Jurchen script
Encyclopedia
Jurchen script was the writing system used to write Jurchen language
, the language of the Jurchen people who created the Jin Empire in the northeastern China of the 12th–13th centuries. It was derived from the Khitan script
, which in turn was derived from Chinese
(Han characters
). The script has only been decoded to a small extent.
The Jurchens were the ancestors of the Manchu people and spoke a language
related to the Manchu language
. The Jurchen script, however, is not ancestral to the Manchu script.
According to the Sino-Jurchen glossary, the Jurchen script contains 720 characters. These comprise a mixture of logograms, which represent whole words without any phonetic element, and phonograms, which represent sounds. Compound words consisting of two or more characters were also used.
The Jurchen characters have a system of radicals similar to Chinese characters and are ordered according to radical and stroke count. The Jurchen script is part of the Chinese family of scripts
.
Liao Dynasty
and established the new Jin Dynasty in 1115, they were using the Khitan script
.
In 1119 or 1120,
Wanyan Xiyin
, the "chancellor" of the early Jin Empire, acting on the orders of the first emperor, Wanyan Aguda
, invented the first Jurchen script, known as "the large script".
The second version, the so-called "small script", was promulgated in 1138 by the Xizong Emperor
, and said to have been created by the emperor himself. According to the Jin Shi, in 1145 the small script characters were used officially the first time.
There is no historical information about any original books that were written in Jurchen, but during the reign of Emperor Shizong of Jin (1161–1189) a large number of Chinese books were translated into Jurchen. The translation program started in 1164; among the translations were Confucian and Taoist classics, histories, and exam study guides. Unfortunately, not even a single fragment of any of the books survived.
Most of the samples of the Jurchen writing available to modern researchers are epigraphic ones (those on monuments etc.), as well as a few short inscriptions on seals, mirrors, ceramics, graffiti, etc. The total of nine epigraphic inscriptions are known so far. The best known, and traditionally thought to be earliest of them is the Jurchen inscription on the back of "the Jin Victory Memorial Stele" (大金得胜陀颂碑, Da Jin deshengtuo songbei), which was erected in 1185, during the reign of Emperor Shizong, in memory of Wanyan Aguda
's victory over the Liao
. It is apparently an abbreviated translation of the Chinese text on the front of the stele. However, the undated inscription from Qingyuan (Kyŏngwŏn) in northern Korea is now thought to be older, surmised to have been created between 1138 and 1153. The only one inscription dating from after the end of the Jin Dynasty is the one on the stele erected in 1413
by the Ming
eunuch admiral Yishiha
on the Tyr
Cliff, on the lower Amur River.
No paper or silk manuscripts in Jurchen were known until 1968, when a Jurchen manuscript was discovered by E.I. Kychanov
among the Tangut papers in the Leningrad
branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies
. It is written on two sheets of paper and dates to 1217. Writing in 1990, Herbert Franke
(perhaps, not aware of Nüzhen zishu, below) describes the Leningrad document as "unique" and not yet deciphered.
Even more importantly, in 1979 Chinese scholars Liu Zuichang and Zhu Jieyuan reported the ground-breaking discovery of an eleven-page document in Jurchen script in the base of a stele in Xi'an
's Stele Forest
museum. This manuscript, containing 237 lines of Jurchen script (around 2300 characters), is thought to be a copy of Nüzhen zishu (女真字书, "Jurchen Character Book"), written by Wanyan Xiyin
himself soon after his invention of the large-character script. According to its discoverers, this manuscript was a type of textbook, a list of large-script characters, each one usually representing a complete word. This is different from the epigraphic inscriptions, which also contain phonetic symbols.
The Jurchen script was apparently fairly widely known among Jurchens, which is attested by numerous graffiti (unfortunately, mostly illegible) left by Jurchen visitors in Bai Ta Pagoda in Hohhot
, Inner Mongolia
.
Jurchen script must have become much less known after the destruction of the Jin Dynasty by the Mongols, but it was not completely forgotten, because it is attested at least twice during the Ming Dynasty
: on Yishiha
's Tyr
stele of 1413 and in a Chinese–Jurchen dictionary included in the multilingual "Chinese–Barbarian Dictionary" (华夷译语) compiled by the Ming Bureau of Translators (四夷馆).
During the Yuan and Ming dynasty Jurchen language continued to be spoken in Manchuria, where it later developed into the Manchu language
. The latter, however, was written first in Mongolian script
(1601), and later in a new Manchu script derived from the Mongolian script (1632), neither of which has any relation to the Jurchen script.
, inspired in turn by Chinese character
s. Apparently, both semantic and phonetic borrowing took place. Many Jurchen characters can be described as copies, or distorted copies of, of Chinese and/or large-script Khitan characters with similar meaning; others apparently were derived from Chinese characters whose sound was similar to that of Jurchen words, without semantic connection. There seem to be few Jurchen characters whose shapes can be related to the Khitan small-character script; however, the idea of using phonetic symbols for grammatical endings
, for phonetics transcription of Chinese loanwords, or for writing words for which there were no special ideograms, may have been inspired by the Khitan small-character script.
The Jurchen characters can be divided into two classes, according to their role:
However, the boundary between the classes was not precise, as some ideographic characters were also used for their phonetic value as parts of other words.
Comparing Wanyan Xiyin
's Nüzhen zishu with later inscriptions and Ming Dynasty dictionaries, one can detect the direction of the writing system's development from ideographic to combined ideographic-phonetic. Many words originally written with a single character were later written with two or even three, the character originally designating the entire word being later used only for its beginning, and a phonetic character (or two) being used for the last one or two syllable(s),
However, because Chinese is an isolating language
and the Jurchen and Khitan languages are agglutinative
, the script proved to be cumbersome.
and Empress Renyi. Thus the Khitan script
was discovered, and the Jin Dynasty's Da Jin huangdi dotong jinglüe langjun xingji inscription, long thought to be written in Jurchen script, turned out to be written in the (still undeciphered) Khitan script and, most likely, Khitan language
, after all.
The pioneering work on studies of the Jurchen script was done by Wilhelm Grube
in the end of 19 c.
, the first emperor of the Jin Dynasty; and a "small script" that was created in 1138 by the Emperor Xizong
(r. 1135–1150), but which was first officially used in 1145. However, all the extant examples of Jurchen writing, including the Sino-Jurchen Vocabulary of the Bureau of Interpreters (Nǚzhēn Yìyǔ 女真譯語) and various monumental inscriptions, are written in basically the same script, which is similar in form to the Khitan large script
. Various theories have been suggested to account for the apparent lack of a Jurchen small script in the extant corpus of monumental inscriptions and manuscript texts.
Daniel Kane
has suggested that the large and small Jurchen scripts are points on a single script continuum: the large script was the earliest form of the Jurchen script, as represented in the manuscript Jurchen Character Book (Nǚzhēn Zìshū 女真字書) that was discovered in Xi'an
in 1979; and the small script was the later form of the Jurchen script, as represented on the Monument recording the names of successful candidates for the degree of jinshi (Nüzhen jinshi timing bei 女真進士題名碑) and in the Sino-Jurchen Vocabulary. The earlier and later forms of the script use basically the same set of characters, but whereas the characters in the Jurchen Character Book are largely logographic is nature, many of the characters in the Sino-Jurchen Vocabulary and monumental inscriptions have developed a phonetic function, and can thus be used to express grammatical endings. Kane considers the "large script" to refer to characters used as logograms, and the "small script" to refer to chracter used as phonograms.
On the other hand, Aisin-Gioro Ulhicun
believes that there were actually two separate Jurchen scripts, a "large" logographic script modelled on the Khitan large script, and a "small" phonographic script modelled on the Khitan small script
. During the 1970s a number of gold and silver paiza
with the same inscription, apparently in the small Khitan script, were unearthed in northern China. Aisin-Gioro has analysed the inscription on these paiza, and although the structure of the characters is identical to the Khitan small script she concludes that the script is not actually the Khitan small script but is in fact the otherwise unattested Jurchen small script. She argues that this small script was only used briefly during the last five years of the reign of its creator, Emperor Xizong, and when he was murdered in a coup d'état the small script fell out of use as it was less convenient to use than the earlier large script.
Jurchen language
Jurchen language is an extinct language. It was spoken by Jurchen people of eastern Manchuria, the creators of the Jin Empire in the northeastern China of the 12th–13th centuries. It is classified as a Southwestern Tungusic language.-Writing:...
, the language of the Jurchen people who created the Jin Empire in the northeastern China of the 12th–13th centuries. It was derived from the Khitan script
Khitan script
Khitan scripts may refer to one of two mutually exclusive scripts used by the Khitan people during the 10th-12th centuries:*Khitan small script – invented in about 924 or 925 CE by a scholar named Diela...
, which in turn was derived from Chinese
Chinese written language
Written Chinese comprises Chinese characters used to represent the Chinese language, and the rules about how they are arranged and punctuated. Chinese characters do not constitute an alphabet or a compact syllabary...
(Han characters
Chinese character
Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...
). The script has only been decoded to a small extent.
The Jurchens were the ancestors of the Manchu people and spoke a language
Jurchen language
Jurchen language is an extinct language. It was spoken by Jurchen people of eastern Manchuria, the creators of the Jin Empire in the northeastern China of the 12th–13th centuries. It is classified as a Southwestern Tungusic language.-Writing:...
related to the Manchu language
Manchu language
Manchu is a Tungusic endangered language spoken in Northeast China; it used to be the language of the Manchu, though now most Manchus speak Mandarin Chinese and there are fewer than 70 native speakers of Manchu out of a total of nearly 10 million ethnic Manchus...
. The Jurchen script, however, is not ancestral to the Manchu script.
According to the Sino-Jurchen glossary, the Jurchen script contains 720 characters. These comprise a mixture of logograms, which represent whole words without any phonetic element, and phonograms, which represent sounds. Compound words consisting of two or more characters were also used.
The Jurchen characters have a system of radicals similar to Chinese characters and are ordered according to radical and stroke count. The Jurchen script is part of the Chinese family of scripts
Chinese family of scripts
The Chinese family of scripts are writing systems descended from the Chinese Oracle Bone Script and used for a variety of languages in East Asia...
.
History
After the Jurchen rebelled against the KhitanKhitan people
thumb|250px|Khitans [[Eagle hunting|using eagles to hunt]], painted during the Chinese [[Song Dynasty]].The Khitan people , or Khitai, Kitan, or Kidan, were a nomadic Mongolic people, originally located at Mongolia and Manchuria from the 4th century...
Liao Dynasty
Liao Dynasty
The Liao Dynasty , also known as the Khitan Empire was an empire in East Asia that ruled over the regions of Manchuria, Mongolia, and parts of northern China proper between 9071125...
and established the new Jin Dynasty in 1115, they were using the Khitan script
Khitan script
Khitan scripts may refer to one of two mutually exclusive scripts used by the Khitan people during the 10th-12th centuries:*Khitan small script – invented in about 924 or 925 CE by a scholar named Diela...
.
In 1119 or 1120,
Wanyan Xiyin
Wanyan Xiyin
Wanyan Xiyin was a trusted advisor of the Jurchen chieftain, Wanyan Aguda . Described by modern writers as the "Chief Shaman" of the pre-Jin Jurchen state, he became deeply interested in Chinese culture, and isparticularly known as the creator of the first writing system for the Jurchen...
, the "chancellor" of the early Jin Empire, acting on the orders of the first emperor, Wanyan Aguda
Wanyan Aguda
Emperor Taizu of Jin was Emperor of Jin from January 28, 1115 to September 19, 1123.He was the chieftain of the Jurchen Wanyan tribe, founder and first emperor of the Jin Dynasty . He was the younger brother of Wanyan Wuyashu...
, invented the first Jurchen script, known as "the large script".
The second version, the so-called "small script", was promulgated in 1138 by the Xizong Emperor
Emperor Xizong of Jin
Emperor Xizong of Jin reigned from February 10, 1135 to January 9, 1150 as an emperor of the Jin Dynasty which controlled northern China from 1115 to 1234. His birth name was Wányán Hélá . His Han Chinese name was Wányán Dǎn .Wanyan Dan was the first son of the founder of the Jin Dynasty Wanyan...
, and said to have been created by the emperor himself. According to the Jin Shi, in 1145 the small script characters were used officially the first time.
There is no historical information about any original books that were written in Jurchen, but during the reign of Emperor Shizong of Jin (1161–1189) a large number of Chinese books were translated into Jurchen. The translation program started in 1164; among the translations were Confucian and Taoist classics, histories, and exam study guides. Unfortunately, not even a single fragment of any of the books survived.
Most of the samples of the Jurchen writing available to modern researchers are epigraphic ones (those on monuments etc.), as well as a few short inscriptions on seals, mirrors, ceramics, graffiti, etc. The total of nine epigraphic inscriptions are known so far. The best known, and traditionally thought to be earliest of them is the Jurchen inscription on the back of "the Jin Victory Memorial Stele" (大金得胜陀颂碑, Da Jin deshengtuo songbei), which was erected in 1185, during the reign of Emperor Shizong, in memory of Wanyan Aguda
Wanyan Aguda
Emperor Taizu of Jin was Emperor of Jin from January 28, 1115 to September 19, 1123.He was the chieftain of the Jurchen Wanyan tribe, founder and first emperor of the Jin Dynasty . He was the younger brother of Wanyan Wuyashu...
's victory over the Liao
Liao Dynasty
The Liao Dynasty , also known as the Khitan Empire was an empire in East Asia that ruled over the regions of Manchuria, Mongolia, and parts of northern China proper between 9071125...
. It is apparently an abbreviated translation of the Chinese text on the front of the stele. However, the undated inscription from Qingyuan (Kyŏngwŏn) in northern Korea is now thought to be older, surmised to have been created between 1138 and 1153. The only one inscription dating from after the end of the Jin Dynasty is the one on the stele erected in 1413
Yongning Temple Stele
The Yongning Temple Stele is a Ming Dynasty stele with a trilingual inscription that was erected in 1413 to commemorate the founding of the Yongning Temple in the Nurgan outpost, near the mouth of the Amur River, by the eunuch Yishiha. The location of the temple is the village of Tyr near...
by the Ming
Ming Dynasty
The Ming Dynasty, also Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history", was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...
eunuch admiral Yishiha
Yishiha
Yishiha was a eunuch in the service of the Ming Dynasty emperors of China who carried out several expeditions down the Sungari and Amur Rivers, and is credited with the construction of the only two Ming Dynasty Buddhist temples ever built on the territory of today's Russia.- Early life:It is...
on the Tyr
Tyr, Russia
Tyr is a settlement in Ulchsky District of Khabarovsk Krai, Russia, located on the right bank of the Amur River, near the mouth of the Amgun River, about upstream from Nikolayevsk-on-Amur....
Cliff, on the lower Amur River.
No paper or silk manuscripts in Jurchen were known until 1968, when a Jurchen manuscript was discovered by E.I. Kychanov
Evgenij Ivanovich Kychanov
Evgenij Ivanovich Kychanov is a Soviet and Russian orientalist, an expert on the Tangut people and their mediaeval Xi Xia Empire. He currently serves as the director of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Science in Saint Petersburg - the institution that until 2007 was...
among the Tangut papers in the Leningrad
Leningrad
Leningrad is the former name of Saint Petersburg, Russia.Leningrad may also refer to:- Places :* Leningrad Oblast, a federal subject of Russia, around Saint Petersburg* Leningrad, Tajikistan, capital of Muminobod district in Khatlon Province...
branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies
Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences , formerly Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, is Russia's leading research institution for the study of the countries and cultures of Asia and North Africa...
. It is written on two sheets of paper and dates to 1217. Writing in 1990, Herbert Franke
Herbert Franke
This is an article about a German sinologist. For the science fiction writer, see Herbert W. FrankeHerbert Franke was a German historian of China...
(perhaps, not aware of Nüzhen zishu, below) describes the Leningrad document as "unique" and not yet deciphered.
Even more importantly, in 1979 Chinese scholars Liu Zuichang and Zhu Jieyuan reported the ground-breaking discovery of an eleven-page document in Jurchen script in the base of a stele in Xi'an
Xi'an
Xi'an is the capital of the Shaanxi province, and a sub-provincial city in the People's Republic of China. One of the oldest cities in China, with more than 3,100 years of history, the city was known as Chang'an before the Ming Dynasty...
's Stele Forest
Stele Forest
The Stele Forest, or Xi'an Beilin Museum , is a museum for steles and stone sculptures which is located in Xi'an, China. Founded in 1944, it was the principal museum for Shaanxi province on the site of what was formerly an 11th century Confucius Temple...
museum. This manuscript, containing 237 lines of Jurchen script (around 2300 characters), is thought to be a copy of Nüzhen zishu (女真字书, "Jurchen Character Book"), written by Wanyan Xiyin
Wanyan Xiyin
Wanyan Xiyin was a trusted advisor of the Jurchen chieftain, Wanyan Aguda . Described by modern writers as the "Chief Shaman" of the pre-Jin Jurchen state, he became deeply interested in Chinese culture, and isparticularly known as the creator of the first writing system for the Jurchen...
himself soon after his invention of the large-character script. According to its discoverers, this manuscript was a type of textbook, a list of large-script characters, each one usually representing a complete word. This is different from the epigraphic inscriptions, which also contain phonetic symbols.
The Jurchen script was apparently fairly widely known among Jurchens, which is attested by numerous graffiti (unfortunately, mostly illegible) left by Jurchen visitors in Bai Ta Pagoda in Hohhot
Hohhot
Hohhot , is a city in north-central China and the capital of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, serving as the region's administrative, economic, and cultural centre....
, Inner Mongolia
Inner Mongolia
Inner Mongolia is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China, located in the northern region of the country. Inner Mongolia shares an international border with the countries of Mongolia and the Russian Federation...
.
Jurchen script must have become much less known after the destruction of the Jin Dynasty by the Mongols, but it was not completely forgotten, because it is attested at least twice during the Ming Dynasty
Ming Dynasty
The Ming Dynasty, also Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history", was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...
: on Yishiha
Yishiha
Yishiha was a eunuch in the service of the Ming Dynasty emperors of China who carried out several expeditions down the Sungari and Amur Rivers, and is credited with the construction of the only two Ming Dynasty Buddhist temples ever built on the territory of today's Russia.- Early life:It is...
's Tyr
Tyr, Russia
Tyr is a settlement in Ulchsky District of Khabarovsk Krai, Russia, located on the right bank of the Amur River, near the mouth of the Amgun River, about upstream from Nikolayevsk-on-Amur....
stele of 1413 and in a Chinese–Jurchen dictionary included in the multilingual "Chinese–Barbarian Dictionary" (华夷译语) compiled by the Ming Bureau of Translators (四夷馆).
During the Yuan and Ming dynasty Jurchen language continued to be spoken in Manchuria, where it later developed into the Manchu language
Manchu language
Manchu is a Tungusic endangered language spoken in Northeast China; it used to be the language of the Manchu, though now most Manchus speak Mandarin Chinese and there are fewer than 70 native speakers of Manchu out of a total of nearly 10 million ethnic Manchus...
. The latter, however, was written first in Mongolian script
Mongolian script
The classical Mongolian script , also known as Uyghurjin, was the first writing system created specifically for the Mongolian language, and was the most successful until the introduction of Cyrillic in 1946...
(1601), and later in a new Manchu script derived from the Mongolian script (1632), neither of which has any relation to the Jurchen script.
Structure of the script
Jurchen script was based on the Khitan scriptKhitan script
Khitan scripts may refer to one of two mutually exclusive scripts used by the Khitan people during the 10th-12th centuries:*Khitan small script – invented in about 924 or 925 CE by a scholar named Diela...
, inspired in turn by Chinese character
Chinese character
Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...
s. Apparently, both semantic and phonetic borrowing took place. Many Jurchen characters can be described as copies, or distorted copies of, of Chinese and/or large-script Khitan characters with similar meaning; others apparently were derived from Chinese characters whose sound was similar to that of Jurchen words, without semantic connection. There seem to be few Jurchen characters whose shapes can be related to the Khitan small-character script; however, the idea of using phonetic symbols for grammatical endings
Morpheme
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
, for phonetics transcription of Chinese loanwords, or for writing words for which there were no special ideograms, may have been inspired by the Khitan small-character script.
The Jurchen characters can be divided into two classes, according to their role:
- Ideographic characters, used to record either:
- a whole word (one to three, but usually two, syllables long), or
- the first one or two syllables of a word, to be followed by one or several phonetic symbols.
- Phonetic characters, usually recording a CV syllable, a Vn ending, or single vowel.
However, the boundary between the classes was not precise, as some ideographic characters were also used for their phonetic value as parts of other words.
Comparing Wanyan Xiyin
Wanyan Xiyin
Wanyan Xiyin was a trusted advisor of the Jurchen chieftain, Wanyan Aguda . Described by modern writers as the "Chief Shaman" of the pre-Jin Jurchen state, he became deeply interested in Chinese culture, and isparticularly known as the creator of the first writing system for the Jurchen...
's Nüzhen zishu with later inscriptions and Ming Dynasty dictionaries, one can detect the direction of the writing system's development from ideographic to combined ideographic-phonetic. Many words originally written with a single character were later written with two or even three, the character originally designating the entire word being later used only for its beginning, and a phonetic character (or two) being used for the last one or two syllable(s),
However, because Chinese is an isolating language
Isolating language
An isolating language is a type of language with a low morpheme-per-word ratio — in the extreme case of an isolating language words are composed of a single morpheme...
and the Jurchen and Khitan languages are agglutinative
Agglutinative language
An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view...
, the script proved to be cumbersome.
Study of the script
Due to the scarcity of the surviving samples of Jurchen writing, it was often difficult to determine for the 19th-century (or sometimes even 20th-century) scholars, whether a given inscription was in the "large" or "small" Jurchen script, or whether it was in Jurchen script at all. Thus, it was commonly thought in the 19th century by the Chinese and Western researchers that the Da Jin huangdi dotong jinglüe langjun xingji (大金皇帝都统经略郎君行记) inscription represented the Jurchen large script until, in 1922, the Belgian missionary L. Ker discovered the Liao Imperial Tombs in Qingling, where this very script was used, in parallel with Chinese text, for the epitaph of Emperor Xingzong of LiaoEmperor Xingzong of Liao
Emperor Xingzong of Liao , born Yelü Zongzhen , was an emperor of the Liao Dynasty. He reigned from 25 June 1031 to 28 August 1055....
and Empress Renyi. Thus the Khitan script
Khitan script
Khitan scripts may refer to one of two mutually exclusive scripts used by the Khitan people during the 10th-12th centuries:*Khitan small script – invented in about 924 or 925 CE by a scholar named Diela...
was discovered, and the Jin Dynasty's Da Jin huangdi dotong jinglüe langjun xingji inscription, long thought to be written in Jurchen script, turned out to be written in the (still undeciphered) Khitan script and, most likely, Khitan language
Khitan language
The Khitan language is a now-extinct language once spoken by the Khitan people . Khitan is generally deemed to be genetically linked to the Mongolic languages. It was written using two mutually exclusive writing systems known as the Khitan large script and the Khitan small script...
, after all.
The pioneering work on studies of the Jurchen script was done by Wilhelm Grube
Wilhelm Grube
Wilhelm Grube was a German sinologist and ethnographer. He is particularly known for his work on Tungusic languages and the Jurchen language.-Biography:Grube was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia in 1855...
in the end of 19 c.
Jurchen small script
According to the History of the Jin Dynasty there were two different Jurchen scripts: a "large script" that was devised in 1120 by command of Wanyan AgudaWanyan Aguda
Emperor Taizu of Jin was Emperor of Jin from January 28, 1115 to September 19, 1123.He was the chieftain of the Jurchen Wanyan tribe, founder and first emperor of the Jin Dynasty . He was the younger brother of Wanyan Wuyashu...
, the first emperor of the Jin Dynasty; and a "small script" that was created in 1138 by the Emperor Xizong
Emperor Xizong of Jin
Emperor Xizong of Jin reigned from February 10, 1135 to January 9, 1150 as an emperor of the Jin Dynasty which controlled northern China from 1115 to 1234. His birth name was Wányán Hélá . His Han Chinese name was Wányán Dǎn .Wanyan Dan was the first son of the founder of the Jin Dynasty Wanyan...
(r. 1135–1150), but which was first officially used in 1145. However, all the extant examples of Jurchen writing, including the Sino-Jurchen Vocabulary of the Bureau of Interpreters (Nǚzhēn Yìyǔ 女真譯語) and various monumental inscriptions, are written in basically the same script, which is similar in form to the Khitan large script
Khitan large script
The Khitan large script was one of two writing systems used for the now-extinct Khitan language. It was used during the 10th-12th centuries by the Khitan people, who had created the Liao Empire in north-eastern China. In addition to the large script, the Khitans simultaneously also used a...
. Various theories have been suggested to account for the apparent lack of a Jurchen small script in the extant corpus of monumental inscriptions and manuscript texts.
Daniel Kane
Daniel Kane (linguist)
Daniel Kane is an Australian linguist, one of the world's foremost authorities on the extinct Jurchen and Khitan languages and their scripts.-Biography:...
has suggested that the large and small Jurchen scripts are points on a single script continuum: the large script was the earliest form of the Jurchen script, as represented in the manuscript Jurchen Character Book (Nǚzhēn Zìshū 女真字書) that was discovered in Xi'an
Xi'an
Xi'an is the capital of the Shaanxi province, and a sub-provincial city in the People's Republic of China. One of the oldest cities in China, with more than 3,100 years of history, the city was known as Chang'an before the Ming Dynasty...
in 1979; and the small script was the later form of the Jurchen script, as represented on the Monument recording the names of successful candidates for the degree of jinshi (Nüzhen jinshi timing bei 女真進士題名碑) and in the Sino-Jurchen Vocabulary. The earlier and later forms of the script use basically the same set of characters, but whereas the characters in the Jurchen Character Book are largely logographic is nature, many of the characters in the Sino-Jurchen Vocabulary and monumental inscriptions have developed a phonetic function, and can thus be used to express grammatical endings. Kane considers the "large script" to refer to characters used as logograms, and the "small script" to refer to chracter used as phonograms.
On the other hand, Aisin-Gioro Ulhicun
Aisin-Gioro Ulhicun
Aisin-Gioro Ulhicun is a Chinese linguist of Manchu ethnicity who is known for her studies of the Manchu, Jurchen and Khitan languages and scripts. She is also known as a historian of the Liao and Jin dynasties...
believes that there were actually two separate Jurchen scripts, a "large" logographic script modelled on the Khitan large script, and a "small" phonographic script modelled on the Khitan small script
Khitan small script
The Khitan small script was one of two writing systems used for the now-extinct Khitan language. It was used during the 10th-12th century by the Khitan people, who had created the Liao Empire in north-eastern China. In addition to the small script, the Khitans simultaneously also used a...
. During the 1970s a number of gold and silver paiza
Paiza
Paiza or Gerege is a tablet of authority for the Mongol officials and envoys...
with the same inscription, apparently in the small Khitan script, were unearthed in northern China. Aisin-Gioro has analysed the inscription on these paiza, and although the structure of the characters is identical to the Khitan small script she concludes that the script is not actually the Khitan small script but is in fact the otherwise unattested Jurchen small script. She argues that this small script was only used briefly during the last five years of the reign of its creator, Emperor Xizong, and when he was murdered in a coup d'état the small script fell out of use as it was less convenient to use than the earlier large script.
Literature
- Herbert FrankeHerbert FrankeThis is an article about a German sinologist. For the science fiction writer, see Herbert W. FrankeHerbert Franke was a German historian of China...
, Denis Twitchett, Alien Regimes and Border States, 907–1368. The Cambridge History of ChinaThe Cambridge History of ChinaThe Cambridge History of China is an ongoing series of books published by Cambridge University Press covering the early and modern history of China. It has been described as "the largest and most comprehensive history of China in the English language"....
, vol 6. Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN 978-0-521-24331-5. - Wilhelm GrubeWilhelm GrubeWilhelm Grube was a German sinologist and ethnographer. He is particularly known for his work on Tungusic languages and the Jurchen language.-Biography:Grube was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia in 1855...
, Die Sprache und Schrift der Jučen. Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1896. - Daniel KaneDaniel Kane (linguist)Daniel Kane is an Australian linguist, one of the world's foremost authorities on the extinct Jurchen and Khitan languages and their scripts.-Biography:...
, The Sino-Jurchen Vocabulary of the Bureau of Interpreters. (Uralic and Altaic Series, Vol. 153). Indiana University, Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies. Bloomington, Indiana, 1989. ISBN 978-0-933070-23-3.
External links
- Jurchen Script
- The Jurchen language and Script Website (Chinese Traditional Big5 code page) via Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...