HOW TO READ THE WORD '初発' IN THE KOJIKI ―BY MEANS OF BUDDHIST SCRIPTURES WITH AID-MARKS, 'OKOTOTEN' IN JAPANESE―

Of Chinese compound-words made up of two characters, some consist of characters which are synonymous with each other. Studying how such words were read by our ancestors in the Heian era, I have come to understand that they were read as simple words, not as compound ones. I think that "初発" ,the first word with which the Kojiki begins, should be read as a simple word in Japanese, though it is, in form, a compound word, and its implication is "beginning"