Hiragana and Indic Scripts

[Dan Lusthaus]

Dear Stella,

Thank you for passing on David's comments, with which I concur.

As for the role of musical notation, this is not something commonly discussed or recognized in the field -- I noticed it years ago but have never published on it -- so it is not surprising that David would be unaware of it. I don't know any online sources for illustrations of the sort of musical notation that I think needs to be taken into account, though splendid examples can be found in Rulan Chao Pian, _Song Dynasty Musical Sources and Their Interpretation_, Harvard-Yenching, Harvard University Press, 1967, esp. the illustrations following p. 42 and passim (see below). Everyone I have ever shown these to is immediately struck by the overlap with kana and wonders if anyone has ever written on it. So far, no one has.

Short of finding a hardcopy of the book, try searching for the book on amazon.com or 
http://tinyurl.com/288o2yd 

do the "search inside the book", and then type "yuann cherng shuang" in the search box, and then select page 38.

Or type "tsyr song" in the search box, and then select p. 37. You'll see what I mean.

best,
Dan
  ----- Original Message ----- 

  Lastly, I do not see any connexion between kana and musical notation, except that kana themselves are used as a kind of solfa notation, and various other kinds of Chinese and Japanese music notation show the influence of Chinese characters: notably the classical notation for the qin (7-stringed zither).


  David


  --
  Stella Sandahl
  ssandahl at sympatico.ca