Re: Re: Re: VMs: Re: Voynich manuscript - Manchu solution claim by Z Banasik

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

Wr

http://assets.cambridge.org/0521243343/sample/0521243343WS.pdf

Gertraude Roth Li writes:-

Page 19:-
	The most striking example of the Jurchens borrowing from the
	culture of the stepper was in the realm of language. Jurchen
	language is affiliated with the Tungusic branch of the Altaic
	language family. The early Jurchens adapted the Khitan script
	to write their own language. Literary Jurchen died out soon
	after the fall of the Chin dynasty in the thirteenth century, but
	spoken Jurchen remained current as the lingua franca of the
	Manchurian region. For correspondence and record keeping,
	Jurchen chiefs used Mongolian, though some records, both
	commercial and governmental were kept in Chinese with the
	aid of Chinese scribes. It was not until the end of the
	sixteenth century [1599] that associates of Nurhaci [the Manchu
	leader] adapted the Mongolian alphabet to write Jurchen and
	thus created a new Jurchen literary language which became
	known as Manchu.

	Even prior to the adaptation of the Mongolian language, the
	Jurchen language contained many words and concepts of
	Mongolian origin. An estimated 20-30 percent of the Manchu
	vocabulary is of Mongolian origin.

See also: Nicholas Poppe, "Introduction to Altaic linguistics (Wiesbaden, 
1965), pp.160-1

Page 27:-
	The term Manchu (manju) occurs in the records of Nurhaci's
	time [in 1613, though Huang Chang-chien notes that it occurs
	in a Korean document of 1605]. However, it was formally
	adopted only in 1635.

Page 28:-
	Many of the earliest documents written in this [Manchu] script
	are preserved in the Old Manchu Archives (Chiu Man-chou tang),
	a collection of Manchu documents from 1607 to 1636
	[there's a modern edition, foreword by Ch'en Chieh-hsien,
	10 vols, Taipei, 1969].

So: old written Jurchen had died out before 1444, and so if the VMs is 
written in Manchu, its earliest date is 1599, and we should also see some 
similarities with written Mongolian. However, Banasik's "proto-Manchu" 
seems doubtful, as Manchu was formally constructed as a written Jurchen 
using elements of Mongolian by two of Nurhaci's advisors (see p.28 above). 
The VMs could be compared against the Old Manchu Archives for 
similarities... but I still think this is unlikely. But feel free to prove 
me wrong! :-o

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....


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