Jurchen (, ; , ) were a number of East Asian Tungusic-speaking people. They lived in northeastern China, also known as Manchuria, before the 18th century. Hong Taiji renamed the Jurchens as Manchus in 1635. The Jurchens were culturally diverse, with different groups living as hunter-gatherers, pastoralist semi-nomads, or sedentary agriculturists. Generally lacking a central authority, and having little communication with each other, many Jurchen groups fell under the influence of neighbouring dynasties, their chiefs paying tribute and holding nominal posts as effectively hereditary commanders of border guards.
The Jurchens are chiefly known for establishing the Jin (1115–1234) and Qing (1636–1912) conquest dynasties on Chinese territory. The latter dynasty, originally calling itself the Later Jin, was founded by a Jianzhou commander, Nurhaci (r. 1616–26), who unified most Jurchen tribes, incorporated their entire population into hereditary military regiments known as the Eight Banners, and patronized the creation of an alphabet for their language based on the Mongolian script. The term Manchu, already in official use by the Later Jin at that time, was in 1635 decreed to be the sole acceptable name for that people.
Classification Han officials of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) classified them into three groups, reflecting relative proximity to the Ming: Jianzhou (Chinese: 建州) Jurchens, some of whom were mixed with Chinese populations, lived in the proximity of the Mudan River, the Changbai mountains, and Liaodong. They were noted as able to sew clothes similar to the Chinese, and lived by hunting and fishing, sedentary agriculture, and trading in pearls and ginseng. Haixi (Chinese: 海西) Jurchens, named after the Haixi or Songhua River, included several populous and independent tribes, largely divided between semi-nomadic pastoralists in the west and sedentary agriculturalists in the east. They were the Jurchens most strongly influenced by the Mongols. Yeren (Chinese: 野人, lit. 'Wild People,' or, 'savage,' 'barbarian'), a term sometimes used by Chinese and Korean commentators to refer to all Jurchens. It more specifically referred to the inhabitants of the sparsely populated north of Manchuria beyond the Liao and Songhua river valleys, supporting themselves by hunting, fishing, pig farming, and some migratory agriculture. Many "Yeren Jurchens", like the Nivkh (speaking a language isolate), Negidai, Nanai, Oroqen, and many Evenks, are today considered distinct ethnic groups. In Outer Manchuria, some Han Chinese men married the local "Yeren Jurchen" women, and their mixed Sinitic-Tungusic descendants became the Taz people.
Name
Lüzhen/Nüzhen The name Jurchen is derived from a long line of other variations of the same name.
The initial Khitan form of the name was Lüzhen. The variant Nrjo-tsyin (now Nüzhen, whence English Nurchen) appeared in the 10th century under the Liao dynasty. The Jurchens were also interchangeably known as the Nrjo-drik (now Nüzhi). This is traditionally explained as an effect of the naming taboo, with the character being removed after the 1031 enthronement of Zhigu, Emperor Xingzong of Liao, because it appeared in the sinified form of his personal name, Zongzhen. Aisin Gioro Ulhicun, however, argues that this was a later folk etymology and the original reason was uncertainty among dialects regarding the name's final -n.
The form Niuche was introduced to the West by Martino Martini in his 1654 work De bello tartarico historia, and it soon appeared, e.g., on the 1660 world map by Nicolas Sanson.
Jurchen Jurchen is an anglicization of Jurčen,. an attempted reconstruction of this unattested original form of the native name, which has been transcribed into Middle Chinese as Tsyu-li-tsyin (; Pinyin: Zhūlǐzhēn) and into Khitan small script as Julisen. The ethnonyms Sushen and Jizhen (, Baxter-Sagart. recorded in geographical works like the Classic of Mountains and Seas and the Book of Wei are possibly cognates.《汲冢周书》. It was the source of Fra Mauro's and Marco Polo's , reflecting the Persian form of their name. Vajda considers that the Jurchens' name probably derives from the Tungusic words for "reindeer people" and is cognate with the names of the Orochs of Khabarovsk Province and the Oroks of Sakhalin. ("Horse Tungus" and "Reindeer Tungus" are still the primary divisions among the Tungusic cultures.)
Janhunen argues that these records already reflect the Classical Mongolian plural form of the name, recorded in the Secret History as J̌ürčät,. and further reconstructed as *Jörcid, The modern Mongolian form is Зүрчид (Zürčid) whose medial does not appear in the later Jurchen Jucen or Jušen (Jurchen:) or Manchu Jushen (Jussin). In Manchu, this word was more often used to describe the serfs—though not slaves—of the free Manchu people, who were themselves mostly the former Jurchens. To describe the historical people who founded the Jin dynasty, they reborrowed the Mongolian name as Jurcit.
In the dictionary "Complete Manchu-Russian dictionary" by Ivan Zakharov, the word чжурчэнь (Jurchen’) is defined as resistance, disobedience, insubordination (сопротивление, непослушание, непокорность).
Appearance
According to William of Rubruck, the Jurchens were "swarthy like Spaniards."
Sin Chung-il, a Korean emissary who in 1595 had visited the Jurchen living north-west of the Yalu River, notes that during his visit to Fe Ala all those who served Nurhaci were uniform in their dress and hairstyle. They all shaved a portion of their scalp and kept the remaining hair in a long plaited braid. All men wore leather boots, breeches, and tunics.
History
Origin
Mohe origin When the Jurchens first entered Chinese records in 748, they inhabited the forests and river valleys of the land which is now divided between China's Heilongjiang Province and Russia's Primorsky Krai. In earlier records, this area was known as the home of the Sushen ( BC), the Yilou (around AD 200), the Wuji (), and the Mohe (). Scholarship since the Qing period traces the origin of the Jurchens to the "Wanyen tribe of the Mohos" around Mt. Xiaobai, or to the Heishui or Blackwater Mohe, and some sources stress the continuity between these earlier peoples with the Jurchen but this remains conjectural.
The tentative ancestors of the Jurchens, the Tungusic Mohe tribes, were people of the multi-ethnic kingdom of Balhae. The Mohe enjoyed eating pork, practiced pig farming extensively, and were mainly sedentary. They used both pig and dog skins for coats. They were predominantly farmers and grew soybean, wheat, millet, and rice in addition to hunting. The Mohe practiced slavery. Horses were rare in the region they inhabited until the 10th century under the domination of the Khitans. The Mohe rode reindeer.
Wanyan origin There is no dated evidence of the Jurchens before the time of Wugunai (1021–74), when the Jurchens began to coalesce into a nation-like federation. According to tradition passed down via oral transmission, Wugunai was the 6th generation descendant of Hanpu, the founder of the Wanyan clan, who therefore must have lived around the year 900. Hanpu originally came from the Heishui Mohe tribe of Balhae. According to the History of Jin, when he came to the Wanyan tribe, it was for the repayment of a murder and a form of compensation. He had two brothers, one who stayed in Goryeo and the other in Balhae when he left. By the time he arrived and settled among the Wanyan, he was already 60 years old and accepted as a "wise man". He succeeded in settling a dispute between two families without resorting to violence, and as a reward, was betrothed to a worthy unmarried maiden also 60 years old. The marriage was blessed with the gift of a dark ox, which was revered in Jurchen culture, and from this union came one daughter and three sons. With this, Hanpu became the chief of the Wanyan and his descendants became formal members of the Wanyan clan.
Because Hanpu arrived from Goryeo, some South Korean scholars have claimed that Hanpu hailed from Goryeo. According to Alexander Kim, this cannot be easily identified as him being Korean because many Balhae people lived in Goryeo at that time. Later when Aguda appealed to the Balhae people in the Liao dynasty for support by emphasizing their common origin, he only mentioned those who descended from the "seven Wuji tribes", which the Goguryeo people were not a part of. It seems by that point, the Jurchens saw only the Mohe tribes as a related people. Some western scholars consider the origin of Hanpu to be legendary in nature. Herbert Franke described the narrative provided in the History of Jin as an "ancestral legend" with a historical basis in that the Wanyan clan had absorbed immigrants from Goryeo and Balhae during the 10th century. Frederick W. Mote described it as a "tribal legend" that may have born the tribe's memories. The two brothers remaining in Goryeo and Balhae may represent ancestral ties to those two peoples while Hanpu's marriage may represent the tribe's transformation from a matrilineal to patrilineal society.
Qing origin Hongtaiji, the Qing dynasty emperor of the Aisin Gioro clan, claimed that their progenitor, Bukūri Yongšon (布庫里雍順), was conceived from a virgin birth. According to the legend, three heavenly maidens, namely Enggulen (恩古倫), Jenggulen (正古倫) and Fekulen (佛庫倫), were bathing at a lake called Bulhūri Omo near the Changbai Mountains. A magpie dropped a piece of red fruit near Fekulen, who ate it. She then became pregnant with Bukūri Yongšon. However, another older version of the story by the Hurha (Hurka) tribe member Muksike recorded in 1635 contradicts Hongtaiji's version on location, claiming that it was in Heilongjiang province close to the Amur river where Bulhuri lake was located where the "heavenly maidens" took their bath. This was recorded in the Jiu Manzhou Dang and is much shorter and simpler in addition to being older. This is believed to be the original version and Hongtaiji changed it to the Changbai mountains. It shows that the Aisin Gioro clan originated in the Amur area and the Heje (Hezhen) and other Amur valley Jurchen tribes had an oral version of the same tale. It also fits with Jurchen history since some ancestors of the Manchus originated north before the 14th-15th centuries in the Amur and only later moved south.
Liao vassals By the 11th century, the Jurchens had become vassals of the Khitan rulers of the Liao dynasty. The Jurchens in the Yalu River region had been tributaries of Goryeo since the reign of Wang Geon, who called upon them during the wars of the Later Three Kingdoms period, but the Jurchens opportunistically switched allegiance between Liao and Goryeo multiple times. They offered tribute to both courts out of political necessity and the desire for material benefits.
In 1019, Jurchen pirates raided Japan for slaves. The Jurchen pirates slaughtered Japanese men while seizing Japanese women as prisoners. Fujiwara Notada, the Japanese governor, was killed. In total, 1,280 Japanese were taken prisoner, 374 Japanese were killed and 380 Japanese owned livestock were killed for food. Only 259 or 270 were returned by Koreans from the eight ships. Uchikura no Ishime, a Japanese woman, left behind a report which was copied down.