''The Tale of the Nisan Shaman'' (also spelled "Nishan"; ) is a Manchu folk tale about a female

shaman Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spir ...

who resurrects the son of a rich landowner.

Versions

Variants of the tale are also found among the Evenk, Daur, and Nanai peoples. The tale was transmitted orally, and manuscripts were rare; Soviet ethnographer A. V. Grebenshchikov managed to purchase two during his early research trips to

Northeast China Northeast China or Northeastern China () is a geographical region of China, which is often referred to as "Manchuria" or "Inner Manchuria" by surrounding countries and the West. It usually corresponds specifically to the three provinces east of ...

in 1908 and 1909, the first near

Qiqihar Qiqihar () is the second-largest city in the Heilongjiang province of China, in the west central part of the province. The built-up (or metro) area made up of Longsha, Tiefeng and Jianhua districts had 959,787 inhabitants, while the total populat ...

, and the second at

Aigun Aigun (; Manchu: ''aihūn hoton''; ) was a historic Chinese town in northern Manchuria, situated on the right bank of the Amur River, some south (downstream) from the central urban area of Heihe (which is across the Amur from the mouth of th ...

. He had a third manuscript given to him in

Vladivostok Vladivostok ( rus, Владивосто́к, a=Владивосток.ogg, p=vɫədʲɪvɐˈstok) is the largest city and the administrative center of Primorsky Krai, Russia. The city is located around the Golden Horn Bay on the Sea of Japan, c ...

in 1913 by a man named Dekdenge. The Qiqihar manuscript shows some unusual features in its orthography; in particular, the verbal tense markers therein are written separately from their base verbs, whereas the standard practise in written Manchu is to write them attached to the base verb. A 1930s ethnographic survey by Johnson Ling of the Academia Sinica () recorded 18 different versions of the tale among Nanai tribes on the

Songhua River The Songhua or Sunghwa River (also Haixi or Xingal, russian: Сунгари ''Sungari'') is one of the primary rivers of China, and the longest tributary of the Amur. It flows about from the Changbai Mountains on the China–North Korea bo ...

. , based on Grebenshchikov's manuscript, was the first

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

translation. In 1969, an English translation was made by George Meszoly, a

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

undergraduate; however, it was never published. Seong Baek-in (then of

Myongji University Myongji University () is a private, Christian university founded in 1948 in South Korea. It provides higher education in the fields of engineering, sciences and humanities. It has two campuses: the Social Science Campus is located in Seoul and ...

) made a

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language ** ...

translation five years later (). The first ''published'' English translation, , relied on the annotations in Volkova's and Seong's works, but did not refer to Ling's study. A Hungarian translation came out in 1987.

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See also

References

Notes

Sources

Translations

Further reading