he Mantchous, upon the model of those of the Mongols. Subsequently, in
1641, a man of great genius, named Tahai, perfected the work, and gave to
the Mantchou system of letters the elegance, clearness, and refinement
which now characterize it.

Chun-Tche had the finest productions of Chinese literature translated
into Mantchou. Khang-Hi established an academy of learned persons,
equally versed in the Chinese and Tartar languages, whom he employed upon
the translation of classical and historical works, and in the compilation
of several dictionaries. In order to express novel objects and the
various conceptions previously unknown to the Mantchous, it was necessary
to invent terms, borrowed, for the most part, from the Chinese, and
adapted, by slight alterations, as closely as possible, to the Tartar
idiom. This process, however, tending to destroy, by imperceptible
degrees, the originality of the Mantchou language, the Emperor
Kien-Loung, to avert the danger, had a Mantchou dictionary compiled, from
which all Chinese words were excluded. The compilers went about
questioning old men and other Mantchous deemed most conversant with their
mother-tongue, and rewards were given to such as brought forward an
obsolescent word or expression which was deemed worthy of revival and
perpetuation in the dictionary.

Thanks to the solicitude and enlightened zeal of the first sovereigns of
the present dynasty, there is now no good Chinese book which has not been
translated into Mantchou; and all these translations are invested with
the greatest possible authenticity, as having been executed by learned
academies, by order and under the immediate auspices of several emperors:
and as having, moreover, been subsequently revised and corrected by other
academies, equally learned, and whose members were versed alike in the
Chinese language and in the Mantchou idiom.

The Mantchou language has attained, by means of all these learned
labours, a solid basis; it may, indeed, become no longer spoken, but it
will ever remain a classic tongue, and ever be of most important aid to
philologers applying their studies to the Asiatic tongues. Besides
numerous and faithful translations of the best Chinese books, the
Mantchou language possesses versions of the principal productions in the
Lamanesque, Thibetian, and Mantchou literature. A few years labour will
thus suffice to place the diligent student of Mantchou in full possession
of all the most pr