Dragon Bytes
Did you know about the word "Shaman"?
People like the Jurchen and the Manchus spoke dialects of the southern branch of the Tungus language family. Many may never have heard of the Tungusic languages in northeast Asia (whose speakers include reindeer herding people of Siberia), but most people probably know a word of Tungusic origin. That word is "shaman."

Shamanic traditions are widespread in the world, but generally refer to people in hunter-gatherer and tribal societies who have the capacity to communicate with the spiritual world. In northeast Asia, they frequently undergo a process of symbolic rebirth in which they die, are disarticulated and then reassembled by supernatural beings. Through this process, they receive special powers, such as those for curing illness.

The word "shaman" is no doubt an ancient one in the Altaic language family (which includes Turkic, Mongol and Tungusic speakers). Apparently, its first written use comes in the observations of the Song Dynasty envoy Xu Mengxin (1126-1207), Collected Accounts of the Treaties with the North Under Three Reigns. Xu evaluates the leading characters in the Wanyan clan of the Jurchen:

Akuta was able to assess the situation and to make good plans. Nienhan was a good strategist and loved to kill. Ku-she was resolute, firm and vindictive. Nienhan served Ku-she like he would have done an elder brother. At home Ku-she used to be seated above Nienhan, but abroad Nien-han was seated above Ku-she.

Wu-shih was crafty and talented. It was he who personally devised laws and a script for the Jurchen, and thus shaped them into one state (kuo). The people of the state called him shan-man; shan-man in Jurchen means a shamaness. This was because he understood changing conditions like a god. From Nien-han down, nobody was able to be his equal. (Franke 1975:155)

Wu-shih sounds like a remarkable person. If he really was shaman, he spanned two worlds in a fascinating way that merged Jurchen tribal traditions with key steps in the transition to a civilized state.

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