Hypotheses on Kudara (5)

Several hypotheses on Kudara (part four)

[page 33 of the original (cont.)]
The names of the two fortresses, Mich'u and Wirye, could be considered, in the light of these facts, as names of mythical capitals. However, one of these two names, that of Wirye, appears also in the Nihon Shoki  ¹⁵⁸ and it seems to be the less mythical of the two, being perhaps possible to link it to the MK ulh “enclosure”. This connection Wirye-ulh would leave open the problem of the contemporaneous presence of two words of evident common derivation, ulh and xol, one at first sight more ancient and the other apparently more recent, in which, besides the difference in the vowel, leaps before the eyes the presence in the second one (and the absence in the other) of the initial fricative x ¹⁵⁹.

The first name of a capital city that has some appearance of historical authenticity is Hansan ¹⁶⁰.
[page 34 of the original]
Imanishi Ryū 今西龍 and Tsuda Saukichi 津田左右吉 ¹⁶¹ say that Wirye was perhaps the original name of Hansan prior to the introduction of the Chinese culture, which happened at the time of king Kŭnch’ogo. Hansan was the capital of Paekche up to the year 475 A.D. when the troups of Koguryŏ conquered it, occupying all the basin of the river Han, on whose lower course it was situated. Besides the names we already remembered of Hansan, Hansŏng, Pulhansansŏng and Namhansansŏng, we must also consider the names of Hanhol 漢忽, Siksŏng 息城 and Naehol 乃忽, which appear connected with the name of Hansan in the kwŏn 37 of the Samguk sagi ¹⁶². The name Hansan seems furthermore linked with that of Han'gang 漢江, the river near whom was the capital. According to some linguists, Han'gang could have had the meaning of “big river” or “main river”; the etymology of han, however, is not completely clear ¹⁶³.

The problem that occurs in the analysis of these ancient names is twofold: on one hand we don' t know which was in Paekche the pronounciation of the characters we are examining, on the other, even if we could be sure of the Paekche's pronounciation of the examined Chinese character, we would not know exactly which group of phonemes of the language of Paekche it was transcribing. The example of 忽 xol (but Karlgren 503l χuət ) used in the language of Koguryŏ to transcribe the sound of a word which had the meaning of “castle, fortress” clearly illustrates the problem. Probably the two pronounciations (the one that the character did get in Paekche and the other of the local term it was transcribing) did coincide. In the uncertainty we cannot do else than consider the ancient Chinese pronounciations, the Korean pronounciations of the 15th century and the Japanese ones, and from those data try to decide which was the true value of the pronounciation of a character in Paekche.

[page 35 of the original]
Let's, therefore, reconstruct the ancient Chinese pronounciation of the first name, Hansan. Karlgren gives us: 144c 漢 χân (*χân), 193a 山 şăn (*săn). Supposing that the differences due to the local pronounciations (Silla-Paekche) of the Chinese characters were not too marked, we could think that the vowel of 漢, which in the reconstruction is equal to that of 翰 ¹⁶⁴. was of the same type of the vowel of this latter character, employed to transcribe a title of the king in the language of Silla ¹⁶⁵. On the other hand the title pronounced hân 翰 or kân 干 in the language of Silla corresponded to a title pronounced kiɒn 鞬 in that of Paekche ¹⁶⁶. What will be the relation between 漢 and 鞬? Will we be able to admit that this character 漢 transcribed a word of Paekche with the meaning of “king” or “unique”? Or must we follow the widespread opinion that 漢 transcribed on the contrary the pronounciation of a word with the meaning of “great, big”? Concerning the initial k- in the pronounciation of this character, we find it in the Japanese reading kan, but up to what point is this in relation with the pronounciation of the character in the language of Paekche? We can tentatively reconstruct for 漢 the pronounciation *kân in the language of Paekche, without making clear, however, than one part of the mistery. At this point it would not even be out of place to think that Hansan was the transcription or the translation of a place-name originally in Mahan language. Anyhow, given as an hypothesis that the word transcribed by 漢 in the name Hansan were in semantic relation with that transcribed by 鞬 in the name 鞬吉支 of the Chou-shu, we would be authorized to think that the meaning of Hansan was “the main (or unique) mountain” or “the mountain of the king”. From the parallel of the various names 漢山, 漢城, 漢忽 we then obtain that the meaning of san 山 was also “fortress” (城, 忽) ¹⁶⁷. from which we can deduct for Hansan the meaning of “fortress of the king”. If the procedure followed until now is correct, this would constitute a good parallel with the name Paekche 百濟 which, as we said before, could mean, precisely, “the fortress of the king” (pɑlktsas). Variants of the name are Pukhansansŏng 北漢山城 and Namhansansŏng 南漢山城, namely the names that the capital took moving from the north to the south of the Han river.
[page 36 of the original]
For Pukhansansŏng, which is in the present-day Koyang’gun 高陽郡, survives a legend according which the founders of Paekche, Piryu and Onjo, would have climbed there in order to decide where to build the capital city ¹⁶⁸. Concerning the other place, it is said that the wall, whose remnants are seen at Namhansansŏng, a mountain in Kwangjugun 廣州郡, were built on the original wall of the Wirye fortress ¹⁶⁹.

The other two names of the capital, Siksŏng and Naehol, do not bring any contribution to the clearing up of this point.

“Mountain” in Koguryŏ language was tal, a word generally transcribed with the character 達 ¹⁷⁰. If the relation between 漢 and 鞬 supposed before is correct, then we can reconstruct a pronounciation *kʌndal (漢達) or *kjʌndal (鞬達) for 漢山, from which perhaps, with the drop of the -n- and with the addition of the final -a, we could arrive to the name Kudara. This thing, anyhow, is so uncertain that we could be tempted to discard this hypothesis, if not for the fact that, really, for many of these countries (and the example of Silla is perhaps the most evident) the name of the state did coincide with that of the capital city. It remains anyhow to be solved the problem given by the Japanese reading of 漢山 and 漢城 which never is Kudara.

As a following hypothesis we should consider also the names Hansan, Hansŏng etc., as translations of terms in southern language. But, since it seems that we can arrive to the name Kudara from Hansan just through a reconstruction where the second part of the word be read in a way similar to *tal (language of Koguryŏ) and not mojh (for “mountain” in language of Silla), we abandon any attempt to reconstruct the word in this way.

The name Hansan could mean, on the contrary “big mountain” ¹⁷¹ and be in close relation with the name Han'gang, to which we already pointed. This interpretation, at a first glance very much logical, cannot by now be proved than by resorting to forms of the language of Silla, and this we said not to be of any utility in the research of the etymology of the name Kudara.

Hypotheses on Kudara (5)