Vernacular Terms in Sinitic Texts: Multilingualism in Eighth-century Japanese Documents

The paper proposes the analysis of manuscript Japanese documents in Sinitic (on wooden tablets or on paper) in which specialised vernacular Japanese terms are employed. These terms are used regardless of the availability of equivalent Sinitic terms, their referents are not culturally specific and, therefore, their usage may not be justified on the basis of cultural particularity. The paper explores the factors that motivate such departures from established norms and their implications for the communicative efficacy of the documents in question, and aims to elucidate the rationale behind the compiling of such multilingual texts. Additionally, the study touches tangentially upon the process of sharing and learning such terminologies among different actors of the eighth-century state.