Distribution of Tonal Marks in the Texts of Chinese Classics Rendered into Japanese

Japanese words written in katakana which correspond to Chinese characteres in the texts of Chinese classics rendered into Japanese language and copied during late Heian, Kamakura and Muromachi Period often have dots around each component so far recognized as denoting both tonal accent and sei-daku distinction. A strong inclination in the distribution of these dots found in the texts in question suggests us the existence of another unknown function assigned to them. In this paper, the author tries to prove that the actual use of the words accoppanying the dots in these texts can mostly be traced back to the Japanese rendering of Chinese classics in the early Heian Period, and that the combination of a specified Japanese word with a specified Chinese character in these cases were initiated by the orthoritative scholars of that period and transmitted to later times. It is evident that the dots in these texts were intended to distinguish such particular words from less important ones