''The Tale of the Nisan Shaman'' (also spelled "Nishan"; ) is a

Manchu The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic peoples, Tungusic East Asian people, East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized Ethnic minorities in China, ethnic minority in China and the people from wh ...

folk tale about a female

shaman Shamanism is a spiritual practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with the spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiritual energies into ...

who resurrects the son of a rich landowner.

Versions

Variants of the tale are also found among the

Evenks The Evenki, also known as the Evenks and formerly as the Tungus, are a Tungusic peoples, Tungusic people of North Asia. In Russia, the Evenki are recognised as one of the Indigenous peoples of the Russian North, indigenous peoples of the Russi ...

Daurs The Daurs, Dagur, Daghur, or Dahur ( Dagur:Daure; Khalkha Mongolian: , ; ; Russian: Дауры, Daury) are a Mongolic people originally native to Dauriya and now predominantly located in Northeast China (and Siberia, Russia, in the past). The D ...

, and

Nanais The Nanai people () are a Tungusic people of East Asia who have traditionally lived along Heilongjiang (Amur), Songhuajiang (Sunggari) and Wusuli River (Ussuri) on the Middle Amur Basin. The ancestors of the Nanai were the Wild Jurchens of no ...

. The tale was transmitted orally, and manuscripts were rare; Soviet ethnographer Alexander Grebenshchikov managed to purchase two during his early research trips to

Northeast China Northeast China () is a geographical region of China, consisting officially of three provinces Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang. The heartland of the region is the Northeast China Plain, the largest plain in China with an area of over . The regi ...

in 1908 and 1909, the first near

Qiqihar Qiqihar (also spelled Tsitsihar) 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, w ...

, and the second at

Aigun Aigun ( zh, s=瑷珲, t=璦琿, p=Ài Hún; Manchu: ''aihūn''; ) 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 ...

. He had a third manuscript given to him in

Vladivostok Vladivostok ( ; , ) is the largest city and the administrative center of Primorsky Krai and the capital of the Far Eastern Federal District of Russia. It is located around the Zolotoy Rog, Golden Horn Bay on the Sea of Japan, covering an area o ...

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 Academia Sinica (AS, ; zh, t=中央研究院) is the national academy of the Taiwan, Republic of China. It is headquartered in Nangang District, Taipei, Nangang, Taipei. Founded in Nanjing, the academy supports research activities in mathemat ...

() recorded eighteen different versions of the tale among Nanai tribes on the

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

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

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

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

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

undergraduate; however, it was never published.

Seong Baek-in Seong Baek-in (; December 7, 1933 – December 19, 2018) was a South Korean linguist who was professor emeritus of linguistics at Seoul National University. His primary area of research is on the Manchu language. Career Seong served as a profes ...

(then of

Myongji University Myongji University () is a Private university, private, Christianity in Korea, 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 Socia ...

) made a

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, people from the Korean peninsula or of Korean descent * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Korean **Korean dialects **See also: North–South differences in t ...

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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Further reading