The most famous etymology of baka is probably a Chinese story. Zhao Gao, chancellor of Qin, called a deer “a horse” before the Second Emperor to test the courtiers (“pointing at a deer and calling it a horse”). From this story, the tale goes, the word baka (馬鹿, “horse-deer”) arose. In “Baka-kō” (“On Baka”) in Nihon no Kotoba (1940), Shinmura Izuru begins his examination from this very story.
First, doubt the characters
What Shinmura first checks is the age of the characters 馬鹿. (The English renderings of the quotations below are ToL translations.)
馬鹿といふ文字をあてたのは、元祿時代を遡ること餘り古くは無いやうである
(Assigning the characters 馬鹿 doesn’t seem to go back much before the Genroku era.)
According to Shinmura, the characters 馬鹿 are seen from about the Genroku era (late 17th century). Around the Keichō era, other ad-hoc characters such as 馬嫁 and 破家 had also been used. It was written 莫迦 as well. (This point Shinmura himself later corrects; see below.) So the word baka came first, and various characters were assigned to it afterward.
The Zhao Gao story is an after-the-fact explanation
How, then, is that famous story handled?
今更辯ずるまでもなく、漢學者の故事附けで取るに足らない。
(There’s no need to argue it now; it is a sinologist’s story-fitting, and not worth taking up.)
This sentence is the first conclusion of “Baka-kō.” Characters were assigned first, and a fitting Chinese story was tied on afterward — that is how Shinmura sees it. That the characters came first and the explanation was made afterward can be seen from the fact that the story’s use as an etymology appears only from about Genroku.
Shinmura adds, though, that popular etymologies by ordinary people do not fail to appear in documents entirely: the ad-hoc characters 馬嫁 and 破家 are themselves a kind of popular etymology.
Since when has the word baka existed?
So since when has the word baka been used? Shinmura points to the Taiheiki. In chapter 23 of that Nanbokuchō-period tale, the Mino samurai Toki Yoritō, not knowing it was the retired emperor’s procession, rode at it on horseback, refused orders from the guards to dismount, and behaved violently — an act of disrespect. Among his abusive words is a line abusing people to the effect of “what kind of baka is he who says ‘get down’?” In the commonly circulated printed editions, the characters 馬鹿者 are assigned, Shinmura notes, but in texts such as the Kanda manuscript of the Taiheiki it is written in katakana, as バカ者.
So the word baka itself appears in documents from about the Nanbokuchō period. We have to look for the origin of the word, not of the characters 馬鹿.
Following the Sanskrit theory
Here Shinmura considers the Sanskrit theory as an origin of the word itself: that baka may derive from a Buddhist word. Shinmura lines up several theories.
慕何は梵語はモーハ mohaであつて、翻譯名義卷六に痴と釋してあるのに正に叶ふ。
(慕何 [boka] is the Sanskrit moha, and it exactly fits its being glossed as 痴 [“folly”] in volume 6 of the Hon’yaku Myōgishū.)
Sanskrit moha means “foolishness, ignorance.” In Chinese Buddhist texts it was rendered with the characters 慕何. 慕何 is close in sound to boka and baka, and its meaning is “ignorance.” Shinmura notes this agreement.
Shinmura also touches on another Chinese rendering of Sanskrit, 摩訶羅 (mahallaka), a word translated as both “ignorant” and “old.” On which of the two is closer to Japanese baka, Shinmura’s judgment is careful. He cannot decide between the two theories. There is one theory, though, that he clearly rejects. The theory in the Nihon Gairaigo Jiten that takes baka as Sanskrit baka — “heron” — Shinmura does not adopt.
Finally: “a mere heckler of Sanskrit studies”
Shinmura closes this conclusion like so.
梵語學の彌次馬に過ぎない私の論である
(This is the argument of me, who am no more than a heckler of Sanskrit studies.)
He states plainly that his argument is not that of a Sanskrit specialist but, so to speak, only the opinion of a “heckler.” When building an argument by borrowing knowledge from a field outside your own, to state its limits yourself — here too Shinmura’s careful attitude shows.
Moreover, after publishing this argument, when the library opened he checked and found new facts, and corrected his earlier argument (the “supplement”). The two characters 馬鹿 appear not only in the Keichō–Genna-era movable-type editions of the Taiheiki, but also in the dictionary Unpo Iroha-shū (compiled in Tenbun 17, copied in Genki 2), which uses 馬鹿 alongside the ad-hoc 破家 and 馬嫁 — and with a note reading “it means pointing at a deer and calling it a horse.” Because the characters were older than expected, Shinmura writes that he is correcting his earlier study. Here too Shinmura finds the flaw in his own theory and mends it without fuss.
Summary
| Point | Detail |
|---|---|
| The characters | 馬鹿 is an ad-hoc spelling seen from about Genroku (a supplement later finds older examples) |
| The Zhao Gao story | “A sinologist’s story-fitting, not worth taking up”: an explanation attached afterward to the characters |
| Age of the word | Baka-mono is already in the Taiheiki; the word is older than the characters |
| Sanskrit theory | From 慕何 (moha, “folly”) or 摩訶羅 (mahallaka); undecided between the two |
| Rejected theory | The “Sanskrit baka (heron)” theory is not adopted |
| Attitude | States his standing as “a heckler of Sanskrit studies” and corrects himself after publication |
In a nutshell — Shinmura Izuru dismissed the famous folk etymology of baka as “not worth taking up,” followed the Sanskrit theory, and in the end wrote “I cannot decide.” He rejected what the evidence rejected, and did not decide where it ran out.