Blog
The Manchu Studies Blog is an informal place to share short write-ups related to Manchu Studies: conference reports, brief introduction to materials, translation, think-pieces, travelogues, or anything else too short or informal for the Saksaha journal but is nevertheless interesting and worth sharing.
To submit a piece of writing for the blog, please reach out to the web editor at emeng AT uchicago DOT edu.
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Two Encounters on the Riverbank
By Eric Schluessel Ph.D. Candidate, Harvard University Consider the Ili River. Along its southern banks, in what is now Cabcal Sibe Autonomous County in Xinjiang, the Sibe were resettled as…
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The Librairie Française and the Manchu books at Capital Library, Beijing
Mårten Söderblom Saarela, Ph.D. Candidate, Princeton University As the former imperial capital, Beijing is home to many of the greatest collections of Manchu literature in China. Students of Qing history…
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The Righteous Elephants
Donjina by David Porter Ph.D. Candidate, Harvard University The author of the story that follows was a Daur man originally from Qiqihar named Donjina. Donjina lived from sometime around 1860…
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Not All Khans Are Equal
Greg Afinogenov, Ph.D. Candidate, Harvard University In the fourth chapter of Sungyun’s famous Emu tanggu orin sakda-i sarkiyan—the Stories of 120 Old Men–which deals with “outer territory” affairs and Russia…
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Turco-Manjurica: The Turki Translation of Shunzhi’s Moral Exhortations to the People
Eric Schluessel Ph.D. Candidate, Harvard University I have just had the pleasure of opening a Turkic-language translation of the Shunzhi emperor’s Moral Exhortations to the People (Ch. Yuzhi quan shan…
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Illuminating the Shadow Economy of the Banner Garrison: Manchu Language Contracts as Sources for Qing Social History
Illuminating the Shadow Economy of the Banner Garrison: Manchu Language Contracts as Sources for Qing Social History Tristan G. Brown Ph.D. Candidate, Columbia University Though relatively understudied, Manchu-language commercial contracts…
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Webmaster’s Notes: Trends from the Blog
Over this past semester, MSG has featured fourteen blog posts by scholars actively using Manchu materials in their work. It is occasionally tempting to dismiss blogs as nothing more than…
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Manchu Folklore: Tales Told by a Bewitched Being
Hanung Kim, Harvard University The genre of folklore is a constituent part of Manchu literature, but has attracted less scholarly attention than other types of literature, perhaps because the strong…
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Thoughts on the Rise and Fall of the Manchu Language
Mårten Söderblom Saarela, Princeton University As a friend recently pointed out to me, Manchu translations of Chinese from the Qing period often seem to adhere to a method in which…
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A Hard-won Work
A Hard-won Work: A. O. Ivanovskii’s Manchzhurskaia khrestomatiia Gregory Afinogenov, Harvard University Aleksei Osipovich Ivanovskii’s academic career was not exactly an unqualified success. In1885, at the age of 22, he…