Wamyōruijushō gyūba no yamai bu ni kansuru ikkōsatsu. Wakun tari o chūshin ni

In this paper, I focus on eight lemmas related to equine and bovine maladies collected in the section “Bovines and Horses” of the Wamyōruijushō (Categorized Notes on Japanese Words, 934 ca.), the encyclopedic dictionary compiled by Minamoto no Shitagō (911–983), where terms are arranged according to semantic categories, with notes on sources, Chinese glosses, and notations in man’yōgana phonograms of kun readings. The eight lemmas include equivalent terms in Vernacular Japanese given in phonograms. I show how these terms, not occurring in canonical literature, are attested in some practical texts of the 8th century, namely bureaucratic registers found among the Shōsōin documents. These Vernacular terms belong to the linguistic domain of the low-ranking officials of the “State grounded in codes” (ritsuryō kokka).