The Uighur Word Materials in a Manuscript of Hua-yi-yi-yu (華夷譯語) in the Library of Seoul National University

Abstract

The Hua-yi-yi-yu is a general name for the various wordbooks between the Chinese language and its neighbor languages compiled on from the beginning of the Ming dynasty (1368~1644). It has broadly 3 different classes: 1. the Sino-Mongolian wordbook compiled by Huo Yuan-Jie; In this wordbook the Mongolian words were written in Chinese characters according to the transliteration rules in The Secret History of the Mongols. 2. the wordbooks which were compiled, continually reedited and added/ reduced in Si-yi-guan; In the wordbooks of this class the words of each foreign language were not only transliterated in Chinese characters but written also in letters native to the language in question. 3. the wordbooks which were presumably compiled in Hui-tong-guan; In the wordbooks of this class the words of each foreign language were transliterated only in Chinese characters and the letters native to the language in question were not used. To the third class belongs also the manuscript in the collection of the library of Seoul National University. It comprises 8 volumes: (1) Korea, (2) Ryukyu, (3) Japan, (4) Annam (= North Vietnam), (5) Siam (= Thailand), (6) Tatar (= Eastern Mongols), (7) Uighur, (8) Malacca. The volume for Uighur contains 19 categories. The second of them is ‘the category of geography’ with 86 entries treated in the present paper. It seems that the compiler/transcriber of these materials did not have a sound command of Chinese and Uighur, for there are many scribal or grammatical errors. This may be the main reason why the Uighur word materials in the wordbooks of this kind are not well treated up to the present.