''The Tale of the Nisan Shaman'' (also spelled "Nishan"; ) is a

Manchu The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) and ...

folk tale about a female

shaman Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiritu ...

who resurrects the son of a rich landowner.

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Variants of the tale are also found among the Evenk, Daur, and Nanai peoples. The tale was transmitted orally, and manuscripts were rare; Soviet ethnographer A. V. Grebenshchikov managed to purchase two during his early research trips to

Northeast China Northeast China or Northeastern China () is a geographical region of China, which is often referred to as "Manchuria" or "Inner Manchuria" by surrounding countries and the West. It usually corresponds specifically to the three provinces east of t ...

in 1908 and 1909, the first near Qiqihar, and the second at

Aigun Aigun (; Manchu: ''aihūn hoton''; ) was a historic Chinese town in northern Manchuria, situated on the right bank of the Amur River, some south (downstream) from the central urban area of Heihe (which is across the Amur from the mouth of the Z ...

. He had a third manuscript given to him in

Vladivostok Vladivostok ( rus, Владивосто́к, a=Владивосток.ogg, p=vɫədʲɪvɐˈstok) is the largest city and the administrative center of Primorsky Krai, Russia. The city is located around the Zolotoy Rog, Golden Horn Bay on the Sea ...

in 1913 by a man named Dekdenge. The Qiqihar manuscript shows some unusual features in its orthography; in particular, the verbal tense markers therein are written separately from their base verbs, whereas the standard practise in written Manchu is to write them attached to the base verb. A 1930s ethnographic survey by Johnson Ling of the

Academia Sinica Academia Sinica (AS, la, 1=Academia Sinica, 3=Chinese Academy; ), headquartered in Nangang, Taipei, is the national academy of Taiwan. Founded in Nanking, the academy supports research activities in a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from ...

() recorded 18 different versions of the tale among Nanai tribes on the

Songhua River The Songhua Postal Romanization, or Sunghwa River (also Haixi or Xingal, russian: Сунгари ''Sungari'') is one of the primary List of rivers of China, rivers of China, and the longest tributary of the Amur. It flows about from the Chang ...

. , based on Grebenshchikov's manuscript, was the first Russian translation. In 1969, an English translation was made by George Meszoly, a

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

undergraduate; however, it was never published.

Seong Baek-in Seong Baek-in (born 7 December 1933) is professor emeritus of linguistics at Seoul National University. His primary area of research is on the Manchu language. Career Seong served as a professor at Myongji University from March 1968 to May 1982. ...

(then of

Myongji University Myongji University () is a private, Christian university founded in 1948 in South Korea. It provides higher education in the fields of engineering, sciences and humanities. It has two campuses: the Social Science Campus is located in Seoul and th ...

) made a Korean translation five years later (). The first ''published'' English translation, , relied on the annotations in Volkova's and Seong's works, but did not refer to Ling's study. A Hungarian translation came out in 1987.

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Further reading