KOGURYO THE LANGUAGE OF JAPAN’S CONTINENTAL RELATIVES BRILL’S JAPANESE STUDIES LIBRARY edited by H. BOLITHO AND K.W. RADTKE VOLUME 21 KOGURYO THE LANGUAGE OF JAPAN’S CONTINENTAL RELATIVES An Introduction to The Historical-Comparative Study of the Japanese- Koguryoic Languages With a Preliminary Description of Archaic Northeastern Middle Chinese BY CHRISTOPHER I. BECKWITH BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2004 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Illustration on the cover: Drawing by C.I. Beckwith, after a Koguryo tomb mural painting. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Beckwith, Christopher I., 1945- Koguryo, the language of Japan’s continental relatives : an introduction to the historical-comparative study of the Japanese-Koguryoic languages with a preliminary description of Archaic northeastern Middle Chinese / by Christopher I. Beckwith. p. cm. — (Brill’s Japanese studies library, 0925-6512 ; v. 21) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 90-04-13949-4 (hd. cover) 1. Japanese language—Foreign elements—Korean. 2. Korean language—Influence on Japanese. 3. Korean language—To 935—Etymology. I. Title. II. Series. PL664.K6 B43 2004 495.6’24957—dc22 2004049680 ISSN 0925-6512 ISBN 90 04 13949 4 © Copyright 2004 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands CONTENTS Preface ............................................................................................... vii Abbreviations ................................................................................... xiii Transcription and Transliteration .................................................... xvii Map .................................................................................................. xxii Introduction .......................................................................................... 1 1. Koguryo and the Origins of Japanese ......................................... 8 2. The Ethnolinguistic History of Koguryo .................................... 29 3. The Old Koguryo Toponyms ...................................................... 50 4. Archaic Northeastern Middle Chinese ........................................ 93 5. Old Koguryo Phonology ........................................................... 106 6. Toward Common Japanese-Koguryoic .................................... 118 7. The Proto-Japanese-Koguryoic Homeland ............................... 144 8. Koguryo and the Altaic Divergence Theories .......................... 164 9. The Altaic Convergence Theory ............................................... 184 10. Japanese and the Mixed Language Theory ............................... 195 11. Linguistic Theory and Japanese-Koguryoic ............................. 214 12. The Japanese-Koguryoic Family of Languages ....................... 236 Koguryo Lexicon ............................................................................ 250 Bibliography .................................................................................... 255 Index ................................................................................................ 267 This page intentionally left blank PREFACE The beginnings of this book go back to 1996, when I was Visiting Pro- fessor of Linguistics at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, Japan. I noticed, by chance, some puzzling correlations between Japa- nese and Chinese that suggested a significant early preliterate loan relationship. Since this idea required the Proto-Japanese speakers to have lived at one time in contact with Old Chinese speakers, I began looking into the problem of Japanese ethnolinguistic origins, and be- came interested in the Koguryo language, which I had read about in the publications of my friend and colleague, Gisaburo N. Kiyose. When I investigated the sources on Koguryo I discovered that the philology had never really been done. Most research involving the language—including some of my own—was vitiated by basic philol- ogical errors. In order that firm linguistic conclusions could be drawn, and in order to establish a solid foundation for the study of Japanese and Koguryo ethnolinguistic history, I decided to undertake the pre- sent study. I would like to thank my friend, colleague, and former student— who has far surpassed his teacher—Tsuguhito Takeuchi, of Kobe City University of Foreign Studies, for help beyond the call of duty in every respect before, during, and after my stay at the National Mu- seum of Ethnology. I am also indebted to my sponsor there, Yasuhiko Nagano, for his generous assistance to me during my stay. I could not have written this book without the help of many friends and colleagues. First of all, Gregory Kasza of Indiana University gave me much encouragement and advice, as did J. Marshall Unger of Ohio State University. The discussions I had with Jim Unger helped me to form clear views of my own on the relationship between Japanese and Koguryo. At the time I was writing grant proposals I also received helpful advice on my research from several other scholars, especially Alexander Vovin of the University of Hawaii. In several instances Sa- sha Vovin’s criticism pointed out the way to a better understanding. Most importantly of all, Professor Kiyose not only advised me, he sponsored me in my application for a Japan Foundation Fellowship and helped me in every possible way before, during, and after my stay in Japan. I cannot sufficiently express my deep gratitude to him. viii PREFACE Due to all this help from my friends and colleagues I was fortunate enough to be awarded a Japan Foundation Fellowship for one year, from August, 2001 to August, 2002. I would like to thank the Japan Foundation (Kokusai Kôryû Kikin) of the Japanese Foreign Ministry (Gaimushô) for the fellowship, without which I could not have written this book. Because Professor Kiyose retired in spring of 2002, his colleague Tatsuo Nakami, of the Institute for the Study of Languages and Cul- tures of Asia and Africa (‘A-A-ken’) at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, kindly offered to sponsor me. I am very grateful to him and to A-A-ken for providing me with an office, an internet connection, and much other support. Professor Nakami also introduced me to many other Japanese scholars interested in the subject of my research, in- cluding several at A-A-ken. I wish to thank Bhaskararao Peri of A-A- ken for lending me a printer to use with the Macintosh computer Pro- fessor Nakami found for me; without it my work there would have been far more difficult. I would also like to thank Izumi Hoshi and the staff of A-A-ken for their cheerful willingness to help me on many occasions during my stay there. Of all the scholars I met in Japan, I owe the biggest debt of grati- tude to Hiroömi Kanno, who collected almost everything ever pub- lished in Japanese and Korean on the Koguryo language, lent all of it to me, and helped me go through some of the Korean publications. Professor Kanno also assisted me with Korean linguistic matters, es- pecially Middle Korean citations, and met me on several occasions for discussion of our common research interests. Without his help this book would have been much poorer. When Professors Kanno and Nakami introduced my work to Ta- katoshi Matsubara, of Kyushu National University, he invited me to give a lecture on my research in Fukuoka. Professor Matsubara also took me around to meet archaeologists and anthropologists and to view Yayoi materials. I am grateful to Professor Matsubara for his generosity and encouragement, and to the faculty and staff at Kyushu National University who graciously showed me their collections. I also wish to thank Professor Takeuchi for inviting me twice to Kansai, where he generously treated me and my family and introduced me to several of his collegues and students. While I was living in Tokyo, my friend and colleague Michael Walter, of Indiana University, took care of many onerous tasks back PREFACE ix home for me. I am indebted to him for helping me out of several diffi- cult situations. In addition, I would like to thank Mike for generously answering questions of mine on Buddhist and other topics. I also owe my gratitute to my friends and colleagues Junko Tanaka, Roger Janel- li, and Dawnhee Yim, who helped me with the Bibliography. A special note of thanks is due to all my helpful colleagues on the Warring States Working Group internet site (http://www.umass.edu/ wsp/), who have answered so many of my questions and often steered me away from error. I would also like to thank Ann Bristow and Wen-ling Liu of the Indiana University Library, who very kindly helped me on several oc- casions, and the staff of the Indiana University East Asian Studies Center, who have often provided me with help not available else- where. I am indebted to Adam Kilgarriff of the University of Brighton for permission to quote extensively from his first-rate computational work on the British National Corpus (see Chapter 10), to Anthropological Linguistics for allowing me to reuse selections from a published