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A Study on the Interpretation of the Unidentified (未詳) Sillan-Language Phrase “Gusunijari (久須尼自利)” in the Nihon Shoki as “What a Wretched Affair”

Abstract

The Sillan-language utterance “Gusunijari (久須尼自利),” recorded in Volume 19 of the Nihon Shoki, is an expression of unknown meaning to which even the compilers of the time attached the annotation “this Sillan word cannot be understood in detail (未詳).” The present study critically analyzes the persuasiveness and limitations of an attempt to interpret this enigmatic phrase as the modern Korean “What a wretched affair (궂은 일이구나).” First, it examines the original notation and the situation of the utterance, and discusses the adequacy of the phonological correspondences and syntactic structure in light of the character notation method (Man’yōgana-style phonetic borrowing) and the conventions of hyangchal notation. It then evaluates the contextual naturalness of this interpretation in light of the circumstances of the time, and considers the relative credibility of the “What a wretched affair” hypothesis by comparing it with other existing interpretive hypotheses. The analysis shows that interpreting the phrase as “What a wretched affair” possesses a certain degree of rationality in terms of the phonology and meaning of the phrase, and is also relatively consistent with the context of a lament uttered during battle. However, because it must rely on several conjectures in the process of phonological conversion (e.g., sil → il) and on the limitations of the Japanese record, it does not reach the level of confirmation. In the end, the precise meaning of “Gusunijari” remains not fully clarified, but by illuminating the possibilities and limitations of the interpretation presented through this study, we aim to reveal the difficulties of deciphering ancient Sillan and the tasks for future research.

1. Introduction

The Nihon Shoki is an official history of Japan compiled in 720, and it contains a great deal of material on ancient Korea-Japan relations. In particular, the entry for Year 23 of Emperor Kinmei’s reign (562 CE) records, verbatim in Chinese characters, a single Sillan-language phrase that a Sillan general uttered on the battlefield. That very phrase is “Gusunijari,” written as “久須尼自利.” According to the record of the Nihon Shoki, the Yamato army fell into chaos: their battle lines collapsed due to internal division and discord among the commanders, and the soldiers would not obey orders. The Yamato general Tehiko (手彦) leapt over the castle moat (垓) on horseback and barely managed to escape. The Sillan general who was pursuing him stood at the edge of the castle moat and, witnessing this scene—that is, the enemy collapsing of its own accord—lamented, “Gusunijari.” The compiler of the Nihon Shoki recognized that this utterance was Sillan and attached the annotation “this is the language of Silla, and its meaning is not detailed (此新羅語、未詳也).” Since then, and down to the present day, “Gusunijari” has remained an undeciphered Sillan word of unknown meaning, and as the only piece of spoken (colloquial) Sillan material appearing in the Nihon Shoki, it has attracted interest in the history of language.

The aim of this study is to comprehensively examine the linguistic validity and limitations of the hypothesis that interprets this “Gusunijari” as the modern Korean “What a wretched affair (궂은 일이구나).” “What a wretched affair” is, in modern terms, an exclamatory expression amounting to “what a truly bad thing this is”—that is, “what an ill thing this is”—expressing regret or lament regarding a situation. Such an interpretation appears to be a natural estimation of meaning in light of the utterance context of “Gusunijari” (a lament in a situation where the enemy general has fled). However, a close examination is needed of whether this Chinese-character notation and the modern Korean syntax can correspond directly, both phonologically and grammatically. In addition, there is a need to evaluate the relative persuasiveness of the “What a wretched affair” hypothesis by comparing it with other interpretive hypotheses previously proposed—for example, the view of Kōno Rokurō and others, which reads “ni (尼)” as meaning “to go” and interprets the phrase as a construction meaning “go to …,” or the recently proposed attempt to segment it as “gut nae sil.”

This paper first examines the form of the original notation and its phonetic-borrowing notation method, and on that basis analyzes the phonological correspondence relationship and the adequacy of the syntactic structure of the “What a wretched affair” interpretation. Next, it considers the naturalness and limitations of this interpretation within the utterance context and compares it with existing interpretations. Finally, through this analysis it organizes the implications obtained and, in conclusion, proposes future tasks for the decipherment of “Gusunijari.”

2. A Linguistic Study of the Notation of “Gusunijari” and the “What a Wretched Affair” Interpretation

2.1 The Original Notation Method: Man’yōgana-Style Phonetic Borrowing Compared with Hyangchal

“Gusunijari” is written with the Chinese characters “久須尼自利,” which is interpreted as a Man’yōgana-style notation that borrows only the phonetic values, independent of the meanings of the characters. Man’yōgana (万葉仮名) refers to a method used in ancient Japan for the kana notation of works such as the Man’yōshū, in which the sounds (on-readings) of Chinese characters were borrowed to write the sounds of Japanese or of foreign languages. That is, “久” is read as ku, “須” as su, “尼” as ni, “自” as ji, and “利” as ri, corresponding to ku-su-ni-ji-ri (in Japanese pronunciation, kusunijiri). In fact, the transmitted reading of the relevant passage in the Nihon Shoki is handed down as “クスニジリ,” which is simply the Chinese-character phonetic notation read aloud. This kind of phonetic-borrowing notation is similar in principle to Korea’s hyangchal (鄕札), but there is an important difference. Hyangchal was a method used in Silla to write Korean when notating hyangga and the like, mixing the sounds and the meanings (kun) of Chinese characters; grammatical elements and particles were mainly notated by borrowing the meanings (kun) of the characters, while content vocabulary borrowed the sounds. By contrast, the Sillan word “久須尼自利” appearing in the Nihon Shoki appears to have been written purely with phonetic values because the Japanese compiler did not know the meaning. In other words, whereas in hyangchal the characters are selected according to the grammatical structure of Korean, here, because grasping the meaning of the Sillan was impossible, it became a Man’yōgana-style notation borrowing everything just as it was pronounced.

A characteristic of this notation method is the incompleteness of final-consonant (coda) notation. It is highly likely that phonemes existing in Old Korean (Sillan) could not be perfectly matched in the Japanese notation. For example, the Korean coda sounds ㄷ/ㅅ do not exist in Japanese, so they were usually written as approximations through means such as adding a vowel. Likewise, the coda sounds ㄴ and ㄹ rarely come at the end of a word in Japanese, making them hard to distinguish. Therefore, it is difficult to assert with certainty even whether the five-syllable notation “久須尼自利” matches the actual number of syllables in the Sillan word. This is an important consideration when later discussing the phonological correspondence of the “What a wretched affair” interpretation.

2.2 Phonological Correspondence and Interpretation: “Gusunijari” vs. “What a Wretched Affair”

If we interpret it as “What a wretched affair,” analyzing the phrase in modern Korean phonology, it is pronounced roughly as [kuʣɨn ili guna]. For convenience, dividing it into syllable units, it is “guj-eun / il-i / gu-na” (five syllables). Now let us correspond it one by one with the Nihon Shoki’s ku-su-ni-ji-ri (kusunijiri) notation.

  • “久須” (kusu) – The first two characters are read “kusu,” and when compared with the sound of the interpretation “gujeun (궂은),” they can be seen to correspond to the “guj- (궂-)” part (kut). The Middle Korean form of “gutda (궂다)” is reconstructed as kwúz-ta, and the adnominal form “gujeun (궂은)” is estimated to be roughly [kwúz-ún]. Here it appears that the final sound /-z/ (corresponding to the modern ㅈ coda, realized in practice as [t]) was not reflected in the Japanese notation but was processed as the “ku” (ku) vowel. That is, the Japanese may have heard the kwutun or kuzun sound and written it as kusu. This can be explained by the phenomenon whereby Japanese, which did not have closed syllables at the time, perceived coda consonants together with a vowel. In addition, the glottalized sound of the kw- series may have been simplified to k- (ku). When “久須” is read in the Korean Sino-Korean reading, it is gusu (archaic sound: kyusyu), and the interpretation that this corresponds to “gut/guj (굿/궂)” has already been proposed by some researchers. For example, Yasuoka Kōichi (安岡孝一, 2024) regards “久須” as corresponding to the Korean “gut (굿)” and mentions a hypothesis that reads the following “自利” as “sil (실).” Here gut is homophonous with the modern word gut for a shamanistic ritual, but in this context it is noteworthy that it matches the sound of “gut/guj (굳/궂).” In conclusion, the phonological correspondence “久須” (kusu) ≈ “guj (gut, 궂/굳)” is judged to fall within the range of possible establishment.

  • “尼” (ni) – The third character “尼” is ni in Japanese sound. In “gujeun iliguna (궂은 일이구나),” the initial sound [i] of “il (일)” begins with a vowel without a consonant, and the Japanese may have heard this vowel as [ni] by linking it with the preceding coda. Specifically, in the sequence kuzun il…, /n/ + /i/ may have been heard as [ni]. However, regarding this part there are different approaches depending on the interpretation. Kōno (1987) once presented the bold hypothesis of reading “尼” as ni and interpreting it as the Old Korean verb ni (to go out, to go). According to his view, “久須尼自利” would be segmented as “gut-ni-jari,” forming the structure “gut(…) go (….).” In that case, however, the decipherment of the following “自利” becomes difficult, so Kōno’s hypothesis was left with difficulties, unable to present a concrete translation. This paper, more simply, grasps “尼” as a sound accompanied by the coda /n/ of the previous syllable, regarding “ni” ≈ coda “ㄴ” + vowel i. In other words, it interprets the sound of the ㄴ of -eun plus the following i of il in “gujeun il (궂은 일)” as having been transmitted like an independent syllable. If this assumption is correct, “尼” can be seen as representing part of “ili (일이)” (to be considered together with “自利” below).

  • “自利” (jari) – The fourth and fifth characters “自利” are read as jari. On the surface, this has the same phonetic shape as the Korean word “jari (자리, seat/place).” Here, however, it is generally interpreted as corresponding to the native word “ili (일이).” That is, the “iguna (이구나)” part of “iliguna (일이구나)” was converted into jari. Examining it phonologically, when “iliguna (일이구나)” is pronounced rapidly it is [iliguna], and the Japanese may not have clearly perceived the [g] sound that comes after the vowel [i] in [i…guna], and instead may have received it as a sound closer to [dʑ]. At the time, Japanese did have word-initial consonant clusters such as [gw]/[kw], but it may have confused the foreign voiced [g] with a [ʣ] sound. Reading “自” as ja (ジャ) may reflect this confusion. Meanwhile, “利” is clearly ri (リ) and bears no resemblance at all to the final vowel -na. This is the greatest difficulty of the phonological correspondence, and several assumptions are possible. First, if the -na of guna was heard as the [nɐ] sound, the Japanese may have misheard it as [ri] or confused it in the process of recording. However, mistaking [na] for [ri] is weakly persuasive because of the low phonetic similarity. As a second assumption, the whole of “jari” may have represented a single complex syllable including a coda. For example, it is conceivable that, in trying to notate a syllable such as “sil (실)” or “il (일)” in the Japanese manner, it was written split into two characters. In fact, Yasuoka (2024) interpreted “自利” as “糸利,” that is, a Man’yōgana notation of the Korean “sil (실).” ‘Sil’ is the sound of “sil (실, thread)” in modern Korean, but here it is posited as the ancient form of il (事, affair). According to some research, the etymology of the Korean “il (일, affair/event)” is also conjectured to be sil or sirh. If, in the Sillan period, ‘il (事)’ was pronounced something like “sil,” then they may have tried to express the [sil] sound by combining 自 (ja) and 利 (ri). There is also an argument that the notation of writing “自” as a variant of “糸” and adding “利” is such a usage. If we follow this hypothesis, “久須尼自利” is decomposed into “gut nae sil,” becoming “gut-nae sil,” that is, the construction “my sil (affair).” However, it does not seem syntactically natural, given points such as the use of ‘nae (my),’ a first-person possessive pronoun. Moreover, in context one is lamenting the situation not of oneself but of the other party, so rather than “my affair,” “this affair (event)” would be appropriate. Therefore, the attempt to read “jari” as “sil (il, affair)” is interesting from the standpoint of historical phonology, but it does not give a clear context for interpreting the whole of “gusu nijari.”

Synthesizing the above phonological analysis, corresponding “Gusunijari” to “What a wretched affair” requires several preconditions. First, one must accept the phonetic-value correspondence “久須” = guj and “自利” = il by way of the loss of the final consonant -ㄷ(ㅈ) of “gujeun (궂은)” and the assumption of sil as the ancient form of “il (일).” And one must interpret “尼” as a connecting sound of the preceding and following syllables (ㄴ + ㅣ). Under these assumptions, the overall structure roughly fits phonologically. Indeed, if “Gusunijari” is divided into syllables in the Korean manner, it is gu-su-ni-ja-ri, and lining up “guj-eun-il-i-guna” in correspondence, one can observe a considerable degree of similarity in the consonant and vowel arrangements. In particular, the gaps between kusu-ni- vs. kut-un i- and between -jari vs. -guna are, strictly speaking, not perfect, but the starting point of this interpretation is that they can be explained within the bounds of the recorder’s mishearing or the limitations of the notation.

2.3 The Adequacy of the Syntactic Structure and Semantic Context

Viewed syntactically, the Korean sentence “What a wretched affair (궂은 일이구나)” has the structure of [subject omitted] + [wretched affair] (noun phrase) + [iguna (이구나)] (predicate). That is, the speaker is pointing at some state of affairs and exclaiming (or lamenting), “(This) is a wretched affair (a bad thing)!” In Korean, “-guna (–구나)” is used as an exclamatory final ending when reconfirming an already-known fact or realizing something anew, and it has a monologic character. Therefore, “What a wretched affair” conforms to the usage in which the speaker pours out regret over a situation before their eyes. If we suppose this to be the actual utterance of a sixth-century Sillan speaker, even if its grammatical system was not entirely identical, it is highly likely that a similar exclamatory expression existed. Exclamatory final phrases also appear in eighth-century hyangga and the like, and forms such as “-guna/-gunana (-구나/-구나ᄂᆞ)” were used in Middle Korean.

Meanwhile, because the notation “久須尼自利” bundles the entire phrase together as a continuous string of Chinese characters, it does not directly indicate the internal grammatical structure. However, the earlier phonological analysis revealed that the “…尼…自利” part can be seen as a single phrase. Kōno regarded it as a verb phrase, but this paper would regard it as a noun phrase + predicate phrase (wretched affair + iguna). The grounds supporting this are that, if Sillan was of the Korean lineage, a syntactic structure of adjective + noun + predicative copular formation would have been current. A word form corresponding to the modern Korean “nappeun ir-ida (나쁜 일이다, it is a bad thing)” would have existed in ancient times as well, though its morphological markers may differ from those of today. For example, in Middle Korean the predicative particle (copula) was realized not as “–i– (–이–)” but, depending on context, in forms such as “–ira/–irau/–iroda (–이라/–이라우/–이로다).” According to hyangchal notation, in the hyangga praising the lord, “Chan Gipa-rang-ga (讚耆婆郎歌),” the form “-伊勒迦 (…iruga)” appears, which is also interpreted as the exclamatory form of “…iroguna (…이로구나).” Comparing such material, one can fully suppose the possibility that the Sillan expression corresponding to “-guna (-구나)” was actually written as “-尼自利” or the like. There are also hyangchal cases in which the single character “尼” represents an auxiliary verb or an ending, but since here it is a phonetic borrowing, we keep in mind the possibility that the whole of “-guna” was segmented into the two characters “…尼自利.” In conclusion, in terms of syntactic structure, the “What a wretched affair” hypothesis has no particular contradiction or awkwardness; rather, it fits the pragmatics of the relevant context well. If we suppose that the commander (the general), watching the absurd self-destruction of the enemy, felt complex emotions—emptiness, regret, or even cynical satisfaction—and lamented to himself, “Ah, what a truly wretched (unpleasant) affair this is,” it is contextually elegant. This has a higher degree of contextual adequacy compared even with interpreting “Gusunijari” in other ways. For example, one might see it as some kind of curse word or imprecation, but nowhere in the main text of the Nihon Shoki is there an annotation or translation to such an effect; rather, judging from the description that he “lamented and said (歎曰),” one can tell that it carries the nuance of a negative exclamation. Therefore, “What a wretched affair” can be evaluated as the interpretation that, in terms of content as well, best captures the character of the lament in question.

3. Comparison with Existing Interpretive Hypotheses and a Critical Examination

There have been several attempts in the past to clarify the meaning of “Gusunijari,” but they have not reached a clear consensus. Examining the representative views and comparing them with the “What a wretched affair” hypothesis yields the following.

First, the hypothesis of Kōno Rokurō (河野六郎). As part of his research on the Baekje language, he paid attention to the Sillan word “久須尼自利” and proposed that “尼” could be read as the Sillan verb ‘ni (to go)’. According to his interpretation, the whole phrase is divided into “gut + (verb) ni + jari,” forming the shape “… go (….).” Kōno developed his argument without settling the meaning of the “jari” part; if “jari” is interpreted like the modern word “jari (座, seat),” there is room for it to become an imperative sentence amounting to “gut[guj] go jari” = “go (you), to your place.” That is, it can be seen as a roar or curse directed at the fleeing enemy general meaning something like “Get back to your place at once” or “Don’t move from where you stand.” However, such an interpretation is no more than conjecture, and Kōno himself did not assert it. Syntactically, too, an imperative verb would come inside a single sentence, which does not harmonize with the surrounding context (a lament). In addition, seeing “jari” as ‘one’s place’ is a modern conception, and it is also uncertain whether “jari” had the meaning of ‘place’ in Old Korean as it does today. Rather, although “jari” is a familiar native word in modern Korean, there is no clear attested usage in Three Kingdoms-period records. Therefore, Kōno’s hypothesis has significance in pointing out one possibility of phonological interpretation, but in terms of a concrete translation or meaning it is rather weak in persuasiveness. Compared with the “What a wretched affair” hypothesis, it is contextually unnatural, and the sentence composition also becomes more complex.

Second, the interpretive experiment of Yasuoka Kōichi (安岡孝一). In a 2024 contribution, he decomposed “久須尼自利” into “gut nae sil (굿 내 실)” and analyzed it in Universal Dependencies form. His proposal is a structure of “gut (noun) + nae (genitive of the pronoun) + sil (noun),” which, translated literally, amounts to “my sil (gut).” Here gut is a homonym of ‘guj’ but its meaning is the shamanistic ritual gut, and sil is the hypothetical etymon of ‘il (事),’ as examined earlier. Yasuoka stated that this analysis was one experiment in possibility, and noted in particular that one cannot guarantee whether “nae” (my) was really “nae” in Sillan as well. As a result, “gut nae sil” ends up as the ambiguous interpretation “my wretched affair” or “my gut (ritual)” syntactically. The former sounds like self-pity, as in a wretched affair I suffered, which does not fit the context, and the latter is far removed from the situation. Regrettably, Yasuoka’s attempt merely explored the possibility of phonological correspondence and did not go so far as to clarify the meaning of a complete sentence. That said, points in his analytical process—such as the assumption “自利” = “sil” and his citation of Kōno’s hypothesis—were also referenced in this paper’s phonological discussion. Compared with Yasuoka’s proposal, the “What a wretched affair” hypothesis is superior in contextual adequacy and clarity in that it is a sentence that plainly describes the situation right before one’s eyes, without additional assumptions such as nae.

Third, as another view, there is the position that vaguely conjectures it to be “a curse word or a lament.” Looking at modern Japanese translations or commentaries on the relevant part of the Nihon Shoki, “久須尼自利” is often treated as an interjection of unknown meaning. Based on the description that “he lamented and said,” it is taken as an interjection amounting to “ah,” or there is also the conjecture that the Sillan, seeing the routed Wa general, may have muttered it in a mocking or cursing tone. For example, on Internet history forums and the like, various wild guesses such as “he’s dead,” “it’s ruined,” and “got him” have been raised, but all are weak in etymological grounding. As a Sillan word corresponding to “died,” forms such as “jugeul” have also been examined, but they are phonologically far from “Gusunijari.” In the end there is still no interpretation officially recognized in academia, and domestic translations also leave it as “Gusunijari (unidentified).” In this situation, the “What a wretched affair” hypothesis has significance in that it proposed a relatively concrete lexical correspondence and sentence form. Although it has not been perfectly proven, it can at least be credited with attempting a persuasive explanation that is not vague like the curse-word view, relying on the possible existence of the Sillan lexical items “gutda (궂다)” and “il (일).”

Fourth, there is the claim that this is not a Sillan word, but rather a Japanese curse word that the Sillan general shouted. According to this hypothesis, the Sillan general may have been familiar with Japanese through frequent military contact and the like, and, watching the enemy’s self-destruction, shouted “糞飲みしろ (kuso nomi shiro, a crude curse meaning ‘go eat shit’).” There is a striking phonological similarity between the recorded phonetic value of ‘久須尼自利’ and the target phrase. Comparing Ku-su-ni-ji-ri (久須尼自利) and Kus(o)-n(om)i-s(h)iro (糞飲みしろ), ‘久須尼’ (kusuni) almost matches ‘kusoni,’ and ‘自利’ (jiri) can be seen as a very plausible phonetic borrowing for ‘shiro.’ In Old Japanese, phonological variation between ‘s’ and ‘j’ is common, and confusion of ‘ri’ and ‘ro’ is likewise well within the possible range. For a military commander, watching the collapse of the enemy army, to spit out a crude curse laden with mockery and contempt is highly realistic given the primal emotions of a wartime situation. This can convey a more vivid sense of the scene than a refined lament. This claim is persuasive in that it requires few assumptions. However, this hypothesis requires separate assumptions—namely, the bilingual ability of the Sillan general and a misperception on the part of the Japanese of the time.

In sum, the interpretation of “Gusunijari” as “What a wretched affair” belongs, among the hypotheses proposed to date, to those with a relatively high level of both contextual plausibility and language-internal plausibility. The strengths of this interpretation are that (1) it provides a natural exclamatory sentence that fits the surrounding circumstances well, and (2) its meaning is clearly graspable in modern Korean. Furthermore, (3) since it is based on actually existing Korean lexical items such as gutda and il, the fact that it is not a far-fetched coinage guess also increases its credibility. On the other hand, as a weakness or limitation of this interpretation, one can point to the fact that it requires several leaps in the phonological correspondence. As pointed out earlier, the correspondence “guna” -> “jari” has not been sufficiently elucidated. As for the reason “-guna” was notated as “-jari,” with the current state of knowledge in historical phonology one can only conjecture. Since there is no more material on sixth-century Sillan pronunciation, it is also difficult to trace back the precise phonetic value of the phonetic-borrowing notation “Gusunijari.” In addition, one cannot be confident that the ancient sound of “il (事)” was sil, and even if it were, it is questionable whether the Japanese would have perceived that s sound. Nor can one rule out the possibility that a recorder’s mistake or a scribal error intervened. If even a single character among “久須尼自利” had been transmitted incorrectly, the decipherment could turn out entirely differently—for example, the possibility that ‘尼’ was in fact a Chinese character of a different sound that was altered in the process of copying. Because of such uncertainties, the “What a wretched affair” hypothesis can only remain a single hypothesis. There is insufficient evidence to fully prove or disprove it.

4. Conclusion

“Gusunijari (久須尼自利),” the only direct Sillan-language phrase appearing in the Nihon Shoki, has long aroused researchers’ curiosity because its meaning is unclear. In this study, we examined in depth the hypothesis that interprets this puzzling phrase as the modern Korean “What a wretched affair (궂은 일이구나).” Through an analysis that takes into account the Man’yōgana-style phonetic-borrowing characteristics of the original notation and the phonological system of Sillan, we confirmed that decipherment as “What a wretched affair” has a certain degree of plausibility. Specifically, the interpretation that “久須” corresponds to “guj (gut, 궂/굳)” and that “自利” corresponds to “il (sil, 일/실)” requires historical-phonological assumptions, but it is not entirely impossible. Moreover, viewed syntactically, the sentence in question is an exclamatory declarative sentence that fits the battlefield lament situation well, and in terms of meaning the nuance of “what an ill thing this is” plausibly represents the feelings of the Sillan general who let the defeated general escape.

However, direct evidence decisively supporting this hypothesis is lacking. To clarify the precise sound and meaning of “Gusunijari,” additional material or cross-evidence on Sillan is needed, but at present there is only fragmentary material such as contemporaneous hyangga, place names, and personal names. One can make inferences through comparison with some hyangchal material, but it remains only the domain of inference. In the end, the “What a wretched affair” hypothesis is no more than one contextually persuasive conjecture.

Despite these limitations, this study has the significance of having systematically organized what kinds of issues a decipherment attempt of “Gusunijari” entails, linguistically and philologically. By concretely examining the problem of phonological conversion, the problem of notational conventions, and the difficulty of estimating meaning that arise when interpreting Chinese-character materials notating Sillan, it offers lessons for future research on deciphering Old Korean. For example, we confirmed that interpreting a foreign language written in phonograms requires not only the historical phonology of that language but also an understanding of the recorder’s language and writing system. We also pointed out that interpretations that assume continuity with modern Korean, such as “What a wretched affair,” are interesting but must necessarily go through rigorous verification of phonological correspondence.

In conclusion, it cannot be said that the precise meaning of “Gusunijari” has yet been fully clarified. The interpretation “What a wretched affair” is, at the present time, a contextually plausible and attractive hypothesis, but it carries the uncertainty arising from limited material. The Sillan word “Gusunijari,” within the fundamental limitation of being a single attestation (hapax legomenon), leaves any interpretation confined to the domain of inference that cannot be disproved. If, in the future, more relevant documentary material is discovered or comparative phonological research advances, we may be able to take one more step toward this enigma. Until then, the work of closely verifying possible hypotheses and comparing them with one another, as in this study, must continue. Even if it is difficult to fully understand the sigh of the ancients contained in the Sillan word “Gusunijari,” the very process of tracing it is a meaningful attempt that enriches a page of the diachronic study of Korean.

References

  • Kim Jong-bok (trans. and annot.). (2018). Wanyeok Ilbon Seogi (Complete Translation of the Nihon Shoki). Seoul: Zmanz. (Original: Nihon Shoki, 720).
  • Compilation Committee of the Kokushi Taikei (ed.). (1965). Nihon Shoki. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan. (Original text and annotated edition)
  • Yasuoka Kōichi. (2024). Is “久須尼自利” “gut nae sil”? Contribution to the Qiita website.
  • Kōno Rokurō. (1987). The Bilingualism of the Baekje Language. Chōsen no Kobunka Ronkō (Studies on the Ancient Culture of Korea). Tokyo: Dōseisha, pp. 81-94.
  • Park, I. (2020, Sept. 1). Japan’s Plan to Invade Silla in 830 (blog post). Interesting Story Storage. (Accessed 2023.08.15)
  • Wikisource, Nihon Shoki Volume 19 original text and modern Korean translation (entry on Kawabe no Omi Tehiko). (Accessed 2023.08.15)

This paper was assisted by ChatGPT and Gemini.

EOD

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