Yongning Temple Stele

52°56′N139°46′E/ 52.94°N 139.76°E/52.94; 139.76

TheYongning Temple Stele(Chinese:Vĩnh Ninh chùa bia) is a stele erected by the ChineseMing dynastyin 1413 with a trilingual inscription to commemorate the founding of the Yongning Temple ( Vĩnh Ninh chùa ) in theNurganoutpost, near the mouth of theAmur River,by the eunuchYishiha.The location of the temple is the village ofTyrnearNikolayevsk-on-AmurinRussia.This stele is renowned both as the latest known example of a monumental inscription in theJurchen script,and also for the inscription of the BuddhistmantraOm mani padme humin four differentscriptson its sides. A stele with a monolingual Chinese inscription, commemorating the repair of the temple by Yishiha, was erected in 1433. Both monuments are now held at theArsenyev MuseuminVladivostok.

Background

The Ming government under theYongle Emperor(reigned 1402–1424) attempted to expand its influence in the far north and defend itself against theMongolsby setting up a system of guards and posts in the territory of theHaixi JurchensandJianzhou Jurchensin theLiaodong Peninsulaand the area of modernJilinprovince, giving official positions to the local Jurchen leaders in exchange for their allegiance.^[1]In 1409 theNurgan Regional Military Commission,covering the region of the lowerAmur Riverand the island ofSakhalin,was established, but this region was under the control of the 'Wild Jurchens' who made raids on Chinese outposts. In 1412, in response to these raids the Yongle Emperor commanded the eunuch Yishiha, a Haixi Jurchen by origin, to lead an expedition to pacify the region. The following year Yishiha set off with a fleet of twenty-five ships and a thousand soldiers, as well as architects and craftsmen. He sailed down theSungari Riverand into the Amur River, reaching a place the Chinese called Telin đặc lâm (modernTyr) where he stayed for almost a year. Near a cliff overlooking the Amur River he built a Buddhist temple named the Temple of Eternal Tranquility (Yongning Temple).^[2]^[3]

In response to the destruction of Buddhist sculptures by localshamans,Yishiha made further expeditions to the Nurgan region in the 1420s, and in 1432–1433 he made one last expedition with 50 ships and 2,000 soldiers to invest a Jurchen chief as the new Nurgan Military Commissioner. As the temple he had founded twenty years earlier had been destroyed, Yishiha built a new Yongning Temple, situated a short distance away from its predecessor, overlooking the Amur River.^[2]^[3]In 1435 the Ming government abandoned its military presence in the region, and disbanded the Nurgan Regional Military Commission.^[1]

The 1413 Stele

Om mani padme hum
Chinese
Hanzi	Úm sao đâu bá 𡄣 hồng
Pinyin	ǎn má ní bā mí hōng
Jurchen
Jurchen script
Transliteration	am ma ni ba mi xu^{[note 1]}
Mongolian
Mongolian	ᠣᠣᠮᠮᠠ᠋ᠨᠢᠪᠠᠳᠮᠢᠬᠤᠩ
Transliteration	oom ma ni bad mi qung
Tibetan
Tibetan	ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པད་མེ་ཧཱུཾ
Transliteration	oṁ maṇi pad me hūṁ

The 1413 stele was erected at Yongning Temple to commemorate its construction by Yishiha. The stele is 179 × 83 × 42 cm in dimensions,^[4]and is inscribed on the front with an inscription inChinesewhich extols the Yongle Emperor and recounts Yishiha's expedition. On the back of the stele are abbreviated versions of the Chinese inscription written inMongolianandJurchen.On one side of the stele, the BuddhistmantraOm mani padme humis engraved vertically in four different scripts:^[4]^[5]

This stele is the latest known example of an inscription in theJurchen script.^[6]The earliest record of this stele was probably in book published in 1639 by a Chinese scholar called Yang Bin, but a rubbing of the actual inscription was not published until 1887 after a Qing official called Cao Tingjie made a journey along the Amur River in 1885. The stele was removed to Vladivostok Museum in 1904.^[4]

The 1433 Stele

The 1433 stele was erected in commemoration of the rebuilding of the Yongning Temple by Yishiha in 1433. It has a single, monolingual Chinese inscription.^[5]

Gallery

Notes

^The Jurchen readings are taken fromJin Qizong'sDictionary of Jurchen(Beijing: Wenwu Chubanshe, 1984). The characters are nos. 474, 370, 560, 419, 641 and 385 inWilhelm Grube'sDie Sprache und Schrift der Jučen(Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1896).

References

^^a ^bLi, Gertraude Roth (2002). "State Building before 1644". In Peterson, Willard J. (ed.).The Ch'ing Empire to 1800.Cambridge History of China. Vol. 9. Cambridge University Press. pp. 11–14.ISBN 978-0-521-24334-6.
^^a ^bStephan, John J. (1996).The Russian Far East: A History.Stanford University Press. pp. 16–17.ISBN 978-0-8047-2701-3.
^^a ^bTsai, Shih-shan Henry (1996).The Eunuchs in the Ming dynasty.SUNY Press. pp. 129–130.ISBN 978-0-7914-2687-6.
^^a ^b ^cKane, Daniel(1989).The Sino-Jurchen Vocabulary of the Bureau of Interpreters.Indiana University, Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies. pp. 63–68.ISBN 978-0-933070-23-3.
^^a ^bJin, Guangping;Jin, Qizong(1980).Nữ Chân ngôn ngữ văn tự nghiên cứu[Study of Jurchen Language and Script]. Wenwu Chubaneshe. pp. 355–376.
^Kiyose, Gisaburō Norikura (1977).A Study of the Jurchen Language and Script: Reconstruction and Decipherment.Hōritsubunka-sha. p. 25.