皆理

Old Korean

Verb

皆理 (*mwotoli- or *mwotori- or unknown)

1. (hapax) The meaning of this term is uncertain. The word appears only once, in the first line of the seventh-century poem Mojukjirang-ga, along with the noun phrase "spring which has gone by". While the first two lines of this poem are straightforwardly interpreted with the exception of this verb, this context is insufficient to determine the exact meaning of the word, especially given the apparent lack of Middle Korean descendants. Due to a lack of case-marking suffixes on the noun phrase, it is not even clear if "spring which has gone by" is the subject or object of the verb. Hypotheses include:
   1. "To think upon", "to reflect upon", "to send away", "to grieve for", etc., mostly based on context. The early parts of the poem (cited below) are about the sadness of the passage of time, and the departed spring is probably a metaphor for lost youth. Most Korean scholars have taken the verb to be transitive.
   2. "To come back", Vovin's suggestion partly motivated by the Japanese and taking the verb to be intransitive. If so, the context would be of an ironic opposition between the returning spring and the speaker's predicament.
   • c. 690, 得烏 (Deugo), “慕竹旨郞歌 (Mojukjirang-ga)”, in 三國遺事 (Samguk Yusa):

     去隱春皆理米 / 毛冬居叱沙哭屋尸以憂音 / 阿冬音乃叱好支賜烏隱 / 皃史年數就音墮支行齊

     *KAn PWOM mwotolimay / mwotol Issa WULwolq-LWO SILUm / atolum nashwotisiwon / CUs-i HOY-S-SWU CWOCHum TIti NYEcye

     The spring which has gone by, mwotoli / And [I] live miserably, by weeping and grief / His visage, which [perhaps "made manifest"?] the atolum / Is following the count of years, all crumbling away

     (The transliteration is from Nam 2019 but is heavily hypothetical.)

Reconstruction notes

The second character is a well-established Old Korean phonogram for both /li/ and /ri/.

The first character also appears to be phonogramic, but its value is disputed. Both Alexander Vovin and Nam Pung-hyeon have recently reconstructed *mwotoLi- on the strength of the Middle Korean hun reading 모ᄃᆞᆫ (mwoton, “all, every”) for the corresponding Chinese character 皆 (jiē, “all, every”), taking the character to be a semantically adapted phonogram. Vovin also points to Japanese 戻る (modoru, “to return”) as a potential loan from Korean.

References

• 박지용 外 (Park Ji-yong et al.) (2012) 향가 해독 자료집, Seoul National University, page 291
• Nam Pung-hyeon (2019). "Mojukjirangga-ui saeroun haedok" 慕竹旨郞歌의 새로운 해독 ["A new reading of the Mojukjirangga"]. Gugyeol Hakhoe Haksul Daehoe (conference). Yongin, South Korea. pp. 1–8.
• Alexander Vovin (2020) “Old Korean and Proto-Korean *r and *l Revisited”, in International Journal of Eurasian Linguistics‎^[1], volume 2, pages 94—107