Mandarin over Manchu : court-sponsored Qing lexicography and its subversion in Korea and Japan / Mårten Söderblom Saarela 

This extract is from the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies Volume 77 Number 2.

Abstract:

The Manchu language studies of the Qing empire emerged in Beijing during the late seventeenth century and spread to Chosŏn Korea and Tokugawa Japan during the eighteenth century. The Qing court sponsored the compilation of multilingual thesauri and thereby created an imperial linguistic order with Manchu at the center and vernacular Chinese, or Mandarin, in a subordinate position. Chosŏn and Tokugawa scholars, by contrast, usually placed Mandarin—not Manchu, Korean, or Japanese—as the leading language in the new multilingual thesauri they compiled on the basis of Qing works. I show how the balance between Manchu and Mandarin changed as Korean and Japanese scholars reworked lexicographic books from Beijing. The lexicographic evidence demonstrates that the international languages of pre-twentieth-century East Asia included Manchu and vernacular Mandarin as well as literary Chinese.

The Manchu language at court and in the bureaucracy under the Qianlong emperor / by Mårten Söderblom Saarela.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"This is the first book-length study of the roles played by the Manchu language at the center of the Qing empire at the height of its power in the eighteenth century. It presents a revisionist account of Manchu not as a language in decline, but as extensively and consciously used language in a variety of areas. It treats the use, discussion, regulation, and philological study of Manchu at the court of an emperor who cared deeply for the maintenance and history of the language of his dynasty"--  Provided by publisher.

Introduction 1
1 The How and Why of Manchu 3
2 Manchu Documents, Books, and Three Reasons for Writing  this Study 12
1 Background: The Manchu Language from the Seventeenth Century to the Qianlong Period 19
1 The Early History of Written Manchu 19
2 The Manchu Language in China Proper 23
3 Scholarly Efforts to Describe the Manchu Language and Qianlong’s
Project to Change it 26
3.1 Manchu Grammatical Studies 27
3.2 Qianlong’s Manchu Neologisms 29
2 Public Inscriptions and Manchu Language Reform in the Early
Qianlong Reign 37
1 Background: Manchu Steles and Public Inscriptions 39
2 Public Inscriptions and Qianlong-era Language Reform 45
3 The Names for Temples, Altars, and Gates 46
4 The Inscription at Fragrance of the Teaching Temple 53
5 Conclusion 57
3 Linguistic Compartmentalization and the Palace Memorial System 59
1 Manchu and Chinese Linguistic Regimes 61
2 Linguistic Compartmentalization and the Palace
Memorial System 67
2.1 The Forwarding of Palace Memorials to Outer Court
Agencies 68
3 The Experiment of Bilingual Palace Memorials 69
3.1 Military Communications 72
3.2 Judicial Cases Involving Individuals Subject to Chinese Law 79
4 Language Choice and Secrecy 83
5 The Limits of Linguistic Compartmentalization:
Lateral Communications 93
6 Conclusion 99
4 Reading Manchu Palace Memorials Against the Idea of Manchu Decline 102
1 The Idea of Manchu Decline 103
2 Palace Memorials from Letters to Bureaucratic Summaries 107
3 How did Qianlong Understand Authorship? The Examples of Kuilin, Kinglin, and Guncukdar 113
4 Problems Related to the Composite Nature of Memorials 120
5 Conclusion 123
5 Imperial Corrections of Language Errors in Manchu
Palace Memorials 124
1 Corrections before Qianlong 125
2 Qianlong’s Corrections of Manchu Usage 127
2.1 Spelling Mistakes and Non-standard Spellings 128
2.2 Word Choice (1): Improper Usage 131
2.3 Word Choice (2): Qianlong’s Idiosyncratic Standard 134
2.4 Sinicisms 138
2.5 Grammatical Errors 145
3 Criticism of Language and of the Writer 152
4 Reprimands for Mistakes in Languages other than Manchu 153
5 Conclusion 155
6 Philological Scholarship in Manchu: Linguistic Studies on the
Pre-conquest Archive 157
1 What was “Evidential Learning”? 157
2 Manchu “Evidential Learning” 161
3 Manchu Philology before Qianlong: The Translation of
Confucian Literature 162
4 The Pre-conquest Archive and the Early Veritable Records 170
5 The Book of Characters Without Dots and Circles 173
6 The Book of Old Manchu Phrases Lifted from the Veritable Records 178
6.1 Structure and Character of the Book 181
6.2 Glosses that Highlight Morphology 183
6.3 Comments on Linguistic Structures 184
6.4 Defining Historical and Contemporary Usage 186
6.5 Glosses that Acknowledge the Plurilingual Historical Context of the Source Text 187
6.6 Conclusion 189
7 Footnotes to Early Qing History: The Grand Secretariat Copy of the Old
Manchu Archive 191
1 Editing the Old Archive 193
2 The Yellow Sticky Notes 198
2.1 Notes on the Archive’s Plurilingual Character 198
2.2 Consultation of Experts and Use of Field Reports 201
2.3 Consultation of Literature 204
2.4 The Research Behind the Notes and Its Limitations 211
3 The Philology of Manchu before Manchu: Multilingual
Historical Glossaries 214
4 Conclusion 222
Conclusion: Manchu after Qianlong 226
1 Manchu as a Language of Court Scholarship 227
2 Statistics on Manchu Document Production 228
3 A New Role for Manchu? 236
4 Survival as an Administrative Language in
Multilingual Contexts 237
5 Socio-political Change and Linguistic Change 240
6 Manchu’s Survival as a Vernacular Language 241
7 Limited use of Manchu as a Spoken Language in
Nineteenth-century Beijing 243
8 The Decline of Manchu 247
Bibliography 251
Archives and Databases Used 251
Works Cited 251
Index 289

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