Manchu Bible History (3)

**List: Manchu Ministry the Bible ( the Bible ) Manchu... MANTCHOU. "I.--GEOGRAPHICAL EXTENT AND STATISTICS. THE Mantchou, Mantchew, or Mandjur language properly belongs to Mantchooria, an extensive region lying north of Corea and north-east of China Proper, and enclosing an area of 700,000 square miles, with an unknown amount of population.   From the year 1644 to the present time (1860), China has been governed by a dynasty of Mantchou princes, and the Mantchou language has consequently been extended to China, while Mantchooria itself has become an integral part of the Chinese empire.   All that portion of Mantchooria lying to the north of the river Amoor has within recent years (since 1847) been transferred to the sovereignty of Russia.   But although the line of the Amoor now marks the frontier between the empires of China and Russia, tribes of Mantchoos are still found to the northward of the river.    The total number of Mantchoos in China barely amounts to a million and a half: yet, notwith- standing their numerical inferiority, and their unpopularity with the Chinese, the entire empire has for upwards of two centuries been subject to their sway; and it is said to be solely owing to their suspicious and unsocial habits that China has been during that lengthened period a sealed country to Europeans. II.--CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LANGAUGE.    The elemental principles of the Mantchou, Mongolian, Tartar, and Finnish languages, may almost be said to be identical; but their genius and construction differ.   In the simplicity of their structure, and in the total absence of all inflection, properly so called, they approach nearer to the monosyllabic type than any other class of languages.   The relations of words in a sentence, in other languages denoted by inflection or by prefixes, are in these languages indicated by the juxtaposition of particles invariably placed after the noun or word to which they refer.   A peculiar and very inharmonious stiffness of construction is the natural result of this arrangement.   In Mantchou, especially, the collo- cation of words in sentences is restricted within very narrow and rigid rules; and as these rules are extremely arbitrary, a long Mantchou sentence is frequently utterly unintelligible until the last word is reached; so that in point of clearness of construction, even Chinese itself is sometimes superior to Mantchou.   But that is owing chiefly to the peculiar mode of conjugation in Mantchou, which is to be considered more as a combination of uninflected participles, affected by certain particles, than as inflections of tenses and moods of verbs as we are accustomed to call them.   So that the terms present, future, past, subjunctive, infinitive, etc., are used in Mantchou grammar more in a conventional than in an accurate manner.   In consequence of these defects, the Mantchous have little poetry: their most eloquent and lofty compositions can never rise beyond a series of dry propositions, in which each word and particle has its own proper and unvarying place assigned by rule.   At present, however, they have no national literature, all their books being translations from the Chinese.    With respect to its vocabulary, the Mantchou language has been said to comprehend three classes of words.   The first consists of those words which are common to the Mantchou and the Tungusians, and which are chiefly expressive of simple ideas and objects primarily necessary to existence: these constitute the basis of the language.   Among these original words are found a great number of terms which bear remarkable affinity to Latin and Greek words.   As, e.g., M. sengge, Lat. sanguis; M. aïsin, gold, Lat. æs, eisen; M. akha, Lat. aqua; M. aniya, Lat. annus; M. toma, Lat. tumulus; M. ilen- ggou, Lat. lingua, etc.; M. outtou-touttou, Gr. ούτω,τουτω, etc.   The second class includes the words which may be traced in the Mongolian, and these are very numerous.   The third class comprises terms which have been borrowed from the Chinese, but deprived of their monosyllabic form, and disguised by one or more unmeaning syllables arbitrarily appended to them.   Besides the above, Mantchou possesses many words relative to the Buddhistic system, borrowed from the Tibetans and Hindoos. The alphabet is syllabic, and, like the Chinese, is written in vertical columns from the top to the bottom of the page.   Unlike the Chinese, however, these columns proceed from left to right. III.--VERSIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES IN THIS LANGUAGE.    An imperfect and very unfaithful translation of part of the Scriptures into Mantchou is said to have been executed by some Jesuit mies.; and in 1818 an abortive attempt towards the pro- duction of a version was made under the sanction of the Governor of Irkutsk.   The prosecution of this important work ultimately devolved upon Lipoffzoff, a learned member of the Russian Bible Society, who had resided fourteen years at Pekin, by appointment of the Russian government, with the particular view of studying the Chinese and Mantchou languages.   The translation was carried on under the superintendence of Dr. Pinkerton; and in 1822 an edition of 550 copies of the Gospel according to St. Matthew was printed at St. Petersburg, from types furnished at the expense of the British and Foreign Bible Society.   A few copies of this Gospel were despatched to various places, whence it was hoped they could be put into circulation; and Dr. Gutzlaff met with one of these copies during his first or second visit to China.   The greater part of the remainder were destroyed in the awful flood which occurred in St. Petersburg in 1824.    The translation of the entire New Testament was soon afterwards completed, and was pronounced to be clear, idiomatic, and faithful; but no further editions were issued till 1834, when public attention was suddenly drawn to the subject by a discovery of a MS. version of almost the whole of the Old Testament.   Mr. Swan, of the London My. Society, found this MS. at St. Petersburg, whither it had been conveyed but a short time previously from Pekin.   Mr. Swan was engaged to copy the whole MS., and his transcript, after undergoing a thorough revision, was forwarded to the Committee of the British and Foreign Bible Society.   The version is considered very satisfactory, and it still awaits publication, for it was deemed desirable in the first place to complete the printing of the New Testament.    At this period (1834), when the committee were deliberating as to the best methods of continuing the revision and publication of the New Testament, Mr. George Borrow of Norwich, who possessed some knowledge of Mantchou, offered to undertake the supervision of the work.   As he was found to be peculiarly qualified for the task, he was sent to St. Petersburg, where great facilities exist for the acquisition of the Mantchou language.   In concert with the translator, he devoted himself to the revision of the entire version.   Permission was obtained to print the work at St. Petersburg; and in 1835 an edition of 1000 copies of the New Testament left the press.   This edition is beautifully printed, and in general free from typographical errors; but the rendering of the original is sometimes very arbitrary.   The whole impression was forwarded to London, to remain under the custody of the British and Foreign Bible Society until an opening be made by Providence for the distribution and circulation of the copies.   A few of these copies were distributed in 1843, by Mr. Lay, among the Tartars, and copies have subsequently been placed at the disposal of the mies. engaged in China. It seems probable, indeed, that more extensive efforts in reference to the Mantchou version will ere long be made.   It was determined by the Society to print, by way of experiment, a small edition of portions of the New Testament in Mantchou and Chinese, in parallel columns, and a fount of Mantchou type was forwarded to Shang-hae for the purpose.   This, however, with others of the Society's stores, was destroyed by the disastrous fire which occurred in 1856.   As there is reason to believe that the Scrip- tures printed in such a form would be highly useful, the work is now in progress; and St. Matthew and St. Mark in Mantchou and Chinese have already been published.   "There are many Chinese and Tartars (writes Dr. Medhurst) partially acquainted with both languages, who would be very glad to obtain books printed in this manner, when otherwise they might not give attention to them.""--The Bible of Every Land. (1860, Second Edition)   Samuel Bagster   [Info only] THE MANTCHOU VERSION.--1860   S. Bagster   [Info only: n.d. John 1:1-7 unknown.]

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