Ch.: Qing wen bu hui ????, Ma.: Manju gisun be niyeceme isabuha bithe [Manchu Collected, Supplemented]

IHING (or YI-XING) ??

About this Item

Eight vols. Large 8vo, orig. wrappers, orig. stitching. [China]: 1802 (date of colophon). Second edition of this landmark Manchu-Chinese dictionary, the last of the great Manchu dictionaries of the 18th century. Ihing first published his dictionary privately in 1786, the date of the Preface. We know of only one copy of this edition, held at a Chinese library. All other copies in circulation are, to the best of our knowledge, of the second edition. In 1708, on the Kangxi emperor s command, a Mirror of the Manchu Language had been published at court. In 1724, Li Yanji published Ch.: Qingwen huishu ????, Ma.: Manju isabuha bithe [Manchu Collected], which translated the contents of the Mirror into Chinese and rearranged the entries in Manchu alphabetical order. Li s book became outdated, however, when the Qianlong emperor reformed the Manchu lexicon and published a number of new lexicographical works, the most important of which was the Mirror of the Manchu Language, Expanded and Emended, from 1772-73. Our book did to the "expanded and emended" Mirror what Li Yanji had done to Kangxi s original: rearrange its contents in Manchu alphabetical order. Yet, Ihing went further than that. He also culled words from other Manchu books published on imperial command in the preceding years, including a book with phrases from pre-conquest Manchu sources and translations of the Confucian classics. The result is that Ihing s dictionary contains words that were not in Qianlong s expanded Mirror, making it in these cases the more complete lexicographical resource. For example, a term such as deyengge nimaha, "flying fish" is included in our book but not in Qianlong s Mirror. In such cases, Ihing noted that the words had been announced by the Grand Secretariat on such-and-such a date. Our copy has slips on the outside cover of the volumes with Manchu syllables written in manuscript. The syllables indicate which word initials are covered in the volume in question, facilitating searching the dictionary. There is a colophon by Fa-ke-jing-e ????, dated 1802. A nephew of Ihing, Fa-ke-jing-e revised the book at his uncle s request. Ihing (Ch.: Yi-xing, 1747-1809) belonged to the Bordered Yellow Manchu Banner and, as a descendant of Nurhaci, was a member of the imperial clan. He rose to the post of vice minister of several of the boards in the Qing secondary capital at Mukden and later served as governor of several southern provinces and as an imperial agent in Outer Mongolia. Very good set, some light dampstaining in the final volume; preserved in a hantao. ? Mårten Söderblom Saarela, The Early Modern Travels of Manchu: A Script and Its Study in East Asia and Europe, 109. Seller Inventory # 9990

Bibliographic Details

Title: Ch.: Qing wen bu hui ????, Ma.: Manju gisun ...

Binding: Soft cover