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Harvard-Yenching Institute A Profile of The Manchu Language in Ch'ing History Author(s): Pamela Kyle Crossley and Evelyn S. Rawski Source: Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 53, No. 1 (Jun., 1993), pp. 63-102 Published by: Harvard-Yenching Institute Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2719468 . Accessed: 19/05/2011 12:55 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=hyi. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Harvard-Yenching Institute is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. http://www.jstor.org A Profile of the Manchu Language in Ch'ing History PAMELA KYLE CROSSLEY, DartmouthCollege EVELYN S. RAWSKI, Universityof Pittsburgh \/J ANCHU was the imperial language of the Ch'ing dynasty. lVI It was the fundamental medium of communications within the imperial family, and within the court it was used for worship, ideological expression, address to the bannermen and nobility, and confidential political and military communications. From the eigh- teenth century on, Manchu also became a cultural emblem, a marker of Manchu identity and status, and an artifact of the univer- salism of the Ch'ien-lung emperor. Early Ch'ing policy required that selected civilians as well as bannermen and nobles acquire literacy in Manchu. This state interest in generalizing the function of Manchu had an impact on eighteenth-century scholarship, par- ticularly as it affected and was affected by the "Four Treasuries" (ssu-k'uch 'uan-shu) project. Ultimately the tradition of literati train- ing in Manchu produced a private field of Manchu-oriented scholar- ship.' ' The authors wish to thank Eugene Wu, Tim Connor, Sidney Tai, and the staff of the Harvard-Yenching Library; Tony Marr, Martin Heijdra, and the staff of the Gest Oriental Library, Princeton University; Monique Cohen and the staff of the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; James Cheng, of the Han Yii-shan Collection, University of California, Los Angeles; Chuang Chi-fa and the late Chiang Fu-ts'ung, of the National Palace Archives (Ku-kung po- wu-kuan), Taipei; R. Po-chia Hsia for information on the archives of the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbuttel. For technical suggestions we are indebted to Gertraude Roth 63 64 PAMELA CROSSLEY AND EVELYN RAWSKI Both as a political instrument and as a natural language, Manchu had a variety of roles to play in Ch'ing life. It also plays a variety of roles in the extant documentation available to students of Ch'ing history. Nineteenth-century Western scholars emphasized the signi- ficance of Manchu in the Ch'ing order, although after the fall of the dynasty some Ch'ing specialists questioned the necessity of ac- quiring literacy in the language.2 In recent years access to Manchu materials has increased dramatically, and a reassessment of the im- portance of Manchu for Ch'ing research is in order. In this essay we review the functions of Manchu under the Ch'ing dynasty and how those functions are reflected in known extant documentation. We do not intend to repeat the historiographical and bibliographical work of generations of scholars. For such information we refer readers to essays on Manchu documents,3 and to published Li, Cheryl Boettcher, and Robin Kornman. Thomas G. Rawski has provided computer assistance, and Hyong-muk Lee has aided in editorial tasks. We are particularly grateful to Gertraude Roth Li and Susan Naquin for their trenchant critiques of an earlier form of this article. Because of space constraints, we include Chinese characters only for terms and titles that would not be easily identified by HJAS readers. Where phrases or titles are cited in both Manchu and Chinese, Manchu precedes. We generally adhere to the M6llendorf system. However, we have adopted practices suggested by Cheryl Boettcher, who was kind enough to show us a draft of her "Standard Romanization of Manchu: A Recommendation," and we hope that these modifications will aid in consistent representation of etymology and case. Manchus and Mongols conventionally did not use a clan or lineage (mukzun)name during the dynasty, but because lineage names are significant to the historian, we have placed them in brackets. 2 For well over a century the necessity of studying Manchu for purposes of research on the Ch'ing period has been the subject of occasional hortatory pronouncements. For glimpses of the debate see Thomas Taylor Meadows's introduction to Translationsfrom theManchu with the OriginalTexts (Canton: S. Wells Williams, 1849); A. V. Grebenscikov, Man'Jzury:ichjazyki pis'mennost'(Vladivostok, 1912); Erich Hauer, "Why the Sinologue Should Study Man- chu," Journal of the North China Branchof the Royal Asiatic Society61 (1930): 156-64; Erich Haenisch's introduction to his Mandschu-Grammatikmit Lesestiickenund 23 Texttafeln(Leipzig: VEB Verlag Enzyklopadie, 1961); Beatrice S. Bartlett, "Books of Revelations: The Impor- tance of the Manchu Language Archival Record Books for Research on Ch'ing History," Late ImperialChina 6.2 (1986): 25-36; Hukjintai's address to the Fifth East Asian Altaistic Conference, "Manju bithe kemuni oyonggo" (now published in the Proceedings[Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 1980]); and the passages from the work of Joseph F. Fletcher, Jr., quoted at the end of this essay. 3 A body of foundation literature, though now out of date, still contains important com- mentary and deserves acknowledgment. See particularly, Paul Georg von Mollendorf, "Essay on Manchu Literature," Journalof theNorth China Branch of theRoyal Asiatic Society 24 MANCHU SOURCES FOR CH'ING HISTORY 65 catalogues of important holdings throughout the world.4 We hope to provide a useful guide to opportunities now available for research on Chinese history and culture through the Manchu language. THE ROLE OF MANCHU IN CH'ING POLITICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE HISTORY Manchu has a long and complex history as a vernacular (1889-1890): 1-45; Berthold Laufer, "Skizze der Manjurischen Literatur," KeletiSzemle 8 (1908): 1-53, reprinted in Hartmut Walravens, ed., KleinereSchriften von BertholdLaufer (Wiesbaden- Franz Steiner, 1976); and Walter Fuchs, Beitragezur MandjurischenBibliographie und Literatur(Mitteilungen der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Natur- und Volkerkunde Osta- siens, 1936). For more current work see Louis Ligeti, "A propos de l'ecriture manchoue," AOASH 2 (1952): 235-98; Denis Sinor, Introductionto ManchuStudies, American Council of Learned Societies, Research and Studies in Uralic and Altaic Languages, Project no. 104 (Micro photo, 1963), Joseph F. Fletcher, Jr., "Manchu Sources," in Donald D. Leslie, Colin Mackerras and Wang Gungwu, eds., Essays on the Sourcesfor ChineseHistory (Canberra: Australian National University, 1973), pp. 141-46; Cheryl M. Boettcher, "In Search of Man- chu Bibliography" (C.A.S. thesis, University of Illinois, 1989). 4 See for example the new catalogue of the Manchu collections in the People's Republic of China compiled by Huang Jun-hua ! et al., Ch'ian-kuoMan-wen tzu-liao lien-ho mu-lu (Peking: Shu-mu ch'u-pan-she, 1992). Also suggestive is the catalogue of Manchu materials in the 1930s in the National Palace Museum archives: Li Te-ch'i 4:,)@, comp., Kuo-li Pei- p 'ing t 'u-shu-kuanku-kung po-wu-yuan t 'u-shu-kuanMan-wen shu-chi lien-ho mu-lu (Peiping: Ku- kung po-wu-yiian, 1933); with its aid some materials may be traced to present archives. On other collections see Walter Simon and Howard G. H. Nelson, comp., ManchuBooks in Lon- don:A UnionCatalogue (London: British Museum, 1977); Nicholas Poppe, Leon Hurwitz, and Hidehiro Okada, Catalogueof theManchu-Mongol Section of the Toyo Bunko(Toyo Bunko, 1964); Martin Gimm, "Zur den mandjurischen Sammlungen der Sowjetunion, I," TP 54.1-3 (1963): 147-79; Jeanne-Marie Puyraimond, CataloguedufondsMandchou: BibliothequeNationale, departementdes manuscrits, division des manuscrits orientaux (Paris: Bibliotheque Nationale, 1979); Giovanni Stary, OpereMancesi in Italia e in Vaticano(Wiesbaden: Komissionsverlag Otto Har- rassowitz, 1985); IkegamiJiro t4E?--A, "Y6roppa ni aru Manshugo bunken ni tsuite," TG 45.3 (1962): 105-21; and "Y6roppa ni aru Manshulgo bunken ni tsuite (hoi)," TG 47.3 (1964): 144-46; for holdings in other European countries, seeJoseph Fletcher's review of the Simon and Nelson catalogue in HJAS 41.2 (1981): 657-58. The best recent guide to studies of archival collections, and to other aspects of Manchu studies, is Giovanni Stary, Manchu Studies:An InternationalBibliography (Wiesbaden: Kommissionsverlag Otto Harrassowitz, 1990). For collections in the United States, see Hartmut Walravens, "Vorlaufige Titelliste der Mandjurica in Bibliotheken der USA," in ZentralasiatischeStudien 10 (1976): 551-613; MatsumuraJun, "A Catalogue of the Manchu Books in the Library of Congress," TG 57.1- 2 (1976): 230-53; Ning Chia, "The Manchu Collection in the Johns Hopkins University," Centraland InnerAsian Stud,ies6 N 999 34-43. 66 PAMELA CROSSLEY AND EVELYN RAWSKI language. It has a demonstrable relationship to both its ancestral language, Jurchen, and its contemporaneous languages and dialects of Northeast Asia; it has a rich oral literature; and it has a doc- umented connection to the political concepts and religious life of Inner Asia.
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