Page:Kojiki by Chamberlain.djvu/17

Rh of a Myriad Leaves” and in the “Collection of Songs Ancient and Modern,”—the first two collections of poems published by imperial decree in the middle of the eighth, and at the commencement of the tenth, century respectively.

The above remarks are meant to apply more especially to the occasional Japanese words,—all of them Archaic,—which, as mentioned above, are used from time to time in the prose text of the “Records,” to help out the author’s meaning and to preserve names whose exact pronunciation he wished handed down. That he should have invented the Songs would be too monstrous a supposition for any one to entertain, even if we had not many of the same and other similar ones preserved in the pages of the “Chronicles of Japan,” a work which was undoubtedly completed in A.D. 720. The history of the Japanese language is too well known to us, we can trace its development and decay in too many documents reaching from the eighth century to the present time, for it to be possible to entertain the notion that the latest of these Songs, which have been handed down with minute care in a syllabic transcription, is posterior to the first half of the eighth century, while the majority must be ascribed to an earlier, though uncertain, date. If we refer the greater number of them in their present form to the sixth century, and allow a further antiquity of one or two centuries to others more ancient in sentiment and in grammatical usage, we shall probably be making a moderate estimate. It is an estimate, moreover, which obtains confirmation from the fact that the first notice we have of the use of writing in Japan dates from early in the fifth century; for it is natural to suppose that the Songs believed to have been composed by the gods and heroes of antiquity should have been among the first things to be written down, while the reverence in which they were held would in some cases cause them to be transcribed exactly as tradition had bequeathed them, even if unintelligible or nearly so, while in others the same feeling would lead to the correction of what were supposed to be errors or inelegancies. Finally it may be well to observe that the authenticity of the “Records” has never been doubted, though, as has already been stated, some of the native commentators have not hesitated to charge with spuriousness another of their esteemed ancient histories. Now it is unlikely that, in the war which has been waged between