Kokinshu #165

[lnhammer]

Written on seeing dewdrops on a lotus.

    These lotus leaves
have spirits untainted by
    mud's impurity,
so why do they deceive with
dewdrops that look like gems?

—19 October, 15 November 11

Original by Henjô. This continues the Buddhist sentiments of the previous, here by alluding to a passage from the Lotus Sutra to the effect that the dharma is unaffected by the world the way a lotus blossom rises clean from muddy water. I've no idea what the significance is of swapping leaves for petals. Nigori can be both "muddy water" and by metaphoric extension "impurity"; absent a liquid encompassing the two senses in English, doubling them up seemed the best compromise, given both are needed as part of the poem's light-hearted wit. Mote confused me mightily, because it looks like a command ("possess!") but apparently is understood as a contraction to fit the meter of mochite ("possesses, and" -- modern motte).


hachisuba no
nigori ni shimanu
kokoro mote
nani ka wa tsuya o
tama to azamuku

---L.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

Interesting especially re: "nigori," which I've met only as a label for a sake type.

[lnhammer]

Cloudy unrefined and so "impure" sake, yes. The word is also used for the "voicing" of kana, as in が (ga) instead of か (ka) -- as another sort of impurity, I assume. The muddiness and impurity senses are still the primary ones in modern Japanese.

---L.

[(Anonymous)]

I would say that it's contracted not to fit the meter so much as because that's how this もて was written/pronounced in this context... At the time of the KKS, "mote" was basically a kanbun-only expression (IIRC "kokoro mote" is one of the very few combinations that you see in Japanese-Japanese writing), and so it had been subject to unique kanbun stressors for linguistic change. There were also もって and もちて, but I want to say that もて was the most common. Also makes total sense that we would see something kanbunic in a Buddhist-influenced poem. --Matt

[lnhammer]

That would explain things. In the interests of simplification, I've been largely ignoring kanbun for the nonce. Thanks.

---L.