The Qing trilingual Mirror of the Manchu language
A 1780 imperial dictionary matching Manchu, Mongolian and Chinese words with their sounds.
Full title Imperially Produced Manchu-Mongolian-Chinese Trilingual Mirror of Manchu with Phonetic Transcriptions (31 juan, 1780)
御製滿珠蒙古漢字三合切音清文鑑
Qianlong imperial commission
Ordered by the Qianlong emperor, this 31 chapter dictionary of 1780 sets Manchu words beside their Mongolian and Chinese equivalents, with phonetic transcriptions, so that court officials could read Manchu and Mongolian names of offices, peoples and places in a standard form. The card lists a Siku quanshu manuscript copy in 26 volumes, in which the Manchu and Mongolian scripts were hand copied by scribes. The atlas holds only a poor-quality machine reading (OCR) of this scan, and no passages were selected or read for this guide.
- How they knew
- Official record
- Who “Tartar” means here
- Not recorded. The card names Manchus, Mongols and Chinese. This is an internal Qing dictionary, not a European account that called the Manchus Tartars.
- Why read it
- It is a key to reading Manchu and Mongolian terms for peoples, offices and places as the Qing court fixed them.
- Watch out
- The manuscript is a copy of the 1780 palace print, and the hand-copied Manchu and Mongolian scripts may hold scribal errors.
What it says
No quotes from this one yet. Its text is out of reach for now, or the scan could not be read.
The fine print
How we know
official or contemporary record An official document or a record made at the time.
official lexicon
Research notes
- Manuscript copy of the 1780 palace print; Manchu and Mongolian scripts hand-copied by Siku scribes.
Why it matters
Key to reading Manchu and Mongolian terms for peoples, offices and places as standardised at the Qing court; supports the trilingual name register alongside the Xiyu tongwen zhi.
Places named
Qing empire
Peoples named
Manchus; Mongols; Chinese