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.

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 Song of the Wretched Scholar, in 5-syllable couplets

Staatsbibliothek fascicles 4 and 14 contain a total of four poems written in five-syllable couplets, of which the poem below is one example. It seems this poem is further organized into quatrains (pairs of couplets), based on the changes of subject matter. This form, borrowed from Chinese tradition, must have been somewhat difficult for a Manchu poet because it limits most lines to two words.

The scholar in the poem is an idealized character, his wretched exterior contrasted with a noble interior. We don’t really get to see the scholar as a whole person, however, with hopes and fears and weaknesses and idiosyncrasies, and in that way the subject seems very shallow.

As the last couplet suggests, we are likely to wonder who the scholar is, and I think the poet had a particular person in mind. Unfortunately, I have never yet seen a Manchu poem where a person is actually named outright, so we may never for certain whom this was intended to describe.

	yadahūn saisa-i ucun		The Song of the Wretched Scholar
	Staatsbibliothek 14.8 (View Online)
	kokima saisa,		The indigent scholar
	umesi yobo,		is quite funny.
	suilacun canggi,		All he has is hardship,
	yadahūn noho,		he’s covered in poverty.
5	abai etuku,		Where are his clothes from?
	abai jemengge,		Where are his meals from?
	aide boo ūlen,		Where is his house and home?
	aide tuwa muke,		Where are his fire and water?
	ai wehe yaha,		What coal does he have?
10	ai jeku bele,		What food and grain?
	jiha yamaka,		Has he any money?
	ulin aibide,		Where is his property?
	nagan fulahūn,		His kang is pink,
	dere [几] ajige,		his table is small,
15	agūra seci,		as for implements,
	mucen-i teile,		just a cooking pot.
	juwari halukan,		Summer is warm,
	kemuni yebe,		so that is nicer,
	tuweri šahūrun,		but winter is cold,
20	ainu hamire,		how will he tolerate it?
	muru ubiyada,		His form is detestable,
	gisun eimede,		his speech repugnant,
	cira horoki,		his face looks old,
	giru šoyoro,		his appearance wrinkled.
25	gūnin wesihun,		His thoughts are exalted,
	beye giohoto,		though he has a beggar’s body.
	oilo buyasi,		Outside he’s humble,
	dolo yekengge,		inside he’s grand.
	hesebun juken,		Fated to be common,
30	mujilen tondo,		his mind is upright,
	mujin ambakan,		his aspirations are great,
	yabun hošonggo,		his deeds are righteous.
	jurgan tuwakiyahai,		As he watches over his virtues,
	hanja hairame,		he loves honesty,
35	jalangga beki,		he’s strong in frugality,
	sahiba moco,		unskilled at fawning.
	aisi de heolen,		Unconcerned with profit,
	tacin de hojo,		gratified in study,
	derenggei doli,		noble in substance,
40	gicukei oilo,		disgraceful in appearance.
	baitalan eden,		Lacking employment,
	funiyagan onco,		his forbearance is vast,
	ere we seci,		if you ask who this is,
	yan dzeng [顏曾] ni gese.		it’s the likes of Yán Huí and Zēngzǐ.

Translation difficulties

derenggei doli. For doli Norman has “the pulp of fruit.” Since the poet has paired it with oilo in the next line, it suggests a meaning that contrasts the scholar’s inner (dolo) being with his outer (oilo) appearance. I chose the translation “substance” as a term that could capture the idea of the stuff a person is made of as well as the stuff you find inside a fruit.

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.

Why We Need to Read Chinese Poetry in Manchu

I've been trying to improve my understanding of Manchu poetry by reading Manchu translations of Chinese verse. One of the surprises that has come out of this is that English translators of Chinese poetry often miss important points that are captured in Manchu translations.

As an example, this morning I have been looking at a poem titled Light Rain in Early Spring (初春小雨) by Han Yu (韓愈). Here is the Chinese text, and Jakdan's translation:

天街小雨潤如酥,		alban giyai imenggi-i gesei aga busu busu,
草色遙看近卻無;		orhoi boco gorokici sabucibe cincilaci dule akū;
最是一年春好處,		emu aniyai niyengniyeri saikan ba jing ere,
絕勝煙柳滿皇都.		gubci hecen-i burgašara fodoho ci cingkai fulu.

Jakdan's translation is relatively easy to understand:

The rain, like [a sheen of] oil on Government Service street, falls lightly,
though one sees the color of grass from afar, if one looks closely it is not really there.

Where the Chinese has "Heaven Street" (天街), Jakdan has rendered this as the more prosaic "Government Service Street." Jakdan apparently takes this to be a street in the capital where court officials worked. This goes well with the second line about the color of grass, because in the imperial palace in Beijing green tiles appear on buildings used by court officials, as opposed to yellow tiles on buildings used by the imperial family.

Here we see a quarter of the city where government workers toil away, a place that is probably normally quite dull, but the rain falling on it makes it shine, and from a distance the green tiles look like grass.

This sets us up for the second half:

The most beautiful spring scene of the whole year is this very one,
far better than the willows that loom everywhere over the city.

The conclusion of the poem is that the soft spring rain has transformed an otherwise dreary place into the most beautiful scene to be found anywhere.

Having read Jakdan first, the Chinese is relatively easy to understand. But if I only had access to the Chinese, I doubt I would fare so well, and I'm not alone. Most of the translations and interpretations that I have found of this poem miss the important point that the spring rain has transformed a mundane scene to one of beauty, and focus instead on the concrete imagery of the grass and the willows.

Here are four English translations, all of which treat the grass as literal grass, and take the willows to be the main subject of the second couplet:

https://www.chinlingo.com/articles/601316/
http://www.chinese-poems.com/h3t.html
http://www.learnancientchinesepoetry.org/2019/02/22/han-yu-early-spring-write-to-zhang-the-eighteenth-now-engaged-as-a-flood-control-officer/
https://www.dougwestendorp.com/poetry-journal

Lest we think that these failures are unique to English translators, there is also Baidu article on this poem with a modern Mandarin translation, here:

https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%88%9D%E6%98%A5%E5%B0%8F%E9%9B%A8

The Baidu translation takes 酥 to mean "yogurt" (酥酪), which comes across as a little strange. It also takes the grass to be literally present, though "sparse" (稀疏零星) on closer examination, despite the fact that in the original poem the grass is not there at all (無).

The Baidu translator also takes the willows to be the main subject of the last couplet, rendering the last line as 最美不过杨柳满城的长安, "The most beautiful, but for the willow-filled city of Chang'an."

I think it's fair to say we could learn a lot from reading the Manchu translations of Chinese poetry. These were, after all, made by people who were usually closer to the subject than we are.

G45.25: A Translation from Chinese

It is generally held that most Manchus (at least urban ones) could speak Chinese in the 19th century, and many could no longer speak Manchu at all.

If that is true, it is all the more interesting that some apparently enjoyed reading Chinese poetry in Manchu, when they could presumably have read it equally well or better in Chinese. Jakdan’s own translations of Chinese poetry are an example of this, as is the poem below from Grebenshchikov 45. I think this type of translation must have been appreciated as an art form of its own.

As I have been reading through G45 I have been struck by the fact that the poetry does not conform to the metrical and rhythmic conventions of Jakdan and the Staatsbibliothek poet(s), and that had caused me some angst. I have previously used syllabic meter and the unique Manchu rhyme scheme as a way to tell autochthonous poetry apart from translated poetry, but in G45 this distinction seemed to break down, since the poetry did not appear to be metrical, and yet I could not find Chinese originals.

In the case of the poem below, since it listed a tune (sumozhe 蘇莫遮), I was able to track down the original Ming poem and confirm that it is indeed a translation.

This is both heartening and disheartening. On the one hand, I don’t feel like I know enough about Manchu intellectual culture to understand how a translation “works” as an art form. On the other hand, it underscores the value of using syllabic meter and Manchu rhyme categories to identify autochthonous poetry.

Here are the G45 poem and the Ming original, side-by-side.

	šanggiyan tugi-i alin,		白云山，
	fulgiyan abdaha-i moo,		红叶树，
	mukdehe gukuhe be akūmbume,		阅尽兴亡、
	duwali tede ofi geli yamjire adali,		一似朝还暮。
	tuhere šun amtangga orho     wajihangge ai ton,		多事夕阳芳草渡，
	furgin hekceme, furgin cilciname		潮落潮生，
	niyalma be amasi julesi fudembi,		还送人来去。
	žuwan gung-ni jugūn, yang dzy-i tala,		阮公途， 杨子路，
	honin duha-i gese     uyun mudan-i bade,		九折羊肠，
	sejen-i muheren be tookabume     kemuni ejehengge singgiyan,		曾把车轮误。
	šunehe morin incara bade		记得寒芜嘶马处，
	saikan ficako, menggun-i yatuhan,		翠管银筝
	dobori dari uculeme     taktu de gerembumbihe,		夜夜歌楼曙。
	su mo je mudan,		to the tune Sumozhe

Snow, to the tune of Wind in the Pines

I have been exploring the idea that some or all of the Wind in the Pines poems in SB 11 are written in response to the corresponding Black-Naped Oriole poems earlier in the same fascicle.

If that is true then the poem below is a response to the Snow of my last post. Certainly some relationship between the two is likely in the fact that they both start with the same word, untuhun. With the consistent alliteration within each line it seems likely that this one would have been written by the same author that wrote Wind to the same tune.

	nimanggi [雪],		Snow
	Staatsbibliothek 11.19 (View Online)
	untuhun ulejefi,		The sky tumbled down,
	šahūn šarapi,		turned white as white,
	beri beri benjime,		bringing one after another,
	sisaha, sisa canggi,		it sprinkled, only sprinkles
5	tuheke tuhekei,		fell, but as it fell,
	inggaha inggari,		it became fluff and down.
	murušeme muduri,		Seeming that dragons
	becunuhei bi,		were fighting,
	emke emken esihe,		one scale after another,
10	fasar farsi farsi,		scattered piece by piece,
	tucinjihe tucin,		came forth in order
	sabubuha sabi.		to make an omen known.

Translation Difficulties

sisa. The usual meaning of sisa is “bean, pea,” which might suggest the idea of hail if it weren’t for the fact that Manchu has a much more common word for hail with the same number of syllables (bono). Given that sisambi means “to sprinkle,” I have read sisa as “sprinkes,” perhaps meaning snowflakes, or else maybe small icy drops.

Snow, to the tune of The Black-Naped Oriole

It hasn’t snowed here yet, but we have freezing temperatures and frost, and there is snow on the other side of the Cascades. Snow is a popular theme in Manchu poetry (as in Chinese), so there is no risk that I will run out of snow poems this winter.

	nimanggi,		Snow
	Staatsbibliothek 11.7 (View Online)
	untuhun deri,		Down through the void
	gukiong moo,		the gemwillow trees
	sigapi,		have dropped their leaves.
	gu-i jalan adali,		It is like a world of jade.
5	ba kiyoo [灞橋] ya nofi,		Who has heard
	gisun bahambi,		of Baqiao?
	lan guwan morin [藍關擁馬] libki,		The horse at the Blue Pass is worn out.
	niyengniyeri,		With the plum flowers
	nenden ilha —		of Spring —
10	juru ufuhi.		a matched set.

Literary Allusions

Baqiao (灞橋) is a district of Xi’an city. The reference here may be to a line of Huáng Tāo (黃滔) from the late Táng. Here is my tortured translation of those lines:

背將蹤跡向京師，	On the trail with a load on my back, I headed for the capital,
出在先春入後時。	I left the prior Spring, I got here a while later.
落日灞橋飛雪裏，	The setting sun and Baqiao in the flying snow,
已聞南院有看期。	I had heard of the southern court, now I have time to see it.

The Horse of Blue Pass (藍關擁馬) is a literary allusion used in poetry about snow back to the Táng. I am not sure what the original reference is, but a commonly cited one is from Hán Yù (韓愈):

雲橫秦嶺家何在?	Clouds across the Qinling range. Where is my home?
雪擁藍關馬不前:	Snow gathers on the blue passes, and the horse will not go forward.

With the blue passes and the remoteness of the scene, this poem by Hán Yù reminds me of some lines from W. E. B. Du Bois, in The Souls of Black Folk (ch. 4, “On the Meaning of Progress”):

So I walked on and on—horses were too expensive—until I had wandered beyond railways, beyond stage lines, to a land of “varmints” and rattlesnakes, where the coming of a stranger was an event, and men lived and died in the shadow of one blue hill.

Translation Difficulties

gukiong moo. Norman has guki moo, “an exotic tree resembling the weeping willow,” as well as gukiong, “hyacinth (a gem).” This seems like a portmanteau, so I’ve translated it with a portmanteau of my own.

gisun bahambi. I am not aware of this being a set phrase, but the meaning “to hear of” seems possible. Perhaps the lines ba kiyoo ya nofi / gisun bahambi are meant to contrast with the 已聞南院 of Huáng Tāo’s poem, pitting the fame of the Táng court against that of Baqiao, a district that surely would not have been as well known in its own time, but has since become famous in poetry.

juru ufuhi. The word juru means “a pair,” and ufuhi “a portion,” but I’m not entirely sure how to put them together. I think the pair in question must be the snow and the plum flowers (which drift like snow when they fall). Several expressions containing juru, such as juru gisun, have a sense of two different things that fit together, so that is how I have read it.

The Moon, to the tune of Black-Naped Oriole

The first eight poems of fascicle 11 of Staatsbibliothek 34981 are set to the Black-Naped Oriole tune, and written on the following themes:

• The Firsherman
• The Woodcutter
• The Plowman
• The Reader
• Wind
• Flower
• Snow
• The Moon

Poems 13-20 of the same fascicle are on nearly the same themes, but set to the tune Wind in the Pines. (The only difference is that the theme of poem 16 is “The Herdsman” instead of “The Reader.”) I don’t know what it means that these themes occur in this order, but I previously noted that the second poem on The Wind looks like a response to the first one, so perhaps the entire second set was written in response to the first set.

Since my last post was about the beautiful (and shocking) second poem on the Moon, I thought I would make this post about the first one.

	biya,		The Moon
	Staatsbibliothek 11.8 (View Online)
	bulekui yangse,		A mirror-like thing,
	atanggi,		when
	werihe,		was it left behind?
	tumen jalan genggiyengge,		It has been ten thousand generations of illumination.
5	can o [婵娥] wei gege,		Whose princess is Chang’e?
	u g'ang ya doose,		Which Daoist priest is Wugang?
	guwang han gurung [廣寒宮]		Is the Vast Cold Palace
	cibsunggeo,		full of silence?
	ten-i e,		How could the high feminine
10	šungga moo ai biretei holo.		and the osmanthus tree be completely false.

Translation Difficulties

werihe. Who is leaving what behind? Does this refer to Chang’e and Wugang leaving the earth behind? Or does it refer to the moon being left behind in the sky? I have decided to read it as the latter because otherwise the first line, bulekui yangse, is left hanging.

cibsunggeo. Norman has cibsu hiyan, “incense used at sacrifices,” apparently connected with the vocalically unusual cibsonggo, “harmony; the right side of an ancestral temple” and cibsen, “quietness; stillness.”

ai biretei holo. The phrase biretei holo seems to clearly mean “completely false,” but what is the ai doing? Since so many of the lines in this poem are questions, I took this to be a final question, “how could they be completely false?”

The Moon, to the tune of Wind in the Pines

Here is another poem to the tune of Wind in the Pines. The theme is the moon (biya) so it has the thematic A-rhyme.

This poem is like a diptych, with the two stanzas of the Wind in the Pines form giving us two starkly different views of the moon. The first stanza describes the moon as an object of beauty, a sphere in space that bathes the world in a cold light. The second stanza abruptly turns to the regret Chang’e feels after being parted from the fertile earth to live out a cold eternity in the vast and empty palaces of the moon.

	biya [月],		The Moon
	Staatsbibliothek 11.20 (View Online)
	untuhun ya bai tana,		From what region of the void is this pearl?
	buleku fiyangga,		Mirror-colored,
	we-i hungkerehengge,		molded by whom?
5	fosoci, gehun ba ba,		When it shines, everywhere it is bright,
	gecen helmen jalu,		full of frost shadows,
	muke elden niša,		replete with water light.
	da e simen bakjikan,		Her menstrual flow was once thick,
10	te goidatala,		now, after so long,
	ekiyehun erin fulu,		thin times remain.
	muheliyen ainu tongga,		How limited is this sphere,
	selabun seriken,		happiness is sparse,
	seyecun utala.		and regret so plentiful.

Translation Difficulties

e simen. Norman has in-i simen, “menstrual discharge,” which must surely be the same thing, the word in being Chinese 陰, and the word e being the native Manchu word for the feminine principle.

A Manchu Song on Winter Rain in Seven-Syllable Couplets

The rain has set in in Portland, and according to the traditional Chinese agricultural calendar we have entered winter, so it seems appropriate to post a song about winter rain.

Rain is an uncommon theme for Manchu poetry, and winter rain seems all the more dreary and unlikely as a topic of verse. But as the last lines make clear, this song is really about being happy regardless of your circumstances. It may be cold, but the rain at night is fragrant, and instead of flimsy flowers the world is decorated by yellow chrysanthemums and red maple leaves.

	tuweri aga be irgebuhe manju uculen		A Manchu Song on Winter Rain
	Staatsbibliothek 4.10 (View Online)
	emu dobori beikuwen,		One night it was cold,
	dule agai šahūrun,		it was actually the chill of rain.
	erin ba be burakū,		I could not tell you where or when,
	ara tuwahai gecuhun,		but oh, in the blink of an eye, there was frost,
5	wangga wa wen wasika,		and an aromatic scent descended.
	fiyangga fiyen fiyan filtahūn,		Bare of colorful makeup,
	eiten ilha sigapi,		every flower had fallen,
	boco ice juwe hacin,		but there were two new kinds of color,
	bojiri hon sohokon,		the chrysanthemum being very yellow,
10	molo ele fulahūn,		and the maple all the more red,
	elemangga kalcunggi,		but nonetheless vibrant,
	utulihekū gecen,		despite the frost.
	sasa tuweri bolori,		Winter together with Autumn,
	uhei kulun dahasun,		the Celestial and Earthly together,
15	ainu cingkai encu ni,		aren’t they vastly different?
	ere yala ai turgun,		So what is the reason for this?
	teisu teisu banjitai,		They each have their nature,
	meni meni sukdun wen,		their various vital forces.
	ilakangge hahiba,		That which blooms is quick,
20	baharangge nekeliyen,		that which can do it is flimsy.
	sigahangge amala,		After the falling of leaves,
	alihangge jiramin,		what remains is thick.
	fulibuha giyan fiyan-i,		There is an order to the forms things take,
	neigen akū de neigen,		an equality in their inequality.
25	tere tenteke giru,		That one has an appearance like that,
	ere enteke banin,		this one has a shape like this,
	ere tuttu jilakan,		this one is pitiful in that way,
	ere uttu elehun,		this one is composed in this way.
	daci adali akū,		Fundamentally different,
30	aide gese teheren,		how are they equally balanced?
	sence seci se seri,		A mushroom’s years are scanty,
	jakdan jaci jalafun,		the pine has a very long life,
	goiha goidaha,		stricken, and long-lived,
	baji banjiha banjin,		appearing only scarcely alive.
35	manda bime hon manda,		When something is slow, it is really slow,
	hūdun dade ten hūdun,		when quick it is fundamentally quick,
	ehe dade ten ehe,		when bad it is fundamentally bad,
	sain bime hon sain,		when good it is really good.
	erei haran ai seci,		What do you say is the reason for this?
40	gemu meimeni sukdun,		They are all vital forces.
	hafu tuwaha sehede,		When you have seen through it,
	teksin akū-i teksin,		it is a neatly arranged disorder.
	arbun bisirelengge,		All forms that exist,
	dubentele efujen,		in the end are subject to destruction,
45	taka bisire beye,		the temporary body,
	yaha tuwai fon erin,		the seasons and hours of embers and fire.
	sebjen bici sebjele,		When there is happiness, rejoice.
	ainu urui jobocun,		Why be constantly miserable?
	kuwai fai seme gūnici,		If one thinks about it lightly,
50	ne je yooni selabun,		immediately one is entirely content.
	jalan doroi mengde fa,		This is a window on the way of the world,
	agu hūtukan neilen,		sir, a quick revelation:
	encu emu abka na,		Different yet the same are heaven and earth;
	nimaha še urgun ten,		fish and black kite are both extremely happy.
55	elhe baire dasargan,		A formula for seeking peace,
	ere emu uculen.		is this single song.

Translation Difficulties

erin ba be burakū. Literally “not giving the time or the place.” The “giving” here is presumably metaphorical, but what type of giving is this? Who is the giver and who is the receipient? The default subject would be the topic of the previous line, “the chill of rain,” but I can’t make sense of that. Instead, I am reading this as the poet being unable to give the reader the time and place that the event occurred.

utulihekū gecen. From the verb utulimbi, “to be aware,” I take utulihekū to be a converb literally meaning “having been unaware,” but by extension “regardless of.”

encu emu abka na / nimaha še urgun ten. I wrestled with this for a very long time, and while I am not entirely happy with the reading I landed on, it is the best I could come up with. The poet has repeatedly touched on the idea of sameness within difference, in lines like neigen akū de neigen and teksin akū-i teksin. In these lines I think he means to say that heaven and earth are both different and the same, like the fish and black kite, which inhabit different realms yet both experience happiness.

Weiqi, a third poem, to the tune Immortal of Linjiang

The 11th fascicle of Staatsbibliothek 34981 has turned up a third poem on weiqi, this one is apparently set to a cí-style tune, but I’m not sure what the tune is. The metrical scheme seems to consist of two stanzas of the form 7,6,7,5,5 with rhyme x,A,A,x,A.

This poem uses an EO-rhyme, which consists of certain words ending in EO and IO. I think these words probably ended in a rising diphthong, such as [əw], and therefore do not rhyme with other words ending in -o, which fall into the E rhyme.

It seems likely that the poet chose the EO-rhyme because it rhymed with the theme, but interestingly the author of the first weiqi poem I looked at chose an E rhyme, suggesting that tonio could have been pronounced in two different ways, perhaps as [tɔɲɔ] at some times, and [tɔɲəw] at others.

	tonio [碁],		Weiqi
	Staatsbibliothek 11.22 (View Online)
	yacin šanyan juwe siden,		Black and white, the two sides,
	maka kimun binio,		I wonder, is there some enmity?
	arga bodon unenggio,		Are the plans and calculations genuine?
	etehe seme,		Suppose you win,
5	aibe bahambio,		what do you get?
	galai afambi seci,		When you say you’re making an attacking move,
	yala bucunuheo,		aren’t you actually fighting?
	wara deribun sureo,		Is it wise to begin killing?
	efin dabala,		It is only a game.
10	batai adalio.		Are you like enemies?

Translation Difficulties

bucunuheo. I don’t find this in my dictionaries. I initially read it as *bucenuheo, from *bucenumbi, “to die together,” but I agree with the feedback in the comments below that it is probably becunumbi, and I have updated my reading to reflect that.

Wind, to the tune of Wind in the Pines

This poem seems like a response to the the previous version of Wind, which was set to the Black-Naped Oriole tune. The two poems use the same rhyme, but while the previous poem described the wind in sublime and lofty terms, ending with a reference to the primordial eldest sister, this poem takes the eldest sister and imbues her with might and power.

The Manchu poems set to Wind in the Pines in Staatsbibliothek 11 and 14 consist of two stanzas with the metrical pattern 7,5,7,7,6,6 and rhyme pattern A,A,x,A,xA. This is essentially the same as the cí tune 風入松 as used by Song poet Wú Wényīng in a work titled 鄰舟妙香 (“Wonderful fragrance of the neighboring boat.”)

In addition to fitting the Chinese cí pattern, this poem also makes every line alliterative.

	edun [風]		Wind
	feng žu sung [風入松] sere mudan		To the tune of Wind in the Pines
	Staatsbibliothek 11.17 (View Online)
	ere eyungge eyun,		This eldest sister,
	dosire dosin,		her entry, when she enters,
	ara arbun amba ni,		doesn’t she take a mighty form?
	asuki, ai ajigen,		A faint noise, but nothing small,
5	fafuri fafungga,		stern when fierce,
	nemeyen nesuken.		tender when gentle.
	lasihire lalahūn,		The soft one that shakes
	wenere weren,		is the ripple that melts.
10	were wara encu ba,		She will nurture and kill in different places,
	enteke encu erin,		she does so in different seasons.
	mutubure muten,		The force that raises to maturity
	šahūrara šajin.		is the holy power that makes cold.

Wind, another Black-Naped Oriole poem

I’ve been busy the last week looking at poems in fascicle 11 of Staatsbibliothek 34981. I had not originally thought that these were autochthonous Manchu poems, but on re-reviewing it I now think they are. (If you want to know more about how I decide what is an original Manchu poem and what is a translation, see my page on the Staatsbibliothek poems.)

Here is one of the poems from that fascicle. It is another Black-Naped Oriole poem, concise and somewhat obscure. The theme is “the wind” and the rhyme is EN, comprising words ending in -en, -in, -un and -ūn, including the theme word edun.

At the end of the poem the author says that the wind is an eldest sister. Apparently each of the trigrams can be understood as a member of a family, and in this model the trigram of the wind corresponds to the eldest daughter (長女).

	edun [風]		The Wind
	Staatsbibliothek 11.5 (View Online)
	jijuhan dosin,		The entry of the trigram,
	asuki,		is a faint noise,
	untuhun,		an emptiness,
	halhūn beikuwen ai kemun,		heat and cold without order.
5	hūwašarai tucin,		It is the reason for growth,
	sigarai yarun,		the origin of leaf-fall,
	were wara kūbulin,		the cycle of nurturing and killing.
	da fukjin,		At the very beginning,
	sargan jusei —		among the daughters it was —
10	eyungge eyun.		eldest sister.

Translation Difficulties

were wara kūbulin. The phrase were wara doesn’t appear in my dictionaries, but the phrase banjire were is given in Norman for “livelihood”, and wara could be the imperfect participle of wambi, “to kill.” I have long thought that the verb wambi is somehow connected with words related to the sense of downward motion, like wasimbi, wasihūn, wala and wargi. Perhaps the verb wembi, now meaning “to melt; to warm; to civilize,” is connected with words with an upward sense like wesimbi, wesihun. If so, perhaps it originally had a meaning in opposition to wambi, with a sense of “to give life to something.” For the purpose of this translation, that is how I have read it.

ai kemun. This would technically be a rhetorical question (“what order is there...?”) but based on Jakdan’s translation of the Ever-Turning Horse Lantern I feel free to decode the rhetorical question as a statement that “there is no order....”

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.”

The Weiqi of Political Advancement, in Seven-Syllable Couplets

The anonymous Manchu poet(s) behind fascicle 14 of Staatsbibliothek 34981 liked weiqi enough to write two poems about it.

This second poem opens with a pair of officials, superior and subordinate, and a sheet of paper listing names and positions. Through a double entendre, the power dynamic between the two officials is compared to the power differential between two players in the end-game of weiqi, where one has attained a position of advantage over the other.

The sheet of paper between them is the board. Like weiqi, the correct move may not be obvious, and to win at the game you must be ruthless in your calculations. Your wealth and connections count for more than your aspirations.

The previous short poem, Weiqi, used a technical term that I could not translate, afari tongko. This longer poem, in seven-syllable couplets with an AN-rhyme, gives us more weiqi vocabulary to throw around the next time we’re looking across the board at a Manchu opponent.

Here are some of those terms, some of which are calques of Chinese terms, and others of which are borrowed from other sports and games popular with the Manchus.

buya ambakan hafan. The Chinese terms 大官 and 小官 refer to the apparent numerical advantage or disadvantage of each player going into the end-game.

gala. This apparently means “a move,” a calque of Chinese 手, which has this meaning in the context of weiqi.

lala. According to Norman one of the meanings of lala is “the last throw in gacuha.” In this context it could mean the last play of the game (收後) or perhaps it refers to playing white, which moves after black at the opening of the game.

mayan. Norman has mayan baha, “obtained a kill, won at dice, won at gambling,” as well as mayan, “blood from a wounded animal; good fortune.” Presumably in weiqi this refers to the capture of pieces or territory with a move.

teisulen. Norman has “correspondence, encounter.” From the sense of “encounter” I think this could have a meaning in weiqi of “connections” (Chinese 接).

ton, tolombi. The ordinary meaning of ton is “number” and tolombi is “to count.” In this context, these probably mean “score” and “keep score.” Perhaps this same ton morpheme lies behind the name tonio for weiqi itself, and perhaps also behind tongki, below.

tongki. The ordinary meaning is a “dot,” and in this case I think it refers to a point in the game.

	hafan wesire nirugan-i amcara tonio be irgebuhengge,		Verses on Pursuing Political Advancement as a game of Weiqi
	Staatsbibliothek 14.18 (View Online)
	buya ambakan hafan,		A lowly official and a superior,
	emu afaha hoošan,		and a sheet of paper,
	oron ubu-i gebu,		the names of posts and responsibilities,
	bithe cooha-i tušan,		official and civilian posts.
5	emke emken-i teku,		Seat after seat,
	jergi ilhi-i tangkan,		a succession of ranks,
	arahangge ne en jen,		what was been written is now finished,
	faidahangge hon giyan fiyan,		what was lined up is very orderly,
	toloho de kemun bi,		there was a system to the counting,
10	siberefi yaka an,		it was massaged in some orderly way.
	erdemungge jingkini,		The virtuous are upright,
	doosidara miosihon,		the covetous are corrupt.
	baita faššan ilgabun,		To judge affairs and effort,
	muten gunggei faksalan,		to discern ability and merit,
15	yasa tuwahai hūi kimcin,		is to examine with eyes wide open.
	gala daci ai boljon,		What inherent certainty is there in a move?
	wasimbime wesike,		In rising, you fell,
	jabšacibe ufaran,		though you succeeded, it was a mistake.
	wala seci dele ten,		The lower position may better than the high one,
20	lala bime bonggo ton,		the last to play may have the foremost score.
	forgošoro kūbulin,		A turn of fortune,
	bekterere mongniohon,		a gasp of terror,
	tongki erin ai kemun,		what sense is there to points and time?
	gūnin seolen bai bodon,		The only thought and consideration is calculation.
25	sain arga baitakū,		A good plan is useless,
	butui nashūn toktohon,		certainty lies in hidden opportunities.
	hojo: ulin teisulen,		Beautiful are wealth and connections,
	baliyan: niyalmai cihalan,		pitiful are people’s aspirations.
	ici tamin yenden jing,		With all the hairs aligned, ascent is continuous
30	ini cisui erin giyan,		time and reason operate of their own accord.
	ere acun de cacun,		This one gets mixed up,
	tere huwekiyen ci mayan,		that one gets a lucky kill.
	tere eici ai turgun,		Now this one wonders why,
	ere geli ya haran,		then that one again wonders why.
35	icanggangge we eden,		Who lacks something interesting?
	icakūngge ya kiyangkiyan,		How is there excellence in being boring?
	gaibuhangge munahūn,		The loser is morose,
	eterengge gicihiyan,		the winner gloats.
	hafu tuwaha sehede,		When one has seen through it,
40	jakai forgon niyalmai fon,		the season of things, the age of man,
	dubentele efin kai,		in the end it is just a game.
	nambuha de ai amtan,		What delight is there in happenstance?
	jalan baita jing uttu,		The affairs of the world are ever thus,
	baibi efire mudan.		a simple playing tune.

Translation Difficulties

gicihiyan, this word is not in my dictionaries, but from context this is how the winner of a game feels, in contrast with the user’s feeling of moroseness. My choice of the translation “gloat” is influenced by the similarity of this word to gicuhe, “disgraceful,” as well as gincihiyan, “shining.”