japan long before the reign of Ojin, whether we take the Japanese or the corrected date for the latter. Buddhism, introduced into Japan in A.D. 552, doubtless supplied the chief incentive to the acquisition of knowledge. But had the Japanese a script of their own at any period of their history?
Hundreds of such words have been manufactured in Japan during the past half-century to equip men for the study of Western learning, and the same process, though on a very much smaller scale, had been going on continuously for many centuries, so that the Japanese language has come to embody a very large number of Chinese words, though they are not pronounced as the Chinese pronounce the corresponding ideographs.
They prove conclusively that the Imperial Family believed that it was only abdicating its political power, whilst retaining all ancient ceremonial rights and titles. Plainly the conception of a Republic, or a People's Government, as it was termed in the native ideographs, was unintelligible to Peking. Yuan Shih-kai had now won everything he wished for.
If this be so, Ishtar may mean 'the goddess that brings blessing' to mankind, but all this is tentative, as are the numerous other etymologies suggested. The ideographs for 'country' and 'mountain' are identical Assyrian. The alternation in the title of Ishtar must not be taken to point to a mountainous origin of the goddess. A full account of this epic will be given at its proper place.
The ideographs with which his name is written designate him as a chief of some kind, and in accord with this, Gudea calls him 'the leader of the land. Pa-sag is mentioned immediately after the sun-god Utu, and in view of the fact that another solar deity, I-shum, whom we shall come across in a future chapter, is designated by the same title as Pa-sag, it seems safe to conclude that the latter is likewise a solar deity, and in all probability, the prototype of I-shum, if not indeed identical with him.
*This term, "provincial governor," appears now for the first time written with the ideographs "kokushi." Hitherto it has been written "kuni-no-miyatsuko." Much is heard of the koushi in later times. They are the embryo of the daimyo, the central figures of military feudalism.
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