Ebook: An early Manchu-Chinese patent of nobility

Sophia University. Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 10, No. 1/2 (1954), pp. 270-276.The New York Public Library recently acquired a well-preserved scroll with a very clear Manchu text, while the corresponding Chinese text is almost wholly obliterated. The date of this document - a patent of nobility - is 1652, which makes it oine of the earliest specimens known, at any rate outside China. Since very little has been published on the subject in western literature,29 a translation and discussion of this new find may prove of interest to sinologists.