Ellis Amdur

Walker - I didn't say there wasn't a consistency of technical content. Simply that the mokuroku, in it's current form, was likely not extant at the time.
One interesting idea that I don't think anyone's done. When I started aikido, I was told it had 1000 or 2000 techniques. Which perhaps, from one calculation, might be true, but if we break it down, you end up with about 12-14 techniques, done from a lot of attacks and variations.
If one broke down Daito-ryu the same way - as BIG techniques, not small variations or with different leads in kata, albeit with one core waza, how many actual techniques would you have? The reason I think of this is in Tomei no Chikara, we read that Sagawa threw someone in a public bath with shihonage, he comments on Kimura's difficulty with kotegaeshi. And an acquaitance of mine who watched a class described an entire class of kaitennage. And aiki-age, from an external viewpoint, is aikido's kokyu-ho.
If I'm correct, it may be that the proper name for the mokuroku should be "Variations on a Theme by <Takeda/Someone> - a relatively small body of core waza.
Best
Ellis Amdur