千隱

Old Korean

Numeral

千隱 (*CUMUn)

1. thousand
   • c. 760, 希明 (Huimyeong), “禱千手觀音歌 (Docheonsugwaneum-ga)”, in 三國遺事 (Samguk Yusa) [Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms]:

     千隱手叱千隱目

     *CUMUn SWON-s CUMUn NWUN

     A thousand hands’ thousand eyes

Reconstruction notes

In Old Korean orthography, native terms with clear Chinese equivalents are usually written with an initial Chinese character (logogram) glossing the meaning of the word, followed by one or more Chinese characters (phonograms) that transcribe the final syllable or coda consonant of the term. In the case of 千隱, the first character shows that this is the native Old Korean word for “thousand”, and the subsequent character(s) show(s) that the coda consonant of this word is *-n. Because the semantics and the final phoneme(s) match, the word is conventionally reconstructed as *CUMUn, the ancestor of Middle Korean 즈믄 (Yale: cùmún). Note that the reconstruction was not necessarily the actual pronunciation. Rather, it should simply be considered as a method of representing an Old Korean form phonetically by using its Middle Korean reflex.

According to scholarly convention, the elements of the reconstruction which are not directly represented by phonograms are given in capital letters. This allows readers to identify what part of the reconstruction is attested and what part is applied retroactively from the Middle Korean reflex.

Descendants

• Middle Korean: 즈믄 (cùmún)

References

• 박지용 外 (Park Ji-yong et al.) (2012) 향가 해독 자료집 [hyangga haedok jaryojip, A Sourcebook of Hyangga Interpretations], Seoul National University, page 90
• 남풍현 (Nam Pung-hyun) (2017) “도천수관음가의 새로운 해독 [docheonsugwaneumgaui saeroun haedok, A new reading of the Docheonsugwaneum-ga]”, in Gugyeol Yeon'gu, volume 45, pages 7–29