Anklebones and Poetry

In my continuing battle to understand Jakdan's poetry, I am currently wrestling with the following lines in Tolgiralame orire uculen:

ede

waliyaha jušuhun baju,

hohoko gosihon misun,

naracun hican,

buyenin duyen,

beye gincihiyan,

weri basucun,

geren-i geigen,

gisun-i fesin,

At this point in the poem Jakdan has become fed up with his miserable lot in life, and he wants to make a change.

Therefore

I’ve thrown out the sour dregs,

I’ve discarded the bitter fermented bean paste,

I long for the simple life,

I desire indifference,

for myself to be the beautiful one,

and the other to be the butt of jokes,

geren-i geigen,

gisun-i fesin,

How are we supposed to read these last two lines?

The easiest one to make sense of is gisun-i fesin. The word fesin refers to a handle, such as the handle of a sword or whip, and gisun is language or speech. There are very few ways to read this other than "handle of language", but what does that actually mean? Given the immediate context in the poem, it makes sense to read this line as referring to something that Jakdan wants, and since earlier in the poem Jakdan expresses envy towards people who are smooth talkers, I believe the best reading is something like "control over language" or "to be adept at language". The same semantic connection could be made in English by saying "having a handle on language".

The more difficult one is geren-i geigen. The word geren has meanings like "a crowd; the many; the multitude", while the word geigen refers to one of the ways that the anklebone (gacuha) can land. But what is the significance of this side of the gacuha?

Both Jakdan and the Staatsbibliothek poet(s) make references to geigen. SB 4.12 has the following lines:

utala sure,

tutala menen,

entekengge jata,

tentekengge geigen,

uttungge nekeliyen,

tuttungge jiramin,

Meaning:

So wise as this,

so stupid as that,

jata like this,

geigen like that,

thin in this way,

fat in that way,

The lines above pair antonyms with each other, so wise/stupid, thin/fat. We should conclude, then, that geigen is being used as an antonym for jata, which means (according to the Qianlong dictionary) "a weak or inferior person", or (according to Amyot) "an ordinary person without talent". So we can understand geigen to mean a talented or superior person.

This works well with Jakdan's other use of geigen in Soktorolame gingsiha ucun, where he concludes his description of the most fortunate people in society by saying:

ne je

niongnio deji,

geigen amban.

Most importantly

and best of all,

[they are] talented officials.

(There is a double-entendre in the last two examples which the reader is free to investigate, around the fact that geigen and geihen are homonyms, but that isn't strictly related to the topic of this post.)

My question now is: What is the connection between the meaning of "talented" and some particular side of the gacuha?

In the Mongolian practice of divination with anklebones, the anklebone is treated as having four sides. Two of these sides are considered "convex" and are treated as lucky, while the other two sides are considered "flat" and treated as unlucky. Of the two lucky sides, one is said to come up about three times more frequently than the other, and the same distribution is said to exist for the unlucky sides.

Norman's lexicon has an expression meke ceke tuwambi, "to see who is better, to compete", where meke and ceke are vaguely described as sides of a gacuha. The word ceke seems to come from Mongolian cege, meaning "the flat" (or unlucky) side of an anklebone, and is described in the Qianlong dictionary as oncohon, "face up". The word meke is not from Mongolian as far as I can tell, but would presumably mean the "convex" (or lucky) side, and is described in the Qianlong dictionary as umušuhun, or "turned over".

If geigen is one of the sides of a gacuha, and it is used in the meaning of "talented", it seems likely that it refers to the less frequent "lucky" side, the one that is worth most and hardest to achieve. This is the side called the "horse" in Mongolian.

So what does geren-i geigen mean as a full phrase? I think the best possible reading is "the most talented one in the crowd" or "the luckiest one in the crowd".

Dream within a dream

I'm working through Jakdan's Handan Dream, which opens with a discussion of the idea that we all live within a Great Dream. In this section I have collided with the following couplet, which I find relatively easy to parse, but quite difficult to understand:

yaya tolgin bisirengge niyalma inu seci, 

yaka niyalmai banjirengge tolgin waka biheni

The syntax here is easy to see, thanks to the parallel lines. Both lines contain a proposition, the first bracketed by the conditional seci, the second by the finite but interrogative biheni. The propositions are both copular, with the first line being of the form NP1 NP2 inu (NP1 is NP2), and the second is simply the negative of that same form, NP1 NP2 waka (NP1 is not NP2). In each case NP2 is a single word (niyalma, tolgin) and NP1 is a quantifier (yaya, yaka) followed by a relative expression (tolgin bisirengge, niyalmai banjirengge).

So it's pretty clear how all the lines are structured, but getting meaning out of it has been tough for me.

My difficulties lie in the relative expressions. Looking at tolgin bisirengge, at first it seems like it ought to mean "what exists in a dream." However, the phrase "what exists in a dream" should actually be tolgin de bisirengge, as attested by examples I have found elsewhere. We are missing the de in the relative expression, so that can't be the right reading.

Instead, I think we have to read this as "that in which a dream exists", or "that which has a dream". If we take it this way, yaya tolgin bisirengge niyalma inu would mean "Each thing in which a dream exists is a person". If you think of dreams as existing in people, then this makes sense.

Moving on to niyalmai banjirengge, the difficulty here is that the verb banjimbi can be transitive ("give birth to") or intransitive ("be born; become; live"). We could read this as "that at which a person is born; becomes; lives" or "that which a person gives birth to". We cannot read this as "that which gives birth to a person" because that would be niyalma banjirengge without the genitive -i.

I think we should go with the intransitive reading in this case, because we have no reason to believe that it would be idiomatic in Manchu to say that a person gives birth to dreams. This forms a nicer parallel with the first line, and gives us a rhetorical question: yaka niyalmai banjirengge tolgin waka, "What does a person live in that is not a dream"?

These two copular phrases are linked together as P1 seci, P2 biheni. It is tempting to take seci...biheni as an if-then clause, but I don't think the mundane idea of dreams residing in people logically leads us to the metaphysical conclusion that people live in dreams. I think Jakdan means to contrast these two statements with each other and call out the curious idea that dreams are within people, while at the same time people live within the Great Dream.

So putting all of that together, the best I can come up with is:

While every dream is said to exist within a person,

is there any person who does not live in a dream?

Dù Fǔ and his Father (via Jakdan)

Dù Fǔ wrote On Climbing the Yǎnzhōu Tower about a visit to his father during the last year of his father’s life. The poem reminds me of the last years of my own father’s life, when I would go to visit him in Tucson to take care of things for him. When I had free time, I would go out of town and climb up into the Saguaro National Park.

In the second quatrain of the poem, when Dù Fǔ looks on the remains of the past, I think he is reflecting on the end of his father’s life. A man that once seemed to have a place in the world is now standing alone, and things that once seemed permanent are now in ruins.

Here is my translation of Jakdan’s translation.

Yan jeo-i hoton-i taktu de tafakangge

dergi giyūn ama uilere fonde,

julergi taktu tuktan tuwame elehe,

neore tugi hai dai nurhūhai,

necin tala cing sioi nikeneme,

cin-i eldengge wehe emteli dabagan debi,

lu-i hoton deyen arkan susuha hede,

julgei unesi udu labdu bicibe,

enggeleme karade emhun guwele mele.

When attending to my father in the east county,

I first got my fill of the view from the south tower.

Just as the floating clouds connected me to Hǎidài,

the level plain drew me near to Qīngxú, and

the stele of Qín was alone on the mountain pass,

the city and palace of Lǔ were just a desolate scar.

Though the ancient relics were many,

when I leaned forward to look out, I did so alone, and furtively.

Notes

hai dai and cing sioi: Since Jakdan left hai untranslated, and did not render it as mederi (ocean), I take hai dai to be a proper name for the region from Mount Tai to the sea, rather than a phrase referring to two places, “Mount Tai and the sea.” Since cing sioi parallels it in the next line, I took that in the same way.

nurhūhai and nikeneme: The verb nurhūmbi means “to link together without a gap,” as in idu nurhūmbi, “to do shifts back-to-back without a break between them.” (That example comes from the Qianlong dictionary.) Presumably the subject of the verb is the thing that does the linking, and in this line that would be the floating clouds. However, if we are taking hai dai to be a single noun phrase, then what is being linked to what?

I think Jakdan understood these two lines to describe the way that the view from the tower connected the poet to the distant places around him. The clouds above connected him to the Hǎidài region, and the plain below connected him to Qīngxú.

It is interesting that nikeneme is not a finite form, giving the impression that the thought in the first quatrain is not yet complete. I tried to convey that by putting a dangling “and” at the end of the quatrain.

Go and Water the Horses Again

A while back I posted about a song in Grebenshchikov 45 about going to water the horses. I have now found a second, longer version of it in Grebenshchikov 45, and I have also determined that this is yet another extract from Jakdan’s translation of the Liáozhài. This makes the third work from G45 that is traceable to a Chinese original, and strengthens my feeling that this manuscript is composed largely of selections of other authors’ translations from Chinese.

It will be interesting to see if G45 contains any copies of Jakdan’s translations of classical Chinese poetry from Jabduha ucuri amtanggai baita, or Jakdan’s own compositions.

The Monastery behind Pò Shān Temple

This poem is kind of like my experience this morning. I got up early and worked on Manchu poetry, with early morning sun shining through the windows, and a clear blue sky outside. Then my kids came downstairs and started playing video games.

破山寺後禪院 （常健）

清晨入古寺，初日照高林。
曲徑通幽處，禪房花木深。
山光悅鳥性，潭影空人心。
萬籟此俱寂，唯聞鐘磬音。

Po šaṇ juktehen-i amargi samadi hūwa		The Monastery behind Pò Shān Temple
erde julgei juktehen de dosikade,		When I entered the ancient temple early in the morning,
mukdeke šun-i fosoko bujan-i sihin,		the canopy of the woods was lit up by the rising sun.
mudanggai doko daniyan-i ici hafungga,		A winding path went through toward the refuge,
samadi hūwa-i ilha moo fisin.		and thick were the flowers and trees of the monastery.
alin eldepi cecikei banin selacuka,		Birds rejoiced that the mountain was illuminated,
juce helmešehei niyalmai mujilen kenggehun,		as the pond reflected it, the human mind became empty.
eiten asuki nerginde [e]lenggei ekisakai,		For a moment, as all the fainter sounds became quiet,
donjihangge damu jungken kingken-i urkin.		all I heard was the clamor of bells and chime stones.

You might notice in my transliteration of the title, I used a dot under the n of šaṇ instead of šan. This is to reflect the fact that the n has a dot on it in Manchu, as you can see in the image below.

The general rule is that syllable-final n does not have a dot. One of the Jesuits (probably either Verbiest or Amyot, I don’t remember) tells us that the n without a dot indicates nasalization of the previous vowel. In this case, Jakdan adds the dot because the Chinese word shān 山 ends in a consonant n, not a nasalized vowel. This is something that is easily overlooked, but can sometimes help you tell the difference between a reference to the khan (han) and the Hàn (haṇ).

What is the genitive marker on ekisakai doing? Normally it would make an adverb, like “quietly,” but there’s no verb here for it to modify. From the context here, I think maybe this structure is comparable to the converb -hAi, which conveys that as one action proceeds, a second action proceeds along with it. This form appears in Jakdan’s translation of Lǐ Bái’s “Sitting Alone on Jìngtíng Mountain,” where he says geren cecike deken-i deyehei wajiha, “as the birds flew higher, they disappeared.”

In this case, since we have an adjective, I think Jakdan’s use of this form means that as the fainter sounds (of birds) became quiet, all the poet could hear was the ringing of bells and chime stones. He reinforces this idea by using the noisy word urkin to contrast with the fainter asuki of the previous line.

Topic versus Subject

Cén Shēn [岑參] wrote the following lines to Dù Fǔ [杜甫] when the two of them were serving together in different departments of the imperial government:

白髮悲花落，
青雲羨鳥飛。

The meaning of these lines seems relatively clear in the original Chinese:

The white-haired one grieves that flowers fall,
the dark clouds envy that birds fly.

Knowing that Cén Shēn addressed these lines to his respected elder Dù Fǔ, we can assume that the “white-haired one” must be Dù Fǔ, and the “dark clouds” would refer to the dark-haired younger man Cén Shēn. The couplet contrasts the older man’s sadness over what has passed away with the younger man’s envies and aspirations.

While the original lines seem relatively clear, what Jakdan did with them is not straightforward. Here are his lines:

funiyehe šarapi sihaha ilhai okto,
yacin tugingge deyenere gashai hihan,

The first line begins with a perfect converb phrase, funiyehe šarapi, “hair having turned white,” followed by a noun phrase, sihaha ilhai okto, “the medicine of falling flowers.” I have not found many clear cases of enjambment in Manchu poetry, so we should assume that this line contains a complete idea, and therefore that the medicine is a predicate. Somehow, we also need to square it with the meaning of the original.

A noun phrase can definitely be a predicate in Manchu poetry, and we often see this in poems with N-rhymes, because no Manchu verb form ends in -n. When we find the syntax NP₁ NP₂, we can usually insert a copula, reading it as “NP₁ is/are NP₂.” If that is what is going on here, and we take the medicine to be NP₂, then we need to look back and find NP₁, and the only previous explicit noun phrase in this line is “hair.” That would suggest a reading like:

The hair, having turned white, is the medicine of falling flowers

With a little imagination you could see how that line might mean something, but not necessarily the same kind of thing as the original Chinese line. The strangeness of this reading begs a closer examination of the line.

As we know, the hair in question belongs to Dù Fǔ, to whom the poem is addressed. If we take the topic of the line to be an unspoken “you,” then a different reading could be possible because the relationship between a topic and a noun predicate is looser than that between a subject and noun predicate. An example of this is the type of structure you might use when ordering a beer in Japanese:

私はビールです

In this line, the topic is “I” [私] and the comment is “[it] is a beer” [ビールです]. The meaning is not “I am a beer,” but rather “As for me, it will be a beer.” Applying this structure to the first line, we get a more sensible reading:

Your hair has turned white, and for you there is the medicine of fallen flowers

The word “medicine” doesn’t really capture the meaning of okto, which can also mean “poison,” so a slightly better reading could be:

Your hair has turned white, and for you there is the potency of fallen flowers

The topic+comment structure also works well for the second line, where the poet identifies himself as yacin tugingge, “the one with the dark clouds.” Treating that as the topic, we get:

For me, the dark-clouded one, there is the preciousness of flying birds

As a minor note, Jakdan’s birds are “flying away” (deye-ne-re), not just “flying”  (deye-re).

The word jedebule

In Resigning as Prime Minister I wondered if Jakdan inserted a specifically Manchu cultural reference into his translation by adding the word takan, “mustard greens.”

In his translation of The Lament of Jiéyú by Huángfǔ Rǎn he seems to have done it again with the word jedebule.

花枝出建章，		giyan jang gurung-ni ilhai gesengge tucike,
鳳管發昭陽。		jao yang deyen-i garudangga sihakū jedebule,
借問承恩者，		bai dacilaki doshon be aliha gegese,
雙蛾幾許長。		juru faitan antaka šuwar seme yangse.

The flowery ones of Jiànzhāng palace have come out,
The phoenix flutes of Zhāoyáng hall are [jedebule].
May I ask you, young ladies who receive favor,
How is it your eyebrows are so [šuwar seme] beautiful?

Jakdan uses the word jedebule to translate Chinese fā [發], but what does it actually mean? It is not inflected, and its placement suggests either a noun or an adjective.

The Qianlong dictionary explains jedebule as follows: kukji haijan be uculere de deribure mudan, “a starting tune when singing kukji and haijan.” The word haijan is further explained: ucun-i mudan kukji de adali, “the tune of a song, like kukji,̦” and kukji is explained as maksire de uculere ucun-i mudan, “the tune of a song where one jumps when one sings.”

From this, it seems jedebule refers to a type of tune that starts a type of dancing song. Amyot adds a bit of detail here in his definition of haijan: “Contenance des chantres mantchoux, qui imitent en chantant les plis et replis des serpents. On dit aussi kouktchi” – “a capacity of Manchu singers, who imitate in song the bending and folding of snakes. One also says kukji.” It is possible that Amyot witnessed this type of singing first-hand, so we can credit him on this.

Amyot’s definition is interesting for two reasons. The first reason is that it works well with the later šuwar seme used to describe the eyebrows of the young ladies. This onomatopoetic phrase refers to the sound of swords being drawn from their sheaths or of snakes slithering, but obviously eyebrows don’t make a sound, so it apparently refers to the shape or movement of the eyebrows.

The other reason that Amyot’s definition is interesting is that it was apparently misunderstood at some point by later lexicographers, and this misunderstanding has gained a life of its own. At some point Amyot’s replis were taken to mean “replies,” creating a set of definitions (including the best dictionaries in the field) which take either kukji or haijan to mean a call-and-response type of song.

By using jedebule and šuwar seme, Jakdan has anachronistically inserted Manchu cultural performance into a Tang dynasty poem, with the effect of decorating the entire poem with a lively and sinuous movement that was not at all present in the original. I try to reflect this as follows in my translation:

The flowery ones of Jiànzhāng palace have come out,
The phoenix flutes of Zhāoyáng hall strike up a snake-dancing tune.
May I ask you, young ladies who receive favor,
How is it your eyebrows are so sinuously beautiful?

Jakdan the Decoder

Jakdan often translates literary and historical allusions into plain language, giving his readings an earthy, plainspun feel. Sometimes his translations reveal a new side to literary allusions, such as his handling of "the home of Jù Mèng" in the following poem by Qián Qǐ (錢起).

逢俠者		Faršatai yabure niyalma be ucarahangge
燕趙悲歌士，		amargi bai usacukai uculere haha,
相逢劇孟家。		weilere antahai boode lakdari ucarabuha,
寸心言不盡，		mujilen-i gisun gisureme wajire undede,
前路日將斜。		julergi jugūn-i šun dabsire hamika.

On Meeting a Knight Errant

A man from the north singing sorrowfully,
I encountered by chance at a roadside canteen serving parlour.
The sun on the road before us had nearly set,
But he was still not yet finished saying all the words in his heart,


The subject of the poem is a knight errant (also known as 遊俠), a kind of wandering warrior known in stories for defending the weak and fighting the wicked. In the original poem, the author meets him in a certain "home of Jù Mèng" (劇孟家), an allusion to a famous knight errant of the Western Hàn, who lived around nine centuries before the poet was born. The two continue on together, walking into the sunset, as the 'knight errant' pours his heart out to the poet.

Some interpretations take the "home of Jù Mèng" to mean the city of Luòyáng, but Jakdan interprets it differently, using the phrase weilere antahai boo. This term does not appear in my dictionaries, so it needs some decipherment.

Norman has antahai boo meaning "a room for receiving guests," and in spoken Sibe we have antⱨey bo, with the same meaning. But what do we do with the modifying weilere? Literally this seems like it ought to mean "a room for receiving working guests," but what kind of place is that?

The similar Sibe term antⱨey kuren means a hotel, in which the "guest" is actually more of a customer than an acquaintance. It seems possible that a weilere antahai boo then could be a place that welcomes laborers as customers, presumably for a brief rest and refreshment. This could also be the type of place that a lonely traveler might stop to take a break before continuing on his long journey into the west.

Verses on a Line-Fishing Platform, by Jakdan

Jakdan wrote four poems in seven-syllable quatrains with an AAxA rhyme scheme, a style not found in the Staatsbibliothek poems, but similar to the form used in some Sibe epic poems like Ba na-i ucun and Hašigar ucun (though Jakdan did not use the Mongolian-influenced head-rhyme that those poems employ).

The seven-syllable quatrain form does not require the same rhyme to be used throughout the poem, and this one uses a different rhyme in each quatrain. Jakdan often ends his poems with a remark to the reader on the poem itself, which can be seen in this poem as well as in his Plum Blossoms and Lotus Flowers.

The topic of the poem is a fishing platform associated in tradition with Yán Guāng [嚴光], a high official of the Eastern Han who was styled Zǐlíng [子陵].

	nimaha welmiyere karan be irgebuhe irgebun		Verses on a Line-Fishing Platform
	Jakdan 8.18
	fu cun alin yan dzy ling,		Yán Zǐlíng of Fùchūn [富春] mountain,
	te welmiyere karan jing,		now frequents a line-fishing platform,
	ninggun biya-i furdehe,		in a fur jacket, even in the sixth month,
	jilan beki tuwakiyan teng,		strong in compassion, resolute in watchfulness.
5	han gurun i han guwang u,		Emperor Hàn Guāngwǔ of the Hàn dynasty,
	siyan šeng ini fe gucu,		the master being an old friend of his,
	emu erin kidufi,		one time was missing him,
	werešehei šuwe akū,		and sought him out, but he was gone.
	arkan acaha erin,		They had barely met when
10	amban obuci sain,		he thought it good to make him an official.
	canjurame acafi		They clasped hands on meeting.
	yaka baisin ya ejen,		Which one is unemployed, and which is lord?
	hafan ohongge waka,		He was not to be an official,
	yala somiha saisa,		but indeed, a reclusive sage,
15	emu bade dedufi,		spending the night in one place,
	guwelke dzy wei usiha,		attentive to the northern stars.
	aibi gebu ai gungge,		Where is fame, what is merit?
	ula tenggin hon hojo,		Rivers and lakes are very beautiful.
	hanja girutu ujen,		Taking honesty and humility seriously,
20	bolgo algin tetele,		his reputation is clean even now.
	minggan jalan goidapi,		Though a thousand generations may pass,
	entekengge hon seri,		people like him will be scarce.
	ere ucun arafi,		I have made this song,
	sain durun obuki		and now you give it good form.

Translation Notes

te welmiyere karan jing / ninggun biya-i furdehe. There is no verb here, but it if you have a fishing platform and a fur jacket, presumably the subject is on the former and wearing the latter.

dzy wei usiha. The “Purple Forbidden Enclosure” (zǐ wēi yuán, 紫微垣) refers to the northern part of the sky, whose stars circle the north star and do not drop below the horizon.

Jakdan’s Take on Plum Blossoms

Pages from a manual of plum blossom painting, from Wikimedia.

In this poem, it seems that Jakdan is trying to encourage a dispirited friend. The subject is simultaneously a plum tree and a person, with an inner strength that defies the hardship of winter and emerges before Spring with the first fragrant flowers in the desolate landscape.

	nenden ilha be irgebuhe ucun		A Song on Plum Blossoms
	Jakdan 8.16
	nenden ilha ai colo,		What shall we call the plum blossom?
	lo fuo endurin gege,		The fairy lady of Luofu.
	tuweri forgon-i tuwabun,		In a winter scene,
	tumen ilha-i bonggo,		it is the first of the myriad flowers.
5	abai silenggi aga,		Where is the dew and the rain?
	niša nimanggi juhe,		Heavy are the snow and the ice.
	tuwaci hūwantahūn hada,		When I look, barren are the crags,
	šaci olhoho holo,		when I gaze, dry are the valleys.
	yaya ilha layapi,		Every flower has withered,
10	eiten orho soroko,		and all the grass has yellowed,
	geren bujan niohušun,		the forests are naked,
	erei teile injehe,		but this alone is smiling.
	butui fangšaha wangga,		A dark, smoky fragrance,
	tumin šahūri boco,		a deep, frigid color,
15	gecehengge ten beikuwen,		what has frozen is so cold,
	ilakangge jing hojo,		what has bloomed is suddenly lovely,
	selei cikten sargiyakan,		the iron tree trunks are sparse,
	šušu dasiha niokso,		with a purple covering of lichen.
	simacuka udu da,		Though solitary its origin,
20	dulembuhe aniya fe,		it has passed through ancient years.
	gengge gangga simeli,		Wandering alone, spartan,
	hūwanta alin-i hošo,		at the edges of the empty mountains,
	gaksi manggai bulehen,		with only a crane for companion,
	emgi yaka cecike,		and no other bird.
25	buru bara biyai elden,		Hazy is the light of the moon,
	bolgo micihiyan muke,		clean is the shallow water,
	yadan nimalan hailan,		exhausted are the mulberry and elm,
	niyere toro foyoro,		weak are the peach and plum.
	ilan šahūrun gucu,		Three cold friends,
30	jakdan mailasun cuse,		the pine, cypress and bamboo,
	nimanggi-i sasari,		together with the snow,
	niyengniyeri be meljere,		will strive towards Spring.
	terei da banin kulu,		Its fundamental nature is strong,
	teni emhun enteke,		that is why it is solitary like this.
35	ioi ling antu halukan,		The south slope of Yuling is warm,
	tuttu nenden fushuhe,		so the plum blossoms have burst open,
	yuwan lu jidun soningga,		The north slope of Yuanlu is interesting,
	gu šan alin gebungge,		Gūshān [孤山] is renowned,
	ho hiowen dergi asari,		The eastern tower of Hexuan,
40	inu gebu tucike,		has also become famous.
	lu k'ai mukei jugūn ci,		From the road of the Lukai water,
	benjihengge hon yobo,		what was brought is quite amusing.
	bayan wesihun hafan,		An official of honor and wealth,
	tuwaki seci ai šolo,		wants to see it but has no free time.
45	giru gulu de fulu,		In form it is full of innocence,
	yangse saikan ci moco,		unskilled at looks and beauty,
	banjitai uttu hican,		so frugal by nature,
	ainahai tuttu oilo,		but not so on the outside.
	jalan an-i asari,		The tower of the Order of the World,
50	saha niyalma geli we,		who still knows of it?
	aika niyengniyeri erin,		If everyone is groaning
	niyalma tome eyoyo,		for Springtime,
	hūwaliyambure šasigan,		it is fair to set for them
	terei tebuhe tondo,		a harmonizing stew.
55	kuri kari hacingga,		Dappled and spotted,
	yaka šahūrun bongko,		with whatever cold buds,
	manggai erere aga,		and the earnestly hoped-for rain,
	geli gelere bono,		and also the feared hail,
	edun fulgiyeme jaka,		as the wind blows it,
60	teci biretei mokto,		but when it settles, everything is bare.
	yasa tuwahai wajiha,		I have seen it with my own eyes,
	emu tolgin kumungge,		a dream that is lively.
	tuttu wesihun saisa,		Thus, honored gentleman
	nenden ilha nioroko,		the plum blossoms have appeared.
65	geren wangga gurun de,		In all the countries of fragrance,
	erei teile encungge,		this alone is different.
	uthai yadahūn saisa,		Just so the poor gentleman,
	jalan akdun-i gese,		with the strength of the world,
	taifin erin somitai,		hiding away in times of peace,
70	mohon fonde serehe,		has appeared in the season of depletion.
	banjinjiha baitangga,		A useful one who has come to be born,
	tucikede oyonggo,		his coming forth is important.
	enduri-i fun beye,		Just like a god,
	damu yoo cy-i omo,		only to Yaochi lake,
75	wasibume ebufi,		he was sent down, he descended,
	jalan tuwakū ojoro,		and takes on a worldly aspect.
	ede ucun arafi,		For him I have made a song,
	akūmbume henduhe,		and completely recited it.
	erin tuwabun serenggeo,		Do we speak of seasons and scenes?
80	šumin mujilen noho,		It conceals a deeper thought.
	erei adali oci,		If this is similar to it,
	yabun hamimbi dere.		I think I have done well enough.

Translation Notes

tumin šahūri boco. I cannot find šahūri in my dictionaries, but I think it must be connected with šahūrun, “cold.”

šušu dasiha niokso. For niokso Norman has a form of algae found on the surface of water, but given the context I think this must refer to lichen on the bark of trees or something similar.

gu šan alin. This seems to be a reference to Gūshān [孤山], where the poet Lín Bū [林逋] was buried. Lín Bū was famously said to have taken “the plum tree as his wife and the crane as his son” [以梅为妻，以鹤为子].

Jakdan’s Song on Lotus Flowers

Jakdan engaged in clever wordplay, both in his translations and in his own poetry. I doubt I will ever have the subtlety or refinement to see all of his clever plays, but sometimes I catch one.

The lotus flower is called šu ilha in Manchu, and Jakdan opens his song by asking why this is. He follows by saying that the flower is dignified in its color and elegant in its appearance, alluding to the meaning of the word šu as “culture” or “refinement.”

Interestingly, like the two flower poems from SB 11, Jakdan makes a reference to the “yang spirit” (fayangga) of the flower.

	šu ilha be irgebuhe ucun		A Song on Lotus Flowers
	Jakdan 8.17
	ilhai gebu šu sembi,		The flower is named “Lotus,”
	ere yala ai turgun,		and indeed, why is this?
	ambalinggū boco fiyan,		Dignified is its bright color,
	fujurungga banin wen,		elegant its appearance.
5	emte darhūwa emteli,		Each stalk is solitary,
	yaka faju ya siren,		with neither fork nor tendril.
	cikten emhun ilingga,		The stem stands alone,
	geli yaka nikebun,		and without a support.
	niohokon-i saracan,		A green parasol,
10	abdaha-i muheliyen,		is the roundness of the leaf.
	fulgiyakan-i fiyentehe,		The pink petals,
	jaksan icehe tumin,		deeply stained with the color of dawn clouds.
	nantuhūn ci banjifi,		It grows from the filth,
	aide heni nantuhūn,		but where has it the least bit of filth?
15	usihin de šekehei,		It’s submerged in wetness,
	aide heni usihin,		but where is it the least bit of wet?
	boihon muke fosofi,		Though sprinkled with earth and water,
	aide heni icebun,		where is it contaminated at all?
	šun-i fiyakiyan fiyakiyahai,		Though exposed to the burning sun,
20	aide heni lalahūn,		where is it the least bit wilted?
	mukei siden de bifi,		Being in the midst of the water,
	abai buraki hukun,		where is its dust and soil?
	colo ambasa saisa,		Its nickname, to wise gentlemen,
	muke biya-i guwan ši yen,		is Guanyin of the Water and Moon.
25	ere ilhai fayangga,		The spirit of this flower
	yoo cy omoi endurin,		is the fairy of Yaochi lake.
	fusai amaga beye,		The incarnation of a bodhisattva,
	iceburakū banin,		its uncontaminated body.
	boihon sahaliyan seme,		Though the soil is black,
30	banjiha de hon šeyen,		what grows from it is so white,
	lifagan ci faššahai,		bestirring itself from the mud,
	watai baibuha hūsun,		with a fierce strength.
	colgoropi ja waka,		Imposing, not ordinary,
	ten gosihon mujilen,		an exalted and compassionate heart.
35	saisai mujingga gese,		Strong-willed like a hero,
	šadacuka suilacun,		tiring are its labors.
	yanggar sere mudan ai,		What is that resounding tune?
	ilha gurure ucun,		A flower-gathering song.
	saikan gege kejine,		Many pretty ladies,
40	sasa nioboro efin,		together in deep green play,
	hojo gilha inenggi,		on a beautiful clear day,
	yala kumunggai tenggin,		truly a sea of melody.
	geren fucihi teku,		Seating for a crowd of Buddhas,
	suman dolo getuken,		is discernible in the mist,
45	goro tuwaci oihori,		splendid when seen from afar,
	hanci šari felehun,		shining and brash up close.
	jortai wangga benjihei,		The wind plays around,
	yobo arara edun,		pretending to carry its fragrance.
	šu ilha be jonoci,		If one reflects upon the lotus blossom,
50	wajin akū-i sain,		it is infinitely good.
	taka joringga gaifi,		This creation in the Manchu language
	manjurara banjibun,		takes it as the theme of the moment,
	emu tookabure ton,		a diverting enumeration
	irgebuhe muwa gisun,		of crude words of verse.
55	gisun cinggiya bicibe		Though the words are superficial,
	gūnin mujakū šumin,		the idea is extremely deep.
	agu cincilame tuwa,		Brother, scrutinize
	erei baktaka jorin.		the meaning this contains.

Translation Notes

yaka faju ya siren. This is structured like a rhetorical question, “Which fork? What tendril?” But as we can see in the second line of Jakdan’s translation of the Ever-Turning Horse Lantern, this type of rhetorical question can be used to simply convey that something is not, e.g. “there is neither fork nor tendril.”

gosihon mujilen. For gosihon Norman has “bitter; miserable,” and the Qianlong dictionary says that it refers to extremely pitiful grieving and weeping. Norman often commented on the semantic connection between this word and gosin, “pity; mercy; love,” and indeed we see gosingga with the meaning of compassionate, so I think it is not completely untenable to translate this as “compassionate heart.” The Qianlong dictionary also says gosihon can refer literally to a bitter flavor, in which case I wonder if this could also refer to the bitter germ of the lotus seed.

In Praise of Snow, by Jakdan

Jakdan’s poems tend to be longer than the Staatsbibliothek poems, and full of literary allusions that need to be tracked down, so they are not easy to work on. This one has taken a few weekends to complete, and in the end I needed the help of my Manchu reading group to understand parts of it—and even then I am not to certain about parts of it.

Like the earlier Snow poem that was set to the tune of Wind in the Pines, this one invokes the imagery of scales falling from dragons fighting in the sky. This imagery is used in Chinese poetry at least as far back as the late Sòng or early Míng, as in these lines by Yè Yóng (葉顒):

	庚子雪中十二律 其十一		Number 11 of 12 Poems amid the Snow of the Year 1120
	攪碎銀河戰玉龍，		Breaking up the Milky Way, jade dragons are fighting,
	紛紜鱗甲舞天風。		many scattered scales dance on the wind of Heaven.
	江山浩浩芳塵逺，		Fragrant powder is spread far over vast rivers and mountains,
	宇宙茫茫醉眼空。		the boundless universe makes the eyes drunk with emptiness.
	春老不香雲樹裏，		The bygone Spring no longer perfumes the clouds and trees,
	鶴歸無影月明中。		the cranes return without a shadow in the brightness of the moon.
	霜橋驢背尋詩罷，		On the frosty bridge, a donkey carries what will end my poem:
	自爇寒爐榾柮紅。		Red kindling and wood to fire my cold stove.

Jakdan’s poem below mentions a lady Daoyun, who must be the Eastern Jìn female poet Xiè Dàoyùn (謝道蘊). Her uncle Xiè Ān is supposed to have been talking with his nieces and nephews about similes that could describe the flying snow, when Xiè Lǎng said “One could more or less compare it to ‘salt sprinkled in the sky’” (撒鹽空中差可擬). At this, Xiè Dàoyùn responded, “That’s not as good as ‘catkins rising on the wind’” (未若柳絮因風起).

The poem also references Lan Kiyoo, perhaps the “Blue Bridge” mentioned in the following lines from Táng poet Yuán Zhěn (元稹). In this poem, the ‘flour market’ describes a village dusted with snow. Thanks to Keith Dede and Steve Wadley for helping me understand the that the ‘flour market’ in this poem describes a village dusted with snow.

	西歸絕句十二首 其十一		Number 11 of 12 Quatrains on Returning West
	雲覆藍橋雪滿溪，		Clouds cover Blue Bridge and snow fills the creek,
	須臾便與碧峰齊。		suddenly it has become like the jade peaks.
	風回麵市連天合，		The wind returns, and the ‘flour market’ melds into the sky,
	凍壓花枝著水低。		encasing ice presses the blooming branches down under water.

I have not yet been able to track down the Yan Qi of line 23.

	nimanggi be maktahangge		In Praise of Snow
	Jakdan 8.12
	nimanggi kai nimanggi,		Snow, it’s snow!
	terei tucin aibici,		Where does it come from?
	geli ilhai moo akū,		There are no flowering trees,
	ainu fiyentehe canggi,		how can there be petals on their own?
5	mere juhe nicuhe,		Ice pearls like grains of buckwheat,
	labsan suku inggari,		snowflake fuzz on the thickets.
	beri beri samsitai,		They sprinkle bit by bit,
	siran siran urkuji,		one after the other without interruption,
	buru bara bitele,		till everything is hazy,
10	šanyan šeyen bengneli,		then suddenly white, pure white,
	ekisakai singkeyen,		and quietly frigid.
	jalutala šarapi,		Everything is full of white,
	tugi sisere manda,		and the clouds sift slowly,
	edun bošoro hahi,		but the wind presses them on.
15	šeyen muduri aise,		Perhaps it is as though white dragons
	becunure adali,		are fighting each other,
	maka esihe huru,		maybe their scaly shells,
	gari mari garjafi,		have been broken asunder,
	hūrgirengge hon garsa,		and their nimble spinning,
20	maksihangge ten faksi,		their skilled dancing,
	tuweri erin-i ferguwen,		are the auspicious sign of winter time,
	bayan aniya-i serki,		the harbinger of a rich year.
	saisa yan ki-i dalba,		The scholar next to the Yan Qi,
	amban lan kiyoo-i ergi,		the official beside the Blue Bridge,
25	yaka boode deduhei,		Someone who has passed the night at home,
	eici guyoo fehumbi,		now may tread on green jasper.
	ba na heni ni akū,		There isn’t even the slightest bit of ground,
	ne je amba gu bini,		right now it is just a giant jadestone,
	gehun gahūn bolokon,		shining bright and clear.
30	aide toron buraki,		Where is the dust and grime?
	acan ninggun giyalan juwe,		The whole universe and both realms,
	bolgomire samadi,		is locked in fasting meditation,
	niša soninggai tuwabun,		an intensely interesting scene,
	gu-i efin unenggi,		a game of jade made real.
35	erei muke cai fuifu,		Boil its water to make tea,
	abkai wa su be omi,		and drink the scent and gusts of Heaven.
	terei jafu nisihai,		With his directive,
	tondo amban-i empi,		the nonsense of a loyal minister,
	murui duibulen hojo,		[produced] a beautiful simile,
40	doo yūn tere gege i,		[from] lady Daoyun herself,
	gubci jalan saišacun,		and the praise of the whole world:
	šuwe gūwa akū damu si,		Only you are utterly peerless.
	šumin sahangge fe ya,		Deep knowledge is ancient, oh,
	niorokongge manggai bi,		what is profound is difficult to attain.
45	tanggū jeku-i simen,		The essence of a hundred foods,
	tumen ilha-i šugi,		the nectar of ten thousand flowers,
	jing cak sere šahūrun,		is presently freezing cold,
	emhulehe niyengniyeri,		and the Spring season which lays claim to them,
	nenden ilha gaibuha,		has made the plum flower take them,
50	maise antaka kesi,		and shown such mercy to the grain.
	juhe secen-i gucu,		Friends of ice and frost,
	tugi aga-i fusi,		under clouds and rain,
	gaha bulehen duwali,		are the confederation of crows and cranes
	jakdan cuse-i hoki,		and the society of pines and bamboo.
55	na-i dolo a weihun,		Yang is alive in the earth,
	ba-i oilo e fempi,		and yin envelopes the land,
	fuserengge jing luku,		thick in its propagation,
	gingkarangge hon beki,		very powerful in its stifling grip,
	ton akū-i sain ba,		but numberless are its good points,
60	šošorongge hoošan fi,		what it heaps up are paper and brushes.
	saikan kai nimanggi.		Beautiful, indeed, is snow.

Translation Difficulties

mere juhe nicuhe. This is more of an observation than a difficulty. Norman has mere nimanggi, “snow that has frozen into small beads the size of a grain of buckwheat.” I think that must be what is intended here.

tugi sisere manda. Literally it seems like this means “the sifting of the clouds is slow.” Though this line feels unnatural to me (why not tugi mandai sisembi?), I suppose the poet chose this phrasing to parallel the next line, edun bošoro hahi.

acan ninggun giyalan juwe. This feels like a calque of a Chinese chéngyǔ, but I can’t find the exact original. There is 六合之内, “all within the universe,” and it’s easy to imagine a coordinate phrase like *六合二世, so that is how I have read it for now.

terei jafu nisihai / tondo amban-i empi. These lines present multiple alternate readings, and in the end I’m not convinced I have found the right one, but what I have here makes more sense than the others I have tried.

• jafu may mean “directive” or “blanket.” I originally wanted to read this as “blanket” to parallel the prior couplet, thinking that tea and a blanket would make a pair of comforting elements in winter. However, with that reading I couldn’t make sense of the whole couplet, so I abandoned it in favor of “directive.” Given the word-play that Jakdan has engaged in elsewhere, it is possible he intended both meanings simultaneously.
• empi. This word is attested with the meaning of “artemesia,” but what is the “artemesia of a loyal minister?” Tom Larsen suggested the reading of “nonsense” for empi, based on empirembi, “to speak nonsense,” which looks like it could be formed from a noun like *empi(n), together with the deverbal morpheme -rA that appears in words like gisurembi < gisun, nikarambi < nikan, manjurambi < manju. Since “nonsense” and “directive” both fit into the semantic domain of spoken things, I decided to use that reading.
• tondo amban. This is not a translation problem so much as a problem of reference: Who is the loyal minister? Since the following couplets refer to Xiè Dàoyùn, perhaps this refers to her uncle Xiè Ān, and maybe the “directive” is the one he gave to his nieces and nephews to produce similes for snow.

The Ever-Turning Horse Lantern, a translation by Jakdan

The 17th translated poem in Jakdan's second fascicle is titled Torhoho moringga dengjan be irgebuhengge 咏走馬燈詩, by the Monk Wu Ji.

I was initially interested in this poem because of the word “lantern” in the title, which I thought could shed some light on the Manchu lantern poems.

團團游了又來游， šurdeme šurdeme sarašame wajinggala geli ebsi sarašahai,

無箇明人指路頭。 jugūn on be jorire getuken niyalma ai.

除卻心中三昧火， dulimba ba-i ilan unenggi tuwa akū ohode,

槍刀人馬一齊休。 gida loho niyalma morin gemu aššarakū bai.

My somewhat free translation from the Manchu (which is subtly different from the Chinese):

Around and around it goes, it stops, and then it goes again,
There is no lucid person there to point it on its way,
But when the fire of Triple Truth is extinguished from the center,
Neither spear nor sword nor man nor horse will move.

When I read this poem, I imagine some kind of clever shadow paper lantern where the hot air rising from a candle causes a lightweight frame to turn, casting moving shadows onto the outside of the lantern. In this case, the shadows would show a man with sword and spear riding a horse.

The word 三昧 (samādhi) is the clue that tells us that the lantern is a metaphor for the mind, and that the extinction of the candle in the middle, which causes the restless movement of the mind to stop, is a metaphor for enlightenment.

There are a number of interesting little features in Jakdan’s translation from the Chinese:

無 X -> X ai. Autochthonous Manchu poetry frequently uses the formula X ai or X ya, which is not very commonly seen in non-poetic Manchu texts. I have been interpreting it as a rhetorical question, as in In Praise of Fire where I translated cing cing serengge gidabure ai as “When it is blazing, what can stamp it out?” Given that that Jakdan uses this formula as a translation for “there is not” (無), perhaps we could read the line from Fire above as “Nothing can stamp it out when it is blazing.”

三昧 -> ilan unenggi. The Chinese term 三昧 originates as a phonetic representation of the Sanskrit term samādhi, referring to a set of meditative states of mind. Jakdan could have used a literal translation like samadi, but instead he chose a play on words and gave us ilan unenggi, “the Three Truths.”

In Praise of Fire

In the surviving body of Classical Manchu poetry, Jakdan was the master of the symmetrical couplet poem. This is a poem built of couplets where the primary rule of meter is that the two lines of a couplet must have the same number of syllables as each other, but may have a different number of syllables from other lines in the poem. (I used to think that the term fujurun applied exclusively to this type of poem, but now I think the evidence for that is quite weak.)

The poem In Praise of Fire has been previously translated in Bosson and Toh (2006). My translation below explores a few ideas that I have about the poem. Among these is the idea that Jakdan was playing with multiple meanings of the words tuwa and ya in the first three lines.

The word tuwa may be the imperative “look!” or the noun “fire.” Similarly, the word ya can mean “which” or “what,” but can also be an exclamation. There is no textual way of knowing whether Jakdan meant to play on these multiple meanings, but I wouldn’t put it past him.

Another possible instance of word-play is in the line weniyere wembure aisi. In the previous lines Jakdan has touched on the relationship between Fire and the elements Earth, Wood and Water, but he has conspicuously left out Metal, aisin. This line, which refers to melting and refining could be his indirect reference to that fifth element, with the word aisi, “aid” being a near-homophone to aisin, “metal.”

I have not been able to determine what places are referred to by Chibi Mountain and Efang Palace, but I hope to find that the former is a volcano and the latter was destroyed by fire.

	tuwa i maktacun		In Praise of Fire
	tuwa tuwa tuwa,		Look at Fire! Look!
	ya ya ya,		What is it? Oh, what?
	na i juwe,		Paired with Earth,
	šun i da,		and the foundation of the Sun.
5	mooi tucin,		Arising by means of Wood,
	mukei bata,		and enemy of Water.
	e i boo,		The house of yin,
	a i hūwa,		and the garden of yang.
	dolo butu,		Dark within,
10	oilo fiyangga,		and brilliant without.
	weniyere wembure aisi,		Helpful for refining and melting,
	bujure boolara tusa,		and advantageous for boiling and roasting.
	fulhureci umesi heni,		It takes only a little to germinate it,
	badarakai mujakū amba,		but when it grows it is truly great.
15	cing cing serengge gidabure ai,		When blazing, what can stamp it out?
	hūr hūr serengge mukiyebuci ja,		Yet when flaming it is easy to douse.
	aššan eldehen jijuhan,		The trigram of movement and light,
	fulgiyan fulahūn aniyangga,		and the “red” and “reddish” heavenly stems.
	abka de bici,     akjan nioron usiha i acabun,		When in the heavens,     its effect is thunder, rainbows and stars,
20	niyalma de bici     sukdun jili girucun i harangga,		and in people     it is the cause of zeal, anger and shame.
	cy bi alin tede sanggū,		Mount Chibi is gratified therein,
	o fang gurung ede waliya,		the Efang palace is dismayed herein.
	tuwa ya adada.		What, indeed, is fire!

Translation Difficulties

adada, Norman has “Brrr–an exclamation used when it is very cold,” and also adada ebebe, “1. an exclamation of surprise 2. clicking the tongue in amazement.” In this context I think this is intended to convey wonder, but I’m not sure how to render it in English. Traditional exclamations like “lo!” seem awkward and stuffy, while more modern exclamations like “wow!” seem out of place. I handled this by a combination of the somewhat stuffy “indeed” and the enthusiastic exclamation mark!

gidabu- vs. mukiyebu-, Jakdan says of a blazing fire that it is difficult to gidabu- but easy to mukiyebu-. I had some trouble sorting out the distinction he was trying to make, but it seems that mukiye- could be etymologically connected with muke, “water” and refer to the extinguishing of fire by water, while gidabu- could refer to the more literal stamping out of fire.

sukdun, the core meaning is “breath” which does, of course, exist in human bodies. But since it was coordinated with jili and girucun—“anger” and “shame”—I felt it should refer to a powerful emotion. Treating it as within the same semantic domain as 氣, I decided to read it as “zeal.”

Jakdan’s predecessors

Despite the glowing praise that Jakdan receives in the preface for being an expert translator of poetry, he wasn't the translator of the first poem in his collection—or at least he wasn't the only translator, or the first.

The Kangxi emperor apparently produced two works (or two versions of a single work) titled A Free and Unfettered Poem (逍遙詞), of which Jakdan chose the second version as the opening poem for his collection. Despite the carefree feel of the original title, Jakdan calls his version A Lament on the World (Ma. jalan be nasara uculen, Ch. 嘆世詞). In fact, I think some of the wording may have been changed to make it more mournful, but that will have to wait for another blog post.

I say that Jakdan’s translation of this poem is not completely original because much the same Manchu text can also be found, without a Chinese parallel text, in a volume at the Bibliothèque nationale de france. At the end of the BNF poem there is a date of Kangxi 60 (1721), which was probably 60 years before Jakdan was born. Of course that may be a date associated with the original poem and not of the translation, but I believe most of the Manchu materials at the BNF were gathered during the Jesuit missions, which ended with the expulsion of the Jesuits in the mid-18th century. Even if one discounts the date at the end of the poem, it would be quite a stretch to date this text to any time in Jakdan's lifetime.

The most reasonable explanation, I think, is that Jakdan included this earlier translation because he considered it an excellent work, and wanted to begin by paying homage to a predecessor, or to the tradition of poetic translation itself. Perhaps he started with a slightly different version of the text, and maybe he made some minor changes that he saw as improvements, but overall he left much of it alone.

An interesting feature of this poem is that it “works” in both Manchu and Chinese. As a Chinese poem it has an -ang rhyme, and as a Manchu poem it has an -a rhyme. In fact, I have seen nothing textual to say whether the poem was originally composed in Chinese or Manchu, or whether it was composed in both languages at the same time (as was probably done for some other imperial poems.)

Here are the Manchu versions:

BNF	Jakdan Manchu
han-i araha emu meyen-i uculen	jalan be nasara uculen
aya,	ai,
bithei urse,	bithei urse,
usin-i haha,	usin-i haha,
weilere faksi,	weilere faksi,
hūdai niyalma,	hūdai niyalma,
udu,
inenggidari kata fata,	inenggidari kata fata,
niyalma banjifi,	niyalma banjifi
untuhusaka,	untuhusaka,
erebe gaisu,	erebe gaju
terebe gama,	terebe gama,
hendure balame,	hendure balama
wesihun fusihūn teisu bi,	wesihun fusihūn teisu bi,
jabšara ufararangge,	jabšara ufararangge
bodoro mangga,	bodoro mangga,
gin gu-i yafan,	ai gin gu yafan
bolori edun,	bolori edun,
u giyang ni bira,	u giyang ula
dobori biya,	dobori biya,
o fang gurung fulahūn,	o fang gurung fulahūn,
tung ciyo kara aba,	tung ciyo kara aba,
dule emgeri haṇ dan-i gese tolgišaha,	dule emgeri haṇ dan-i gese tolgišaha,
	yargiyan-i nasacuka,
	yargiyan-i usacuka,
erebe saci,
abka be sebjeleme,	damu abka de sebjeleme
hesebun be sacina,	hesebun be sacina,
teisu be dahame,	teisu be dahame
an be tuwakiya,	an be tuwakiya,
nenehe wang,	nenehe han
amaga wang serebe ai gana,	amaha han sere ai tusa,
yendehe gurun,	yendehe gurun
gukuhe gurun serebe, ai gana,	gukuhe gurun sere ai ganaha,
bucere hanci uksalara de mangga,	bucere hamici ukcara de mangga,
julgeci baturu haha siran siran-i ufaraha,	julgeci ebsi baturu kiyangkiyan sa siran siran-i ufaraha,
muduri taktu,
garudai-i leose serebe jocina,
aisi jugūn,
gebu tangka serebe yakacina,
derengge saikan iletu ilgai dele,	yala derengge saikan ilhai dele
silenggi,	silenggi,
bayan wesihun orhoi dubei gecen dabala,	bayan wesihun orhoi dubei gecen secina,
jalan-i baita uttu oho be saci,	jalan-i baita be tuwaci gemu uttu be dahame,
yendere gukure be aiseme mujilen de dara,	yendere gukure be aiseme mujilen de dara,
	muduringga taktu
	garudai asari sere be jocina,
	aisi-i jugūn
	gebu-i tangka sere be naka,
yargiyan-i nisicuka-i usacuka,
	jabduha ucuri ekisaka tefi,
alin-i dalba,
bigan tala,
aba saha,
sula tehe de,
irgebun irgebume,	irgebun nure-i emgi sebjeleme bicina,
nure omime,
gūnin-i cihai emgeri gingsifi bedereci,	emgeri gingsici, bedererengge
ai tookan,	ai tookan,
emgeri uculefi,	emgeri uculeci,
šanyan muke buru bara,	mederi muke buru bara,
	edun biya be irgebume,
	buyecuke sur sere be baihana,
hacingga ilha ilaci,	hacingga ilha ilaci,
alha bulha geren gasha guwendeci,	alha bulha, geren gasha guwendeci,
jiji jaja,	jiji jaja,
	alin-i dalba,
	muke-i dalba,
	bigan tala
	aba saha,
ere nergin de absi saišacuka,	ere nergin absi saišacuka,
taka emu coman nure be wacihiya,	taka emu coman nure be wacihiya,
yasa habtašara sidende,	yasa habtašara sidende
juwe erei šulu herecun akū de šaraka.	juwe erei šulu herecun akū šaraka.
elhe taifin-i ninjuci aniya