Jurchen people

Jurchen people
Chinese name
Chinese女真
Traditional Chinese女真/女眞
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinNǚzhēn
Wade–GilesNü3-chên1
South Korean name
Hangul여진
Transcriptions
Revised RomanizationYeojin
North Korean name
Chosŏn'gŭl녀진
Transcriptions
McCune–ReischauerNyŏjin
Russian name
RussianЧжурчжэни
RomanizationChzhurchzheni
Khitan name
Khitandʒuuldʒi (女直)[1]
Mongolian name
MongolianЗүрчид, Зөрчид, Жүрчид[citation needed]
Zürchid, Zörchid, Jürchid[2]
Middle Chinese name
Middle Chinese/ɳɨʌX t͡ɕiɪn/

Jurchen (Manchu: ᠵᡠᡧᡝᠨ Jušen, IPA: [dʒuʃən]; Chinese: 女真, Nǚzhēn [nỳ.ʈʂə́n]) is a term used to collectively describe a number of East Asian Tungusic-speaking people.[a] They lived in northeastern China, also known as Manchuria, before the 18th century. The Jurchens were renamed Manchus in 1635 by Hong Taiji.[6] Different Jurchen groups lived as hunter-gatherers, pastoralist semi-nomads, or sedentary agriculturists. Generally lacking a central authority, and having little communication with each other, many Jurchen groups fell under the influence of neighbouring dynasties, their chiefs paying tribute and holding nominal posts as effectively hereditary commanders of border guards.[7]

Han officials of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) classified them into three groups, reflecting relative proximity to the Ming:

  1. Jianzhou (Chinese: 建州) Jurchens, some of whom were mixed with Chinese populations,[citation needed] lived in the proximity of the Mudan river, the Changbai mountains, and Liaodong. They were noted as able to sew clothes similar to the Chinese, and lived by hunting and fishing, sedentary agriculture, and trading in pearls and ginseng.
  2. Haixi (Chinese: 海西) Jurchens, named after the Haixi or Songhua river, included several populous and independent tribes, largely divided between semi-nomadic pastoralists in the west and sedentary agriculturalists in the east. They were the Jurchens most strongly influenced by the Mongols.
  3. Yeren (Chinese: 野人, lit. 'Wild People,' or, 'savage,' 'barbarian'), a term sometimes used by Chinese and Korean commentators to refer to all Jurchens. It more specifically referred to the inhabitants of the sparsely populated north of Manchuria beyond the Liao and Songhua river valleys, supporting themselves by hunting, fishing, pig farming, and some migratory agriculture.[7]

Many "Yeren Jurchens", like the Nivkh (speaking a language isolate), Negidai, Nanai, Oroqen and many Evenks, are today considered distinct ethnic groups.

The Jurchens are chiefly known for producing the Jin (1115–1234) and Qing (1644–1912) conquest dynasties on the Chinese territory. The latter dynasty, originally calling itself the Later Jin, was founded by a Jianzhou commander, Nurhaci (r. 1616–26), who unified most Jurchen tribes, incorporated their entire population into hereditary military regiments known as the Eight Banners, and patronized the creation of an alphabet for their language based on the Mongolian script. The term Manchu, already in official use by the Later Jin at that time,[8] was in 1635 decreed to be the sole acceptable name for that people.

  1. ^ "遼朝國號非「哈喇契丹(遼契丹)」考" [The State Name of the Liao Dynasty was not “Qara Khitai (Liao Khitai )”] (PDF). 愛新覚羅烏拉熙春女真契丹学研究 (in Chinese). Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 September 2011.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference htt was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b Viktorova, Lydia Leonidovna (1980). Mongols: Origin of the People and Source of Culture (in Russian). Moscow: Nauka. p. 183. Это отчасти связано с недостаточным количеством материалов, отчасти - с допущенными ошибками. Например, фонетическое отождествление древнего народа дунху (восточные ху) с тунгусами, сделанное в начале XIX в. Абелем Ремюса лишь на принципе звукового сходства дунху - тунгус, привело к тому, что всех потомков дунху долгое время считали предками тунгусов. (rough translation: 'This is due to the insufficient amount of materials and partly due to the mistakes made. For example, the phonetic identification of the ancient people of the Donghu (Eastern Hu) with the Tungus, made at the beginning of the 19th century by Abel-Rémusat only on the principle of sound similarity between Donghu and Tungus. This led to the fact that for a long time all the descendants of the Donghu were considered the ancestors of the Tungus.')
  4. ^ Zarrow, Peter (23 September 2015). Educating China: Knowledge, Society and Textbooks in a Modernizing World, 1902–1937. Cambridge University Press. p. 191. ISBN 978-1-107-11547-7. Fan and Han noted that the Jurchens were of the Eastern Hu race (Donghuzu)
  5. ^ *Pulleyblank, Edwin G. (1983). "The Chinese and Their Neighbors in Prehistoric and Early Historic China," in The Origins of Chinese Civilization, University of California Press, pp. 411–466. quote (p. 452): "The chance similarity in modern pronunciation of Tung Hu "Eastern Hu,' and Tungus led to the once widely held assumption that the Eastern Hu were Tungusic in language. This is a vulgar error with no real foundation."
  6. ^ Lee, Lily Xiao Hong; Wiles, Sue (13 March 2014). Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women: Tang Through Ming, 618-1644. M.E. Sharpe. p. 222. ISBN 978-0-7656-4316-2. The Jin dynasty was established by the Jurchen people, ancestors of the Manchus who later founded the Qing dynasty.
  7. ^ a b Roth Li 2002, pp. 11–13.
  8. ^ Roth Li 2002, p. 27.


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