The Qing Tradition and the Return of Manchu Lexicography to China (1970s–1990s)

Abstract

Summary In Qing China (1644–1911), many bilingual dictionaries of Manchu and Chinese were compiled to serve the needs of a multilingual empire. They were largely forgotten in the 20th century. In the 1970s, government initiatives to organize and research the historical heritage meant greater interaction with the Manchu language of the millions of Qing administrative documents still extant. Several projects to compile Manchu-Chinese dictionaries were thus undertaken, leading to the simultaneous publication of several titles in the early 1990s. The new Manchu dictionaries appealed to the Qing lexicographical tradition in their arrangement. By comparing the organization of two recent Manchu dictionaries, compiled respectively by An Shuangcheng (b.1942) and Hu Zengyi (b.1936), two scholars based in Beijing, this paper reveals that although no one pointed it out, the allegedly traditional arrangement in fact differed substantially between dictionaries.