From: hiraga@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Yuzuru Hiraga)
Subject: Re: Heian Alphabet
Followup-To: sci.lang.japan
Keywords: IROHA-uta
Organization: Stanford University CSLI
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 15:10:56 GMT

In article <1992Oct7.161159.1@sissa.it> radikkio@sissa.it writes:
>	There are five novels written in the early years of Mishima's life 
>(1940-43). The fourth of these novels, entitled "Yoyo ni nikosan", has 
>something curious. There are 27 chapters and each of them is named with a 
>sign coming from the Heian alphabet (First is "i", second is "ro", then 
>"ha", "ni", "ho", etc.).Is there a particular meaning? Or it is just a 
>strange way to name the chapters of a book?

I'm not sure whether this will be answering your question,
but some notes on IROHA-uta (I think that's what you mean by Heian alphabet).

Perhaps a better word than "alphabet" might be "pangram"
(which I picked from rec.puzzles).  A pangram is a meaningful sequence
(sentence, poem, etc.) that contains all the letters of the alphabet.
In our context, we further add the restriction that each letter
is used only once.

IROHA-uta is one of the oldest, and the most popular of the pangrams.
Its origin may well be in the Heian era (I'm not sure), and
has served as the de facto alphabet for a long time, before
the current AIUEO system replaced it in the education system
(so it's no error to call it an alphabet).
Just like the Western ABC alphabet, it has been used for
enumerating lists or items.  Perhaps that's its use in the Mishima novel
(just like saying chapter 1,2,3.. or chapter A,B,C..), though of course,
he may have had something different in mind.
And as "ABC" may mean elementary or introductory steps
(as in "ABC of math"), so does IROHA.
There are hundreds of other pangrams invented, and some, in a sense,
may be more elegant than IROHA, though none has matched it in popularity.
Although it is not taught in schools, any Japanese person does or is
expected to know it, and is still popularly used in everyday contexts.

The text of IROHA is in 7-5 rhythm, and is said to reflect the spirit
of NEHAN-KYOU (Nirvana-sutra?) that "all existence is nought".
It incorporates 47 letters, 45 in the AIUEO system plus 2 that are
now obsolete (The "n" character in AIUEO is not used).
Below is the text, cut by phrases.  The first line of each phrase
is a direct letter-wise transcription into Roma-ji, the second
its phonetic and modern transcription, and the third is my crude translation
(sounds like the Rosetta stone).  I'm not that confident about the
translation, there certainly would be a huge room for improvement.

I RO HA NI HO HE TO   CHI RI NU RU WO
 Iro wa nioedo,        chirinuru wo,
  The fragrance(color) is reminiscent, but (the flowers) have fallen away,

WA KA YO TA RE SO     TSU NE NA RA MU
 Wagayo da(ta)rezo     tsunenaramu.
  Noone in our world    is ever unchanged(lasting).

U WI* NO O KU YA MA   KE FU KO E TE
 Ui no okuyama         kyou* koete,
  Today, passing over the back mountains of UI*
   
A SA KI YU ME MI SHI  WE* HI MO SE SU
 Asaki yume mishi      yoi* mo sezu.
  Saw a shallow dream though it wasn't much of a distraction(fantasy).

Hmmm.... quite cryptic.
Some notes.
* WI, WE are now obsolete letters with the sound of I, E;
  The JIS code is 0x2470, 0x2471 (hiragana) and 0x2570, 0x2571 (katakana).
* "KE FU" and "WE HI" are old transcriptions of the sounds "kyou" and "yoi"
  (to be more precise, are associated with words of that sound).
* I'm not sure about the meaning of "UI"; the above assumes it to be
  a place name.
* Consonant pairs like t<->d, s<->z are written as the same
  letter in old transcriptions.
* The letter "N" is often appended at the end to complete it as an alphabet.
  It is often the case to append instead the kanji "kyou" (for Kyoto),
  as in IROHA-Karuta's (?English?).

-Yuzuru Hiraga



PS: some English pangrams, taken from FAQ list of rec.puzzles
    (In part 6: ==>English/pangram.s<==).

Sympathizing would fix Quaker objectives. (5 words, 36 letters)
Quick brown fox, jump over the lazy dogs. (8 words, 32 letters)
Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs. (8 words, 32 letters)
Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz. (7 words, 31 letters)
The five boxing wizards jump quickly. (6 words, 31 letters)
How quickly daft jumping zebras vex. (6 words, 30 letters)
Quartz glyph job vex'd cwm finks. (6 words?, 26 letters)
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz. (6 words, 26 letters, Dmitri Borgmann)

Veldt jynx grimps waqf zho buck. (6 words, 26 letters, Michael Jones)
Squdgy fez, blank jimp crwth vox. (6 words, 26 letters, Claude Shannon)
Phlegms fyrd wuz qvint jackbox. (5 words, 26 letters, Dmitri Borgmann)

Dub waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex.  (7 words, 28 letters, Stephen J. Smith)
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan