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54-708: The Nanai language belongs to the Manchu-Tungusic family . According to the 2010 census there were 12,003 Nanai in Russia. Common names for these people include Nanai ( Nanai : нанай , нани , IPA: [nanai] , lit.   ' natives, locals, people of the land/earth ' ) and Hezhen ( хэдзэни , IPA: [χədʑən] ; Chinese : 赫哲族 ; pinyin : Hèzhézú ). There are also terms formerly in use: Goldi , Golds , Goldes , and Samagir . Other self names are Qilang ( IPA: [kilən] , lit.   ' those who live by

108-402: A bird and fly off. When an infant dies they are not buried. Instead they are wrapped in a paper made of birch bark and placed in a large tree somewhere in the forest. The soul of the child, or the bird, is then free to enter back into a woman. It is common practice in preparing a funeral rite of an infant to mark it with coal, such as drawing a bracelet around the wrist. If a child is later born to

162-416: A great reverence for the bear ( Doonta ) and the tiger ( Amba ). They consider that the shamans have the power to expel bad spirits by means of prayers to the gods. During the centuries they have been worshippers of the spirits of the sun, the moon, the mountains, the water and the trees. According to their beliefs, the land was once flat until great serpents gouged out the river valleys. They consider that all

216-630: A much smaller extent in China 's Heilongjiang province, where it is known as Hezhe . The language has about 1,400 speakers out of 17,000 ethnic Nanai, but most (especially the younger generations) are also fluent in Russian or Chinese , and mostly use one of those languages for communication. In China, the language is referred to as Hèzhéyǔ ( Chinese : 赫哲语 ). The Nanai people there variously refer to themselves as /na nio/, /na bəi/ , /na nai/ (which all mean "local people"), /ki lən/ , and /χə ɖʐən/ ,

270-464: A number of dialects. The basic difference with Sunik's classification concerns the Amur and Upper Amur groups: Avrovin considered Bolon and Dzhuen under Naykhin, while separating Kur-Urmi as its own group, while Sunik viewed Kur-Urmi as a dialect. Sem, in contrast, classified Nanai into Upper, Central, and Lower Amur groups, each divided into a number of dialects; he counted a total of ten dialects. Among

324-510: A place name has spawned conspiracy theories including ideas of a "hidden past" and "mud floods ". Such theories assert that Tartary (or the " Tartarian Empire ") was a lost civilization with advanced technology and culture. This ignores the well-documented history of Asia , which Tartary refers to. In the present day, the Tartary region spans from central Afghanistan to northern Kazakhstan , as well as areas in present Mongolia , China and

378-535: A possible source of spiritual knowledge lacking in contemporary European society. In Five Years of Theosophy , edited by the Theosophist and scholar G.R.S. Mead , the polymath and "seer" Emanuel Swedenborg is quoted as having advised, "Seek for the Lost Word among the hierophants of Tartary, China, and Tibet." The use of "Tartary" declined as the region became more known to European geographers; however,

432-425: A special ritual must be performed to chase the evil spirit away. After death, a person's soul is put into a temporary shelter made of cloth, called a lachako. The souls of the deceased will remain in the lachako for seven days before being moved to a wooden sort of doll called a panyo , where it will remain until the final funerary ritual. The panyo is taken care of as if it is a living person; for example, it

486-643: A woman that has similar markings to those drawn on a deceased child then it is believed to be the same soul reborn. The deceased were normally buried in the ground with the exception of children who died prior to the first birthday; these are buried in tree branches as a "wind burial". Many Nanai are also Tibetan Buddhist . In Russia the Nanai live on the Sea of Okhotsk , on the Amur River , downstream from Khabarovsk , on both sides of Komsomolsk-on-Amur , as well as on

540-580: Is 84%.) However, as of 2005 teachers have recently finished compiling what is probably the first Hezhe language textbook. The 2000 Chinese census recorded 4640 Nanai in China. (Only includes counties or county-equivalents containing >0.45% of China's Nanai population.) Nanai language The Nanai language (also called Gold , Goldi , or Hezhen ) is spoken by the Nanai people in Siberia , and to

594-586: Is also some vocabulary shared with Mongolian and the Turkic languages , such as: These too are likely loanwords, though proponents of the Altaic hypothesis may take these as evidence of a genetic relationship . Conversely, the Nanai language itself has also contributed some loanwords to the Udege language , supplanting Udege vocabulary: A large degree of mutual assimilation of the two languages has been observed in

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648-420: Is given a bed to sleep in each night, with a pillow and blanket to match its miniature size. The closest family member is in charge of taking care of the deceased’s panyo . Each night this family member puts the panyo to bed and then wakes it in the morning. The panyo has a small hole carved where the mouth of a person would be, so that a pipe may occasionally be placed there and allow the deceased to smoke. If

702-1025: Is in heaven. Ини таондоани сиагопова эпэмбэ бунду буру. Ini taondoani siagopova epembe bundu buru. Ини таондоани сиагопова эпэмбэ бунду буру. Ini taondoani siagopova epembe bundu buru. Give us each day our daily bread. Буэ оркимпова гудиэсигуру, буэ-дэ оркиӈку, наӈдаку гурумбэ гудиэсиэпу, буэ мурумпувэ-дэ эди памаванда, хай-да дялимбани, оркимбани эди дял дяпаванда"». Bue orkimpova gudiesiguru, bue-de orkiŋku, naŋdaku gurumbe gudiesiepu, bue murumpuve-de edi pamavanda, haĭ-da dǎlimbani, orkimbani edi dǎl dǎpavanda.'" Буэ оркимпова гудиэсигуру, буэ-дэ оркиӈку, наӈдаку гурумбэ гудиэсиэпу, буэ мурумпувэ-дэ эди памаванда, хай-да дялимбани, оркимбани эди дял дяпаванда"». Bue orkimpova gudiesiguru, bue-de orkiŋku, naŋdaku gurumbe gudiesiepu, bue murumpuve-de edi pamavanda, haĭ-da dǎlimbani, orkimbani edi dǎl dǎpavanda.'" Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation" The Nanai language has seven vowels in

756-742: The 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China where they are known as "Hezhe" ( 赫哲族 ; Hèzhé Zú ). According to the last census of 2004, they numbered 4,640 in China (mostly in Heilongjiang province). Chinese Nanai speak the Hezhen dialect of Nanai . They also have a rich oral literature known as the Yimakan . The dialect does not have a written system in China and Nanai usually write in Chinese. (Second language literacy

810-672: The Amur in 1709. According to them, the native people living on the Ussuri and on the Amur above the mouth of the Dondon River (which falls into the Amur between today's Khabarovsk and Komsomolsk-on-Amur ) were known as Yupi Tartars, while the name of the people living on the Dondon and on the Amur below Dondon was transcribed by the Jesuits into French as Ketching . The latter name may be

864-588: The Bikin region; the Udege language itself only has 230 speakers left. Tartary Tartary ( Latin : Tartaria ; French : Tartarie ; German : Tartarei ; Russian : Тартария , romanized :  Tartariya ) or Tatary (Russian: Татария , romanized:  Tatariya ) was a blanket term used in Western European literature and cartography for a vast part of Asia bounded by

918-617: The Caspian Sea , the Ural Mountains , the Pacific Ocean , and the northern borders of China , India and Persia , at a time when this region was largely unknown to European geographers. The active use of the toponym (place name) can be traced from the 13th to the 19th centuries. In European sources, Tartary became the most common name for Central Asia that had no connection with the real polities or ethnic groups of

972-530: The Russian Far East in " Chinese Tartary ". Knowledge of Manchuria , Siberia and Central Asia in Europe prior to the 18th century was limited. The entire area was known simply as "Tartary" and its inhabitants "Tartars". In the early modern period , as understanding of the geography increased, Europeans began to subdivide Tartary into sections with prefixes denoting the name of the ruling power or

1026-460: The 1920s, the period of initial studies of the Nanai language, the area of settlement of the Nanai people was more extensive than at present; many dialects, which had not yet been classified by researchers, later disappeared, and remain unnamed. The next period of studies did not begin until after a 20-year interruption, at the end of the 1940s; by then, the number of dialects had grown, and subsequent classifications distinguished as many as ten. Also,

1080-574: The French transcription of the reported self-name of the Nanai of the lower Amur, [xədʑən] , which was also applied to the closely related Ulch people. According to the Jesuits, the language of the Yupi people seemed to occupy an intermediate position between the Manchu language and that of the "Ketching" people ( Chinese : 盖青 ; pinyin : Gàiqīng ); some level of communication between

1134-571: The Hezhen dialect /i, u, y, o, œ, a, ə/ and six in the Bikin dialect /i, ɪ, u, o, a, ə/ . There are sixteen allowed diphthongs in total: /ai, aɪ, ao, əi, əo, ɪa, ɪo, ia, iə, io, iu, ua, ui, uo, oi, oɪ, ya, yə/ ; there are also two allowed triphthongs : /iao, uai/ . Phonemic vowels change as follows based on surrounding consonants: The following table summarises the rules of vowel harmony. As for consonants, there are twenty-nine: Phonemic consonants may optionally change as follows: Phonology of

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1188-650: The Latin basis for the small-numbered peoples of the North . In January 1932, these alphabets, including Nanai, were officially approved at the I All-Russian Conference on the Development of Languages and Writings of the Peoples of the North. The approved Nanai alphabet was as follows: In some versions of the alphabet, the letter Ꞓ ꞓ was replaced with the usual Latin C c and meant the same sound. On June 5, 1936,

1242-888: The Manchus and the lands they ruled as "Tartary". European opinions of the area were often negative, and reflected the legacy of the Mongol invasions that originated from this region. The term originated in the wake of the widespread devastation spread by the Mongol Empire . The adding of an extra "r" to "Tatar" was suggestive of Tartarus , a Hell -like realm in Greek mythology . In the 18th century, conceptions of Siberia or Tartary and its inhabitants as "barbarous" by Enlightenment -era writers tied into contemporary concepts of civilization , savagery and racism . More positive opinions were also expressed by Europeans. Some saw Tartary as

1296-519: The Nanai (Hezhe) people use Chinese for writing. The number of speakers has been in continual decline for decades; by the 1980s, the use of the language was restricted to special situations and communication with family members. In an effort to reverse this decline, a text book for Hezhe schoolchildren discussing the Hezhe language was published in 2005 (in pinyin transcription). In the history of written Nanai, there are three stages: The first books in

1350-403: The Nanai language also noted a variety of loanwords from Chinese, such as [ʐili] "calendar" from Chinese 日曆 ( Pinyin : rìlì ); a few also came from other languages, such as [pomidor] (tomato), almost certainly from Russian помидор, though the exact route of transmission is not attested, and it may have been reborrowed from other neighbouring languages rather than directly from Russian. There

1404-474: The Nanai language were printed by Russian Orthodox missionaries in the late 19th century in a Cyrillic orthography. In the 1920s–30s, after several false starts, the modern written form of the Nanai language was created by a team of Russian linguists led by Valentin Avrorin . The Nanai language uses the same alphabet as the Russian alphabet . In 1930, it was decided to create a Unified Northern Alphabet on

1458-545: The Nanai spelling rules in Cyrillic were adopted, refined in 1958, when the Nanai alphabet began to contain all 33 letters of the Russian alphabet, as well as the letter Ӈ ӈ (instead of Нг нг ). However, in fact, in most publications, instead of Ӈ ӈ , the use of Нг нг continued. The current version of the Nanai alphabet was approved in 1993. The modern Nanai alphabet has the following form: To indicate long vowels in

1512-584: The Nanai the name "Fish-skin Tartars " ( Chinese : 鱼皮鞑子 ; pinyin : Yúpí Dázi ). This name has also been applied, more generically, to other aboriginal groups of the lower Sungari and lower Amur basins. Agriculture entered the Nanai lands only slowly. Practically the only crop grown by the Yupi villagers on the Ussuri River shores in 1709 was some tobacco . The Nanai are mainly Shamanist , with

1566-687: The Presidium of the Council of Nationalities of the CEC of the USSR decided to translate the written language of the peoples of the North, including the Nanai, into Cyrillic. At the beginning of 1937, the Nanai Cyrillic alphabet was officially approved – it included all the letters of the Russian alphabet except Щ щ and Ъ ъ . The sound [ŋ] was indicated by a combination of letters Нг нг . In 1939,

1620-468: The Ussuri River in 1709), the economy of the people living there (who would be classified as Nanai, or possible Udege people , today) was based on fishing. The people would live in villages along the banks of the Ussuri, and would spend their entire summers fishing, eating fresh fish in the summer (particularly appreciating the sturgeon ), and drying more fish for eating in winter. Fish would be used as fodder for those few domestic animals they had (which made

1674-575: The Yupi and the Ketching was possible. Some Han Chinese are said to have founded clan subdivisions among the Nanai, and the Nanai have absorbed Manchu and Jurchens. Nanai culture is influenced by Han Chinese and Manchu culture, and the Nanai share a myth in common with southern Chinese. The Nanais at first fought against the Nurhaci and the Manchus, led by their own Nanai Hurka chief Sosoku before surrendering to Hongtaiji in 1631. Mandatory shaving of

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1728-744: The banks of the Ussuri and the Girin rivers (the Samagirs ). The Russians formerly called them Goldi, after a Nanai clan name. According to the 2002 census , there were 12,160 Nanai in Russia . In the Soviet Union , a written standard of the Nanai language (based on Cyrillic ) was created by Valentin Avrorin and others. It is still taught today in 13 schools in Khabarovsk . The Nanai are one of

1782-434: The body is merely an outer shell for the soul. This concept of a continuing soul was not introduced to the Nanai by Christianity, but is original to them. The Nanai believe that each person has both a soul and a spirit. On death, the soul and spirit will go different ways. A person’s spirit becomes malevolent and begins to harm their living relatives. With time, these amban may be tamed and can later be worshipped; otherwise,

1836-568: The contemporary carriers of Nanaian language (middle and lower Amur dialects), dialect levelling and mixing has occurred due to extensive population migrations and the system of teaching of Nanai language (based on the Naykhin dialect); therefore it is difficult to differentiate the dialects in contemporary language data. The Nanai language is taught in secondary schools in Russia, mainly in Nanai villages in Khabarovsk Krai . In China,

1890-435: The distribution of the Nanai language had sharply narrowed; many Lower Amur and Ussuri dialects remained unstudied. According to Sunik's classification, which emphasizes morphological and phonetic features, "Nanaian language forms two groups, which are decomposed into a number of dialects". Avrorin divided the language into three varieties: Sungari (aka Upper Amur), (Lower) Amur, and Kur-Urmi, further subdividing them into

1944-1251: The educational literature, diacritics are used – macrons above the letters. In China , where Nanai residents also live, in 1987 a reading book for Nanai schools was published with parallel text in Chinese and Nanai languages. Pinyin was used to write the Nanai text. Sample text from a Bible translation published in 2002 is shown below. Нёани дахамдичии уӈкини: «Кэсивэ гэлэйдуэри туй ундусу: "Боаду, уйлэ би, Эндур Ама! Гэбукуди гэрбуси бигини. Си боа яловани далачайси эрин исигини! Наду-да, боаду-да Си чихалайси бигини! Nǒani dahamdičii uŋkini: "Kesive geleĭdueri tuĭ undusu: 'Boadu, uĭle bi, Endur Ama! Gebukudi gerbusi bigini. Si boa ǎlovani dalačaĭsi erin isigini! Nadu-da, boadu-da Si čihalaĭsi bigini! Нёани дахамдичии уӈкини: «Кэсивэ гэлэйдуэри туй ундусу: "Боаду, уйлэ би, Эндур Ама! Гэбукуди гэрбуси бигини. Си боа яловани далачайси эрин исигини! Наду-да, боаду-да Си чихалайси бигини! Nǒani dahamdičii uŋkini: "Kesive geleĭdueri tuĭ undusu: 'Boadu, uĭle bi, Endur Ama! Gebukudi gerbusi bigini. Si boa ǎlovani dalačaĭsi erin isigini! Nadu-da, boadu-da Si čihalaĭsi bigini! He said to them, "When you pray, say: 'Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it

1998-481: The ethnic autonomous status of the Nanai District. According to Stolyarov's data, the worldwide Nanai population is 11,883, of whom 8,940 live in rural localities of Khabarovsk Krai. However, only 100–150 native speakers of the language remain there. The 2002 Census recorded 12,194 Nanai people who claimed to speak Russian as well. Three ethnic Nanai villages remain, those being Dzhuen, Ulika, and Dada; in

2052-446: The family member travels they will bring the panyo with them. The dead’s final funerary ritual is called kasa tavori and lasts three days, during which there is much feasting and the souls of the deceased are prepared for their journey to the underworld. The most important part of the kasa tavori is held on the third day. On this day, the dead’s souls are moved from the panyo into large human-looking wooden figures made to be about

2106-415: The flesh of a locally raised pig almost inedible by visitors with European tastes). The traditional clothing was made out of fish skins. These skins were left to dry. Once dry, they were struck repeatedly with a mallet to leave them completely smooth. Finally they were sewn together. The fish chosen to be used were those weighing more than 50 kilograms. In the past centuries, this distinct practice earned

2160-452: The front of all male heads was imposed on Amur peoples conquered by the Qing including the Nanai people. The Amur peoples already wore the queue on the back of their heads but did not shave the front until the Qing subjected them and ordered them to shave. The term "shaved-head people" was used to describe the Nanai by Ulch people. As described by early visitors (e.g., Jesuit cartographers on

2214-469: The geographical location. Thus, Siberia was Great Tartary or Russian Tartary , the Crimean Khanate was Little Tartary , Manchuria was Chinese Tartary , and western Central Asia (prior to becoming Russian Central Asia ) was known as Independent Tartary . By the seventeenth century, however, largely under the influence of Catholic missionary writings, the word "Tartar" came to refer to

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2268-429: The last being the source of the Chinese ethnonym Hezhe . The language is distributed across several distantly-located areas: It is thought that in Russia, the Nanai language has been best preserved in the Nanai District of Khabarovsk Krai, because of the active Nanai-speaking community there, which has been active in working on the publication of books in Nanai, as well as textbooks on the language, and also because of

2322-434: The presence of a fire. Nanai shamans, like other Tungusic peoples of the region, had characteristic clothing, consisting of a skirt and jacket; a leather belt with conical metal pendants; mittens with figures of serpents, lizards or frogs; and hats with branching horns or bear, wolf, or fox fur attached to it. Bits of Chinese mirrors were also sometimes incorporated into the costume. When a person dies their soul lives on, as

2376-406: The region; until the 19th century, European knowledge of the area remained extremely scarce and fragmentary. In modern English-speaking tradition, the region formerly known as Tartary is usually called Inner Asia or Central Eurasia . Much of this area consists of arid plains, the main nomadic population of which in the past was engaged in animal husbandry . Ignorance surrounding Tartary's use as

2430-540: The remaining populated areas, the proportion of Nanais among local residents is much smaller. Scholars in China have traditionally presented less fine-grained dialect classifications; An identified only two, Hezhen and Qile'en, the former referring to all varieties of the language spoken in Russia . He conducted his studies in Jiejinkou, Bacha, and Sipai villages in Heilongjiang; at the time of his survey in 1982,

2484-414: The river ' ; Chinese: 奇楞 ), [nanio] and [nabəi] . [na] means 'land, earth, ground, country' or, in this context, 'native, local'; [nio] , [bəi] , or [nai] means 'people' in different dialects. The Russian linguist L. I. Sem gives the name Hezhe nai ( хэǯэ най ) or Hezheni ( хэǯэны , [xədʑən] ) and explains it as

2538-520: The self-name of the Nanai of the lower Amur, meaning 'people who live along the lower course of the river'. It is the source of the Chinese name for the Nanai, Hezhe ( 赫哲 ), formerly Heijin ( 黑斤 ) and Hezhehala ( 赫哲哈喇 ). Some of the earliest first-hand accounts of the Nanai people in the European languages belong to the French Jesuit geographers travelling on the Ussuri and

2592-483: The shaman leads the dog sleds on the dangerous journey to Buni , from where she must leave before sunset or else she will die. After kasa tavori , it has previously been practiced that the living relatives could no longer visit the graves of the deceased, or even talk about them. The souls of Nanai infants do not behave in the same manner as an adult’s. For the Nanai, children under a year old are not yet people, but are birds. When an infant dies, its soul will turn into

2646-440: The size of the deceased, called mugdeh. These mugdeh are moved into a dog sled that will be used to transport them to the underworld, Buni . Before leaving for Buni , the shaman communicates any last wills of the deceased to the gathered family. For example, in the anthropologist Gaer’s account of this ritual, one soul asked his family to repay a debt to a neighbor that the deceased was never able to repay. After this ceremony,

2700-595: The term " Siberia " being coined for the Asian half of the Russian Empire . By the 20th century, Tartary as a term for Siberia and Central Asia was obsolete. However, it lent the title to Peter Fleming 's 1936 book News from Tartary , which detailed his travels in Central Asia. Misinterpretations of Tartary as an empire distinct from the Mongol Empire or as an archaic name for Central Asia gave rise to

2754-463: The term was still used long into the 19th century. Ethnographical data collected by Jesuit missionaries in China contributed to the replacement of " Chinese Tartary " with Manchuria in European geography by the early 18th century. The voyages of Egor Meyendorff and Alexander von Humboldt into this region gave rise to the term Central Asia in the early 19th century as well as supplementary terms such as Inner Asia , and Russian expansionism led to

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2808-407: The things of the universe possess their own spirit and that these spirits wander independently throughout the world. In the Nanai religion, inanimate objects were often personified. Fire, for example, was personified as an elderly woman whom the Nanai referred to as Fadzya Mama. Young children were not allowed to run up to the fire, since they might startle Fadzya Mama, and men always were courteous in

2862-427: The various dialects of Nanai has been influenced by surrounding languages. Tolskaya specifically noted several phonological peculiarities of Bikin dialect which may indicate influence from Udege , including monophthongisation of diphthongs, denasalisation of nasal vowels , deletion of reduced final vowels, epenthetic vowel preventing consonant final words, and the deletion of intervocalic [w] . Tolskaya's survey of

2916-487: The youngest fluent speaker was 55, and the oldest 72. There are several classifications of Nanai dialects. Early classifications tended to be areal and paid less attention to criteria for the differentiation of dialects. Lipskoy-Val'rond's classification, which distinguishes seven dialects, is one example of this; he distinguished the Sungari , Upper Amur , Ussuri , Urmi , Kur , Central Amur, and Lower Amur dialects. In

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