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I always found it funny how the counter for people, `人`, has the special cases
`[一人]{ひとり}`, `[二人]{ふたり}`, but then continues `[三人]{さんにん}`, `[四人]{よにん}`, ...

However, this summer I came across a neat bit of info. If you go to bunraku
plays or similar performances, like Doh theatre performances, they will say
`[四人]{よったり}` instead. I heard this phrase also survives in some regional
dialects in mordern Japanese, although I don't know which ones. This has lead
me to conjecture that in the past, people were counted as the following, or a
variation thereof.

`[一人]{ひとり}、[二人]{ふたり}、[三人]{みったり}、[四人]{よったり}、[五人]{いったり}、[六人]{むったり}、[七人]{ななたり}、[八人]{やったり}、・・・`

Does anyone know whether there is any evidence for this in old Japanese?
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2014-10-28T01:31:29.947
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2014-10-29T14:18:42.923
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question
etymology classical-japanese
Old way of counting people?
Please note that the nature of writing using Chinese script often makes it
impossible to know how the word was originally pronounced. Generally the only
real way of knowing is by having glosses written in kana. In Old Japanese,
neither hiragana nor katakana were yet invented, though man'yoogana does
indicate the pronunciation. That said, I can only find `hitori` and `futari`
in Old Japanese, though the corpus is relatively small compared to the other
periods.

If you expand the search a few centuries, citations for most of the other
terms are easier to come by. Note that there are multiple manuscripts for the
same text, some containing kana readings that other manuscripts do not. That
is why the same text appears multiple times below with different dates. I gave
the manuscript name when relevant.

  * mitari: 金光明最勝王経 (西大寺 c. 830), 観弥鞘上生経 (c. 850), 大唐西域記 (c. 950)
  * yotari: 金光明最勝王経 (石山寺旧蔵 c. 1050), 金剛頂瑜枷中略出念誦経 (c. 1065)
  * itori: 東大寺諷誦文 (c. 830), 観弥鞘上生経 (c. 850)
  * mutari: 法華論義草 (c. 950)
  * yatari: 日本書紀 (兼永本 c. 1200)

I variously searched for two days through my resources but did not immediately
come up with anything for `7人` or `9人`. A lack of evidence, though, is not
evidence in itself. I figure I have spent enough time on this already though,
so I am calling it quits here.
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2014-10-29T14:18:42.923
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2014-10-29T14:18:42.923
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answer