From: Pamela Crossley <[log in to unmask]>
Date: May 19, 2006 11:38:31 PM EDT
To: [log in to unmask] (Wayne is Vain)
Subject: Re: [SAHALIYAN] is "Tungusic" part of "Altaic" anyway?

Original literature... Well, there is a huge corpus of works  
sponsored by the Qing court. Conventionally they have been viewed as  
"translations" as if they were written first in Chinese and then  
translated into Manchu. There is no evidence that was the process of  
the intention. Some were written first in Manchu and others in  
Chinese, and some in Mongolian. The court referred to the process of  
imperial documentation as having the attribute of being  
"simultaneous." (kamcime, hebi).

If you mean, how much literature was created only in Manchu and not  
accompanied by translation into Chinese, there are again  
qualifications that can be made before that can be quantified.  
"Literature" to me does not mean government documents or scholarly  
writing. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century there was a  
considerable amount of private writing --diaries, scholarship, secret  
reports-- written in Chinese were not, or were only partially,  
translated into Chinese.

There are two articles I know of on the Harvard Yenching Manchu  
documents. They were first catalogued and described by Evelyn Rawski  
and I in 1992, and in 1993 our survey of the Harvard documents was  
incorporated into the article "A Profile of the Manchu Language in “A  
Profile of the Manchu Language in Ch'ing History” published in HJAS  
in 1993. At the time of our survey the Manchu documents at Harvard  
were undescribed, unlisted and kept in very haphazard conditions. We  
gave our handlist of the titles and descriptions to Eugene Wu and  
never knew what happened to it afterward.  In 2003 Mark C. Elliott  
and James Bosson published a chapter "Highlights of the Manchu- 
Mongolian Collection" in the book, Treasures of the Yenching, which  
is a beautifully produced book, exclusively focussed on the Yenching  
documents.  The Yenching collection includes many examples of the  
kinds of documents that are presumably yet to be found in archives in  
the PRC, and perhaps to a small extent in Taiwan (though the Taiwan  
Manchu archives have been well catalogued for some time).

Supposedly authoritative scholars often cite the number of "one  
million" to "two million" unread Manchu documents yet to be used.  I  
have never known what the real basis for such a number is. There are  
certainly a lot, but unexplored archives often hold great surprises -- 
like no documents. So, we will have to wait to see how many there are  
and where.


On May 19, 2006, at 9:15 PM, Wei Yu Tan wrote:

> --- You wrote:
> I think there are several explanations. Eastern Asiian riding,  
> after about 700, was very different from central Asian (maybe we  
> can say Turkic) riding, and remained so until the 20th century.   
> So, the horse riding style, the horse tackle, the terms and the  
> breeds might actually have formed a complex that had a distinct  
> east/west differential.
> --- end of quote ---
>
> Thanks Professor Crossley!
>
> Just curious, did the Manchus produce a lot of original literature  
> in the Manchu script other than translations of Chinese classics? I  
> read somewhere the other day that the Yenching Institute has  
> holdings of Manchu documents and I'm wondering if they're all  
> historical documents?