Jurchen letter

When the Jurchen revolted against the Khitan dynasty of Liao and founded the Jin dynasty in 1115, they used Khitan writing ^[4] . In 1119 or 1120 ^[5], Wanian Xi Yin, the “ Chancellor ” of the early Jin, by order of the emperor Aguda, invented a large Jurchen letter ^{[4] [6]} .

The creation of a small Zhuruzhensky letter was announced in 1138 ^{[4] [6]} , and it was claimed that the emperor Hal himself invented it ^[4] . According to Jin Shi , in 1145, a small Jurchen letter was officially used for the first time ^[4] .

Information about non-translated books on Jurchen is missing ^[7] , but many Chinese books were translated into the Jurchen letter to the board of Emperor Ulu (1161–1189) ^[8] . The translation campaign began in 1164 ^[4] ; Among the texts were Confucian and Taoist classical works, stories and texts for the imperial examinations . Not a single fragment of these books has been preserved ^{[6] [9]} .

Most of the examples of texts in Jurchen letter are epigraphies and short inscriptions on seals, mirrors, ceramics, walls, etc. ^[6] . For 1989, nine inscriptions were known ^[10] , the most famous and the earliest of which is on the back side of the whale stela . trad. 大金 得勝 陀 頌 碑 , manage . 大金 得胜 陀 颂 碑 , pinyin : dàjīn déshèngtuó sòngbēi , pall. : Dajin Deshento Sunbei , erected in 1185, during the reign of Wanyang Ulu, in memory of the victory of Wanyang Aguda over the Liao dynasty. Apparently, this is an abridged translation of the Chinese inscription on the front of the stela ^[11] . However, a non-dated inscription from , located on the territory of modern North Korea, is believed to be created between 1138 and 1153 ^[12] . The only inscription dated after the fall of Jin is on a stele in the Yunnin temple , erected in 1413 by the Minsk admiral Ishiha on a hill near the village of Tyr in the lower reaches of the Amur ^[13] .

Until 1968, it was believed that fragments of texts recorded on Jurchen letter on paper or silk were not preserved ^{[6] [14]} . That year, E. I. Kychanov discovered among the Tangut paper documents in the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (now the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences ) two sheets of paper with Jurchen text dated 1217 ^[14] . In 1990, Herbert Franck (probably not knowing about Njuzhen Zishu) describes the Leningrad discovery as a unique undeciphered ^[9] . In 1979, Chinese scientists Liu Zuichang and Zhu Jieyuan reported a sensational discovery - an 11-page document written by a Jurchen letter found at the base of one of the steles of the Sian Museum . The manuscript has 237 lines, about 2300 characters. It is assumed that this is a copy of Nujen zishu ( Chinese trad. 女真 字 書 , Exercise 字 书 , “the book of Jurchen symbols”) by Wanian Xiin. According to the researchers who discovered the manuscript, this is a textbook containing a list of large characters written, each of which represents a word. It differs from epitaphs, in which there are also hieroglyphs that record sounds phonetically ^[15] .

The Jurchen was fairly well known among the people, as evidenced by the numerous graffiti (mostly not deciphered) left by the Jurchen in the Bai Ta pagoda in Hohhot ^[16] .

Writing was forgotten after the overthrow of Jingy by the Mongols, but the fact that complete oblivion did not happen, is said by inscriptions found on it dated by the years of the Ming dynasty : on the stele in Tyr (1413) and in the Chinese-Jurchen dictionary, which is part of the multilingual “Chinese-barbaric dictionary” ( Chinese trad. 華 夷 譯 語 , manage . 华 夷 译 语 , pinyin : huáyí yìyǔ , pall. Huai yyu ), created by the Minsk bureau of translators ( Chinese trad. 四夷 馆 , manage . 舘 , pinyin : sìyíguǎn , pall .: Syiguan ) ^[17] .

During the dynasties of the Yuan and Ming, the Jurchen continued to speak in Manchuria, on its basis the Manchurian language was formed , the writing for which , however, was based on the Mongolian letter ^[18] .

The Jurchen letter was created on the basis of the Khitan letter , which, in turn, is akin to Chinese characters . Many signs of the Jurchen letters were borrowed from Chinese (semantic and phonetic borrowing) and externally similar to Chinese and / or Khitan ^[19] . Only a small part of the characters is related to the characters of the small Khitan letter, but the idea of ​​using phonetic hieroglyphs to write the variable part of the word was probably borrowed from there ^[19] .

Signs Jurchen letters can be divided into two groups:

• ideographic , which record:
  • whole word (1-3 syllables),
  • the first 1-2 syllables of a word;
• phonetic signs that usually spell syllables like “consonant-vowel”, verb ending or vowel sound ^[20] .

The boundary between the groups was fuzzy, since some ideograms were also used as phonetics ^[20] .

The development of writing can be traced by comparing Nju zichu with later documents. The letter became ideographic-ideographic-phonetic, many words, which were originally recorded with one sign, later began to write two or three; the hieroglyphs with which the whole word was written, began to mean only its beginning ^[21] .

Due to the insufficient number of well-known samples of Jurchen letters, it was often difficult for scholars of the XIX (and sometimes XX) centuries to determine whether the letter was small or large, and whether it was Jurchen in general. Because of this, the document “Dajin Huangdi Dotun Jinliue Lanjun Sinzi” (Tex, Texts . Traditions 大金 皇帝 都 統 經 經 略 郎君 行 記 уп пин пин пин пин пин пин пин d d пин пин 記 記 пин пин пин пин пин пин пин пин пин пин пин пин пин пин пин пин пин пин пин пин пин written by the Jurchen letter, until in 1922 the Belgian missionary L. Kerwin ( fr. L. Kervyn ) did not find the tombs of the emperors Liao in Qingling, where the same letter with a Chinese word-pen was used on the epitaph to the emperor Xing-chung and his wife . According to this document, the Khitan letter was discovered, and "Dajin Huangdi ..." turned out to be written in an undeciphered Khitan letter, not Jurchen, and, most likely, in Khitan language ^{[22] [23]} .

The first work on the Jurchen letter belongs to Wilhelm Grube ^[9] .

The Jurchen letter had two varieties: “large”, created in 1120 by order of Aguda, and “small”, whose authorship is attributed to Shijun ^{[4] [24]} . However, all the known inscriptions in Jurchen letter, including the Sino-Jurchen dictionary ( Chinese trad. 女真 譯 語 , pinyin : nǚzhēn yìyǔ , pall .: Nyuzhen yu ), are made of the same type, close to the Khitan large letter.

suggested that large and small letters are part of the written continuum: large letters were an early version (for example, Njuzhen Zishu, Chinese trad. 女真 字 書 , pinyin : nǚzhēn zìshū , discovered in Xi'an in 1979); and a small letter, a later one, an example of which is the record of those who passed the imperial examinations, whale. trad. 女真 進士 題名 碑 , manage . 女真 进士 题名 碑 , pinyin : Nǚzhēn jìnshì tímíng bēi , pall. : Nujen Jinxi Timing Bay , and Sino-Jurchen Dictionary. Although almost the same set of characters is used in both forms, it is clear from late letter that phonetic meanings appeared on signs, they began to write the endings of words ^[25] .

On the other hand, the historian Aisin Gioro Ulkhichun believes that the small letter was a reworked small Khitan. In the 1970s, several gold and silver paitsa were found with the same text, probably written in a small Khitan letter ^[26] , and Aixin Gioro examined them. She claims that this is a small Jurchen letter, which was used only for the last five years of its creator's rule, and after his murder gave way to a more famous large letter ^[27] .

• , , Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368. Cambridge History of China , vol 6. Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN 978-0-521-24331-5 .
• Wilhelm Grube , Die Sprache und Schrift der Jučen. Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1896.
• Daniel Kane , 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 .
• Golovachev V. Ts. Stella in memory of Wanian Siin, as an epigraphic source on the history of the Jurchen (translation and commentary) // Moscow University Bulletin. Ser.13. Orientalism. - 2006, № 2. - p. 82-99.
• Golovachev V. Ts., Ivliev A. L., Pevnov A. M., Rykin P. O. Tyrskiye stela of the 15th century: Translation, commentary, study of Chinese, Mongolian and Jurchen texts. - SPb .: Science, 2011. 320 p. + 117 fig.

• Burykin A. A. Mongolian and Turkic borrowing in samples of small Jurchen letters
• An article about the Jurchen script on Omniglot
• The Jurchen language and Script website (Chinese Traditional Big5 code page) via Internet Archive