X-Nico

2 unusual facts about Jurchen script


Jurchen script

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.

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).


Tungusic languages

Jurchen–Manchu (Jurchen and Manchu are simply different stages of the same language; in fact, the ethnonym "Manchu" did not come about until 1636 when Emperor Hong Taiji decreed that the term would replace "Jurchen") is the only Tungusic language with a literary form (in Jurchen script and later the Manchu alphabet) which dates back to at least the mid- to late-12th century; as such it is a very important language for the reconstruction of Proto-Tungusic.


see also