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Reading Jakdan's Poetry: an Exploration of Literary Manchu

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Reading Jakdan's Poetry: an Exploration of Literary Manchu Reading Jakdan’s Poetry: An Exploration of Literary Manchu Phonology Brian Tawney Submitted to the Committee on Regional Studies—East Asia in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the A.M. degree in Regional Studies—East Asia Harvard University September 27, 2007 Reading Jakdan’s Poetry Table of Contents 1. THE HISTORY OF MANCHU PHONOLOGY 5 TH 2. THE PHONOLOGY OF COURT MANCHU IN THE 18 CENTURY 14 2.1 THE CARDINAL VOWELS 17 2.1.1 THE VOWEL A 22 2.1.2 THE RAISED A 23 2.1.3 THE VOWEL E 24 2.1.4 THE FRONT E 26 2.1.5 THE RAISED E 28 2.1.6 E > O AFTER LABIAL CONSONANTS? 29 2.1.7 E > O IN FINAL SYLLABLES 31 2.1.8 E > BEFORE WORD-FINAL N? 32 2.1.9 THE VOWEL I 34 2.1.10 I > AFTER S 34 2.1.11 THE VOWEL O 35 2.1.12 THE VOWEL U 36 2.1.13 THE VOWEL 36 2.1.14 THE WHOLE PICTURE 39 2.2 CONSONANTS 40 2.2.1 THE CONSONANTS B AND P 40 2.2.2 THE CONSONANT M 41 2.2.3 THE CONSONANT F 41 2.2.4 THE CONSONANT W 42 2.2.5 THE CONSONANTS D AND T 43 2.2.6 THE CONSONANT N 44 2.2.7 THE CONSONANTS S AND 45 2.2.8 THE CONSONANT R 48 2.2.9 THE CONSONANT L 49 2.2.10 THE CONSONANTS J AND C 49 2.2.11 THE CONSONANT Y 52 2.2.12 THE CONSONANTS G AND K 52 2.2.13 THE CONSONANTS NG AND NGG 55 2.2.14 THE CONSONANT H 57 2.2.15 -MBI > -MI, AND SIMILAR CHANGES 57 2.2.16 THE WHOLE PICTURE 59 2.3 DIPHTHONGS AND TRIPHTHONGS 60 2.3.1 ASCENDING DIPHTHONGS 61 2.3.2 DESCENDING DIPHTHONGS 63 2.3.3 SUMMARY OF DIPHTHONGS AND TRIPHTHONGS 64 2.4 PROSODY 67 3. RHYME IN JAKDAN’S POETRY 76 3.1 A-RHYME 77 1 Reading Jakdan’s Poetry 3.2 E-RHYME 77 3.3 I-RHYME 78 3.4 U-RHYME 78 3.5 AI-RHYME 79 3.6 EN-RHYME AND AN-RHYME 79 3.7 ING-RHYME 82 3.8 IO-RHYME 82 3.9 DISCUSSION 83 4. METER IN JAKDAN’S POETRY 85 4.1 FUJURUN: POEMS OF SYMMETRICAL COUPLETS 85 4.2 SEVEN-SYLLABLE LINES 89 4.3 SYLLABLES AND DIPHTHONGS 90 4.4 PROHIBITION ON WORD-FINAL -B 95 4.5 PROSODY IN THE SEVEN SYLLABLE POEMS 97 4.6 PROSODY IN THE FUJURUN 101 4.7 DISCUSSION 102 5. CONCLUSIONS 102 BIBLIOGRAPHY 105 APPENDIX A: TRANSLITERATIONS OF THE YM 112 POEM 1: BALLAD IN A DRUNKEN RAMBLE 112 POEM 2: A DREAM WHEN WALKING IN MY SLEEP 117 POEM 3: THE DREAM OF HANDAN 121 POEM 4: ON READING THE BOOK HUKOU YUSHENG 124 POEM 5: A BALLAD ON LIN XIANGRU’S RETURNING THE JADE INTACT TO THE ZHAO COUNTRY 128 POEM 6: VERSES ON TAOHUA YUAN 130 POEM 7: A BALLAD FOR BANISHING BOREDOM IN TIMES OF RAIN 132 POEM 8: PONDERING THE PAST OF LOUSANG VILLAGE 134 ESSAY 9: A SPEECH ON THE LOVE OF CHRYSANTHEMUMS 137 POEM 10: ON STABBING YIZHIHU 139 POEM 11: A RAMBLING BALLAD ON WEALTH 142 POEM 12: IN PRAISE OF SNOW 145 POEM 13: AN ODE TO THE HUT OF PEACE AND JOY 146 POEM 14: VERSES ON CHAISANG 148 POEM 15: LYRICS IN PRAISE OF TOBACCO 150 POEM 16: A SONG OF PLUM FLOWERS 152 POEM 17: LYRICS ON LOTUS 154 POEM 18: ODE TO THE FISHING PIER 155 POEM 19: ON NARCISSUS 156 POEM 20: IN PRAISE OF FIRE 157 POEM 21: A TEXT OF OFFERING TO THE BEARD GOD 158 2 Reading Jakdan’s Poetry APPENDIX B: GISUN I KOOLI 160 APPENDIX C: A MIXED-LANGUAGE DIDACTIC POEM 162 3 Reading Jakdan’s Poetry The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct, as precisely as possible, the phonological aspects of the language of a set of unique poems, composed in the Manchu language by a translator named Jakdan, at some time early in the 19th century. Drawing on both Asian and European sources contemporary to the poet, I will create an initial outline of Manchu phonology, including the inventory of phonemes, major allophonic variations, diphthongs, triphthongs, syllable stress, and syllable quantity. I will then use meter and rhyme in Jakdan’s poetry to prove and refine my description of Manchu pronunciation. Through reconstructing the phonology of an idiolect—the language of an individual—I hope to add to our understanding of the phonology of Literary Manchu overall, including the ways in which it has changed over time, and the relationships between the language of the Manchu court and the surviving spoken Manchu dialects. I will begin by reviewing the history of the study of Manchu phonology, and outlining the relationships between important scholars of the Manchu language and the spoken language of the court. I will argue that each scholar should be considered an expert on a particular phase or dialect of the language, but that a single scholar’s statements can’t be expected to hold for all dialects and all phases of the language. I will choose a set of sources that I consider to be closest to the language of Jakdan’s poetry, and then, through a detailed analysis of rhyme, meter, and alliteration, refine my description of the pronunciation of Jakdan’s poetry, and finally discuss the linguistic implications of my conclusions. 4 Reading Jakdan’s Poetry 1. The History of Manchu Phonology Literary Manchu phonology is a topic on which much has been written, though for many purposes, and from many points of view. The earliest accounts of Manchu phonology, written by Jesuit missionaries as well as Chinese, Korean and Manchu authors, focused on the language of the court in Beijing. These accounts were driven by the essential need to speak the language of official interaction correctly, a requirement that was especially acute for those who had audiences with the emperor, or other high Manchu officials. Once Manchu ceased to be used by Europeans as a spoken language at the court, the next generation of European scholars learned Manchu as a primarily literary language through Chinese sources, which gave their descriptions of Manchu pronunciation a distinctive Chinese character. Modern scholarship has tended to focus on the surviving dialects of spoken Manchu, which, while very valuable, are both geographically and historically distant from the language of the court in the 17th and 18th centuries. Simultaneous with this, modern scholars of Literary Manchu preserve several academic traditions of pronunciation, traditions that are informed by elements found throughout the long history of Manchu scholarship. In this paper, I will treat the early Jesuit missionaries as describing the language of everyday transactions in the court in Beijing. The earliest European source upon which I draw is a treatise titled Elementa Linguæ Tartaricæ, now shown to have been composed by Ferdinand Verbiest, though earlier attributed to Jean-François Gerbillon.1 1 The identification of the Elementa with Verbiest was made both by Pelliot (1922:367- 386) and Jaegher (1925:64-66). Verbiest (1623-1688), together with Joachim Bouvet (1656-1730), Jean-François Gerbillon (1654-1707), and Thoma Pereira (1645-1708), were advisors to the Kangxi emperor on a variety of mathematical and scientific subjects. 5 Reading Jakdan’s Poetry Verbiest, in addition to tutoring the Kangxi emperor on a number of scientific subjects, and acting as a translator for a Russian legation, is thought to have begun a translation of Euclid into Manchu from Chinese.2 Among the Jesuits who followed Verbiest was Dominique Parrenin, who was sent to China in 1697, and was said to be fluent in both Chinese and Manchu. Parrenin’s knowledge of the language was sufficient for him to compose a handbook on anatomy in the Manchu language from European sources,3 but the only phonological item that survives from him is an anecdote related by his biographer, Jean-Baptiste du Halde. A third great Jesuit scholar was Jean Joseph-Marie Amyot (or Amiot), who was sent to China in 1750 and died in Beijing in 1794. Amyot published a French translation of a Manchu-Chinese dictionary (with the assistance of Louis Langlès) in 1789, in which he gives the pronunciations of words as they were spoken at court.4 I treat anything that Louis Langlès has to say about the Manchu language as coming from Amyot, his primary informant, except in certain cases where it is clear that Langlès has imposed his own interpretation on the information he received from Amyot, or else when he cites another informant. According to Bouvet, they instructed the emperor “sometimes in the Chinese, sometimes in the Tartarian language” (Bouvet 1699:52). 2 Englefreit 1998:344. 3 One manuscript copy of this is in the Bibliothèque Nationale. C.f. Catalogue du Fonds Mandchou (Puyraimond 1979), item no. 289. 4 Amyot 1789. The following note is at the beginning of the dictionary, before the title page. “...les mots chinois et mantchoux y sont écrits comme on les prononce à la cour.... Il contient tous les mots de la langue tartare-mantchou jusqu’à la douzieme année (du regne) de Kien-long.” 6 Reading Jakdan’s Poetry These Jesuit scholars represent over a century of interaction with the imperial court in the Manchu language, from a time when most Manchus would have spoken Manchu as their first (and sometimes only) language, to a time when first-language acquisition of Manchu in court circles became a rarity.
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