China and the Manchus

E-text prepared by John Bickers and Dagny and revised by David Widger, Kuwehe, Judith Wirawan, Juliet Sutherland, Tony De Vita, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)

A NÜ-CHÊN TARTAR ( 14th Century )
BY HERBERT A. GILES, M.A., LL.D.
Professor of Chinese in the University of Cambridge, and sometime H.B.M. Consul at Ningpo
It is impossible to give here a complete key to the pronunciation of Chinese words. For those who wish to pronounce with approximate correctness the proper names in this volume, the following may be a rough guide:—
a as in alms. ê u in fun. i ie in thief. o aw in saw. u oo in soon. ü u in French, or ü in German. ŭ e in her. ai aye (yes). ao ow in cow. ei ey in prey. ow o (not as ow in cow). ch ch in church. chih chu in church. hs sh (hsiu=sheeoo). j in French. ua and uo wa and wo .
The insertion of a rough breathing ʽ calls for a strong aspirate.
The Manchus are descended from a branch of certain wild Tungusic nomads, who were known in the ninth century as the Nü-chêns, a name which has been said to mean west of the sea. The cradle of their race lay at the base of the Ever-White Mountains, due north of Korea, and was fertilised by the head waters of the Yalu River.
In an illustrated Chinese work of the fourteenth century, of which the Cambridge University Library possesses the only known copy, we read that they reached this spot, originally the home of the Su-shên tribe, as fugitives from Korea; further, that careless of death and prizing valour only, they carried naked knives about their persons, never parting from them by day or night, and that they were as poisonous as wolves or tigers. They also tattooed their faces, and at marriage their mouths. By the close of the ninth century the Nü-chêns had become subject to the neighbouring Kitans, then under the rule of the vigorous Kitan chieftain, Opaochi, who, in 907, proclaimed himself Emperor of an independent kingdom with the dynastic title of Liao, said to mean iron, and who at once entered upon that long course of aggression against China and encroachment upon her territory which was to result in the practical division of the empire between the two powers, with the Yellow River as boundary, Kʽai-fêng as the Chinese capital, and Peking, now for the first time raised to the status of a metropolis, as the Kitan capital. Hitherto, the Kitans had recognised China as their suzerain; they are first mentioned in Chinese history in A.D. 468, when they sent ambassadors to court, with tribute.