Chapter 170A Glossed Ritual Prayer Opening
An invocation and worship statement from Motozō Nabesawa’s lower Saru prayer, with person, applicatives, and the formal ending analyzed.
170.1 An address to the fire deity
Endō quotes an ancestral memorial prayer by Motozō Nabesawa, also named Motoanrek, from the lower Saru area. Its addressee is the fire deity, invoked as the grandmother who rules the land. The original publication is the Monbetsu-chō Kyōdoshi Kenkyūkai collection of 1966, pages 106–107; the excerpt here follows Endō's quotation Endō (2022: §2.3, example 13). Monbetsu in this attribution is the town now called Hidaka.
The opening combines an invocation with a statement of worship using liquor and prayer sticks. Slashes in the source tier mark printed lines, with the wrapped compound verb joined as one word. The remaining tiers supply segmentation, grammatical glosses, and an English translation.
170.2 The opening passage
mosir kor huci! / tap-an tonoto / inaw tura-no / ku-e-ko-pase-onkami siri / ne hi tap-an na
‘Grandmother who rules the land! With this liquor and these prayer sticks, I respectfully worship you. This is my prayer.’
Endō 2022: §2.3; Saru, Opening of example 13; Monbetsu-chō Kyōdoshi Kenkyūkai 1966:106–107
Person marking is shown with = in the segmented tier. The tap-an analysis follows Endō. The translation renders the formal ending idiomatically.
170.3 Address and the worship predicate
Mosir kor modifies huci: the deity is addressed through a relationship to the land. The worship predicate begins with first-person singular ku=. Endō analyzes e- as instrumental and ko- as directed toward the addressee; pase contributes the respectful sense of weight or importance Endō (2022: §2.3, example 13).
The derived predicate differs from bare onkami, which Tamura lists as intransitive Tamura (1996: s.v. onkami). The compound has a transitive analysis in Endō’s gloss, with the worshipper marked as its A argument. For the relevant derivations, see Chapter 153 (Poetic and Elevated Language).
170.4 The formal ending
Endō's analysis identifies siri as an evidential expression, followed by copular ne and nominalizing hi. The final tap-an na completes the formal statement Endō (2022: §2.3, example 13). Tamura separately lists adnominal tapan and a predicate used after nominalized expressions in respectful or formal speech Tamura (1996: s.v. tapan).
This is one connected prayer opening. Other prayers differ in person choice, epithets, and endings, while incantations form a separate ritual genre. Those distinctions are discussed in Chapter 154 (Respectful, Ritual, and Avoidance Registers).