神は偉大 kami wa idai God is Great
This is a philological study of the Japanese sentence 神は偉大 (kami wa idai), God is great. It spans the record from the Meiji adjective idai's first use in prose in 1885 and the Christian sentence Uchimura Kanzō wrote of Jehovah in 1914, through Yanagi Sōetsu's answer five years later and a letter of Lafcadio Hearn's translated in 1927, to the thirty-five Japanese Wikipedia articles that carry the completed sentence today, and it examines why this correct translation of an English sentence completes, in Japanese, to the Islamic call to prayer rather than to the Bible.
Abstract
神は偉大, kami wa idai, is a Meiji-Japanese rendering of the English sentence God is great, built on 偉大, an adjective first attested in prose in 1885. Uchimura Kanzō used it of the Christian God in 1914, and Yanagi Sōetsu denied it of God five years later; the Japanese Bible has never used it, saying instead the LORD is great with the plainer word 大 since 1887. The completed form of the sentence, 神は偉大なり, is instead the fixed Japanese rendering of the Islamic takbīr, Allāhu akbar, carried into Japanese by a 1927 translation of a letter of Lafcadio Hearn's and standing today in thirty-five Japanese Wikipedia articles. This is a correct translation of the English sentence into Japanese, and the sentence it produces belongs, completed, to the other faith's confession.
Overview
The sense. A title's: the sentence with its copula left off. One sense, God is great, in the sense of mighty, not large. The four characters as brushed are a headline: every Japanese sentence that says this closes with a copula, and the bare form is how a title or a slogan is written, and a Japanese reader completes it without effort. The Chinese word is older and wider: a Taiwanese dictionary's second sense is huge, with Xuanzang's elephants in the seventh century, so in Chinese the four characters could be read God is big [1]; in Japanese they cannot. The sentence has two homes in Japanese as it has in English: completed, 神は偉大なり is the Japanese for Allāhu akbar [2], and the Japanese Bible says the LORD is great with a different word [3].
The words. Four graphs: kami, god; は, the topic particle; 偉, outstanding; 大, great. Idai is a Meiji word [4]. Kami is god and God, the kami of a shrine and the Christian deity in one word, which is every Japanese Christian sentence's ambiguity and not this one's.
The text in English. In English God is great is the Psalmist's Great is the LORD, and a child's grace, and the usual rendering of the Arabic takbīr, which Wikipedia's page for the phrase lists first [5]. Hepburn and Brinkley give nothing [6]: the word postdates Hepburn's first two dictionaries, and whether the later ones carry it is not settled.
The historical record
1872, and 1885. The word itself. The dictionary dates it to 1872 and gives Tsubouchi Shōyō's 1885 essay on the novel as its first use in prose, is its merit not great? [4]
1887, and 1917, and 1955. The Japanese Bible. Japanese carries the same double life, and its Bible has always kept to the plain word: the Meiji Psalms of 1887 say the LORD is great with 大 [3], the 1955 Psalms say the Lord is a great God with the same adjective in modern dress [7], and the 1917 New Testament never uses idai at all.
1914. Uchimura Kanzō, 感想十年, under the heading The Great God. The sentence with idai is Uchimura Kanzō's, under the heading The Great God: the God we worship, Jehovah, is a great God; he is not the god of mere pity the world speaks of… he is surely a stern father [8].
1919. Yanagi Sōetsu, 宗教とその真理. Yanagi Sōetsu answered him five years later: the true God is not great; he must be beyond even the comparison of great and small. When we say God is great we are already far from God's meaning [9].
1922. Okakura's satire, Japanesed. Okakura's satire came home in 1922: Our god is great, and money is his Prophet, the Book of Tea's line on the modern West, Japanesed as 神は偉大である。然し金がその豫言者である [10].
1914. A church history, the takbīr's plain word. The takbīr entered Japanese with the plain word first, in a church history of 1914: the one phrase 'Allāhu akbar' (God is great) is the life of the religion [11].
1927. A letter of Lafcadio Hearn's, translated. The takbīr took idai by 1927, when a letter of Lafcadio Hearn's was translated for his collected works: God is great! God is great! I witness that there is no god but God!, the call to prayer as Bilāl sang it [12].
1943. A study of Indian Islam. A 1943 study of Indian Islam defines the takbīr as the recitation of the repeated prayer-phrase 神は偉大なり [13].
Today. That is the form the language kept: thirty-five Japanese Wikipedia articles carry 神は偉大なり today, and every one of them is the takbīr, on the flags of Iraq and Afghanistan, in the Saudi anthem, in the call to prayer [2]. The design is a translation of the English sentence, and the Japanese it produces is grammatical, right in its adjective, and headline-shaped for want of a copula. The dictionary sense is great by excellence, outstanding, and the page's gloss, mighty or magnificent, not large, is exactly that [4]. The register a Christian buyer brings is the Psalm's and the grace's; the register a Japanese reader brings, once the sentence is completed in the mind, is the takbīr's, because that is where the fixed phrase lives. A Japanese Christian would more likely write God is a great one or quote the Psalm; this phrase is what a translator writes for God is great when nothing says which great.
A reading
This sentence translates an English one correctly and lands in the other house. The adjective is honest: idai is great in the sense of mighty, and it cannot mean large, which the Chinese word can. The grammar is a title's, and a Japanese reader finishes it without thinking. But the finished sentence has a fixed home in Japanese, and it is not the Psalm. The Bible in Japanese has said the LORD is great with the plain word since 1887, because idai was too new and too secular for the Meiji translators, and their successors kept the choice. The sentence 神は偉大なり belongs to the takbīr, from Hearn's Bilāl in 1927 through a wartime study of Indian Islam to the thirty-five encyclopedia articles that carry it now; a Japanese reader who hears the sentence completed hears Allāhu akbar. The English has the same double life, and the English encyclopedia sends God is Great to the takbīr first too.
References
- moedict (Taiwan Ministry of Education dictionary), 「偉大」, second sense. https://www.moedict.tw/raw/偉大
- 「タクビール」, at Japanese Wikipedia, and its full-text search on 神は偉大なり (35 articles). https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/タクビール · https://ja.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=%22神は偉大なり%22&ns0=1&fulltext=1
- 明治元訳 旧約, 旧新約聖書 引照附, 1937 printing, Psalm 48:1 scan 509, Psalm 95:3 scan 533. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1030419/1/509 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1030419/1/533
- 「偉大」, 精選版日本国語大辞典・デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/偉大
- "God is great", disambiguation, at English Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_is_great
- James Curtis Hepburn, A Japanese and English Dictionary, 1867, 1872, and 4th ed. 1888; Francis Brinkley et al., An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary, Sanseido, Tokyo, 1896.
- 口語訳, Psalms 48:1 and 145:3, at wordproject.org. https://www.wordproject.org/bibles/jp/19/48.htm · https://www.wordproject.org/bibles/jp/19/145.htm
- 内村鑑三, 感想十年, 1914, pp. 150–151, scan 80. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/943876/1/80
- 柳宗悦, 宗教とその真理, 1919, p. 228, scan 128. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/944005/1/128
- 天心先生欧文著書抄訳 (日本美術院訳), 1922, p. 97, scan 58; Okakura Kakuzō, The Book of Tea, 1906, chapter VI, Flowers. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/970353/1/58
- 柏井園, 基督教史, 1914, p. 310, scan 165. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/943496/1/165
- 小泉八雲全集 第9巻, 第一書房, 1927, pp. 176–177, scan 92. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1188369/1/92
- 小川亮作, 印度の回教徒, 1943, p. 260, scan 143. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1040057/1/143