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Date(s)： 2024/09/13
Time： 15:00~17:00
Venue： Archives 2nd Conference Hall
Host： Prof. Chang Che-chia ( Associate research fellow ,IMH, AS)
Speaker：Prof. Chengzhi (Otemon Gakuin University)
Organizer： History of Knowledge Research Group
Abstract: How should we define the Manchu language (manju gisun) or Manchu writing (manju hergen), and what constitutes the Manchu-Qing language? This is an important question that historians of the Great Qing empire need to consider. The compilation of the Han i araha manju gisun i buleku bithe (Imperially commissioned Mirror of the Manchu language) series of dictionaries coincided with the creation of national language dictionaries by many Eurasian countries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. From perspective of global history, does this history of Manchu lexicography signify that a key characteristic of so-called national languages was that they took a diversity of the topolects and gradually standardized them into unified forms? This report explores the little-known history of a language survey conducted in Qiqihar during the Kangxi period as documented in a memorial to the emperor regarding a survey of Manchu as the national language. This memorial states that on the twenty-third day of the first month of the forty-fifth year of Kangxi (March 7, 1706), Heilongjiang Garrison General Boding went to Qiqihar by imperial decree to survey such languages as Old Manchu (Fe Manju), New Manchu (Ice Manju), Kūyala, Oroqen (Oroncon), and Kiler. After gathering the results of this survey, Heilongjiang Garrison General Boding detailed eighty-five annotated words from Old Manchu, New Manchu, and Kūyala in a Manchu-language memorial dated the seventeenth day of the sixth month of the same year (July 26, 1706). He also recorded sixty-one words of the Oroqen language. If we compare this linguistic information to that of the Han i araha Manju gisun i buleku bithe (1708) and the Han i araha nonggime toktobuha Manju gisun i buleku bithe (Imperially commissioned mirror of the Manchu language, expanded and emended) dictionaries, we find that most New Manchu and Kūyala words were considered to be the “Manchu language” (“Manju gisun”) and included in the Han i araha manju gisun i buleku bithe and the Han i araha nonggime toktobuha manju gisun i buleku bithe with the format “geli … sembi” or “inu … sembi” (“Also called …”). This method of compiling these three different topolectal vocabularies into the “Manchu language” both enriched Manchu vocabulary while on the face of it also erasing the diversity of Manchu topolects. Unearthing the topolectal words of different regions and ethnic groups from Manchu dictionaries provides evidence for the enrichment and refinement of the “Manchu language.”