14世紀~17世紀女眞の外交文書について = Documents connected with Jurchen foreign relations during the fourteenth and the seventeenth century

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The Jurchen script required a great deal of effort and time to learn and since learning it brought no practical benefit, it was hardly used at all among the Jurchen. The Jurchen people only use Jurchen script in sending memorials accompanying tribute to the Ming dynasty, seeing its use as formality which was unavoidable. Extant examples include the "Letter Sent on Arrival a t the Jurchen Lodge" (女眞館來文)
After the Hsu¨an-te (1426-1436) 宣德 period, however, no record is to be found of edicts in Jurchen script being sent to the Jurchen, for it seems the Ming state settled on a change of policy towards the Jurchen to accord with the actual situation that Jurchen script was not intelligible to them. Ming China and Korean Kingdom sent edicts and diplomatic letters to the Jurchen written in Chinese, without a translation into Jurchen script, and it may be supposed that on delivery at site, they were interpreted and read aloud in the Jurchen vernacular.
There is no reliable evidence that there were items noted in Jurchen script in documents so from the Jurchen to Korean Kingdom except only one script. There is evidence that documents in Mongolian script and in Chinese script were sent, but there are examples of clumsy composition in the documents written in Chinese. The documents sent from Korean Kingdom to the Jurchen are in Mongolian script or written Chinese or, rarely, in Jurchen script, but it appears that apart from those in Mongolian script, they could not be understood.
During the fourteenth and the seventeenth century, setting aside the question of Jurchen script the Jurchen people had not mastered written Korean or Chinese, but many of them knew the Mongolian writing system. The decision in 1444 to discontinue the despatch of edicts in Jurchen script to Hsuan-ch'eng 玄城 and the other forty garrisons and to use Mongolian script in edicts thereafter was probably because it was narrated that among the Jurchen of this period, the Chinese and Jurchen script had become practically useless and the Mongolian language and script were widely understood.