Editing Old Japanese (section)

==Sources and dating==
[[File:Genryaku Manyosyu.JPG|thumb|right|alt=Two pages of a manuscript, with the main text in standard characters and annotations in a cursive style|11th-century annotated manuscript of the ''[[Man'yōshū]]'']]
Old Japanese is usually defined as the language of the [[Nara period]] (710–794), when the capital was [[Heijō-kyō]] (now [[Nara, Nara|Nara]]).{{sfn|Shibatani|1990|p=119}}{{sfn|Miyake|2003|p=1}}
That is the period of the earliest connected texts in Japanese, the 112 songs included in the ''[[Kojiki]]'' (712).
The other major literary sources of the period are the 128 songs included in the ''[[Nihon Shoki]]'' (720) and the ''[[Man'yōshū]]'' ({{circa|759}}), a compilation of over 4,500 poems.{{sfn|Miyake|2003|p=17}}{{sfn|Frellesvig|2010|p=24}}
Shorter samples are 25 poems in the ''[[Fudoki]]'' (720) and the 21 poems of the ''[[Bussokuseki-kahi]]'' ({{circa|752}}).
The latter has the virtue of being an original inscription, whereas the oldest surviving manuscripts of all the other texts are the results of centuries of copying, with the attendant risk of scribal errors.{{sfn|Miyake|2003|pp=19–20}}
Prose texts are more limited but are thought to reflect the syntax of Old Japanese more accurately than verse texts do. The most important are the 27 {{tlit|ja|[[Norito]]}} ('liturgies') recorded in the ''[[Engishiki]]'' (compiled in 927) and the 62 {{tlit|ja|Senmyō}} (literally 'announced order', meaning imperial edicts) recorded in the ''[[Shoku Nihongi]]'' (797).{{sfn|Frellesvig|2010|p=24}}{{sfn|Bentley|2001|p=6}}

A limited number of Japanese words, mostly personal names and place names, are recorded phonetically in ancient Chinese texts, such as the "''Wei Zhi''" portion of the ''[[Records of the Three Kingdoms]]'' (3rd century AD), but the transcriptions by Chinese scholars are unreliable.{{sfn|Miyake|2003|pp=5–8}}
The oldest surviving inscriptions from Japan, dating from the 5th or early 6th centuries, include those on the [[Suda Hachiman Shrine Mirror]], the [[Inariyama Sword]], and the [[Eta Funayama Sword]].
Those inscriptions are written in [[Classical Chinese]] but contain several Japanese names that were transcribed phonetically using Chinese characters.{{sfn|Miyake|2003|p=10}}{{sfn|Seeley|1991|pp=16–25}}
Such inscriptions became more common from the [[Suiko period]] (592–628).{{sfn|Miyake|2003|p=12}}
Those fragments are usually considered a form of Old Japanese.{{sfn|Miyake|2003|p=66}}

Of the 10,000 paper records kept at [[Shōsōin]], only two, dating from about 762, are in Old Japanese.{{sfn|Seeley|1991|pp=55–56}}
Over 150,000 wooden tablets ({{tlit|ja|[[mokkan]]}}) dating from the late 7th and early 8th century have been unearthed.
The tablets bear short texts, often in Old Japanese of a more colloquial style than the polished poems and liturgies of the primary corpus.{{sfn|Frellesvig|2010|p=22}}