Conversation with Brian Tawney: The Portland Manchu Reading Group and the English Translation of the Manzhou shilu

Ice aniya amba urgun okini, gucuse! ᡳᠴᡝ ᠠᠨᡳᠶᠠ ᠠᠮᠪᠠ ᡠᡵᡤᡠᠨ ᠣᡴᡳᠨᡳ᠈ ᡤᡠᠴᡠᠰᡝ᠉

Happy new year of 2021 from the Manchu Studies Group! Wishing you all continued good health and good spirits as we prepare to welcome the Year of the Ox.

Last December, we had the pleasure of catching up with Brian Tawney. Many of you have known Brian as a long time member of a Manchu reading group based in Portland, OR. For almost twenty years now, he has been meeting together every week to read Manchu with Steve Wadley (Professor of Chinese and International Studies at Portland State University, also a long-time editor of Saksaha), Keith Dede (Professor of Chinese at Lewis and Clark College, studied Manchu with Jerry Norman), and Tom Larsen (Professor Emeritus at Portland State University). We are excited to share a conversation between Manchu Studies Group president He Bian and Brian, in which he tells us stories of how the reading group began on the campus of Portland State University, how the meetings went virtual around 2007 – way earlier than our present age of zoom meetings – and how the late Professor Jerry Norman had influenced the group’s interest in the philological and linguistic study of Manchu. 

Picking up on the theme of Manzhou shilu from He’s previous conversation with Loretta Kim, Brian also updated us on his group’s long-time project to prepare the first complete English translation of the Manzhou shilu, which is near completion. We also discussed the group’s translation strategy, challenges of textual variations, and potential audiences both in and beyond academia. Toward the end of the conversation, Brian shared his favorite moment in the narrative of Nurhaci’s career, and we also touched on the recent popular fascination over pre-Conquest Jurchens and pondered how can we as scholars respond to that.

We hope you enjoy listening to this conversation, and let us all make a resolution to read and practice more Manchu skills this year!