A Manuscript Russian-Chinese-Manchu Dictionary (from before 1737) in T.S. Bayer’s Papers in Glasgow University Library. Part I: Authorship of the Dictionary
Résumé
This article presents an anonymous Russian-Chinese-Manchu manuscript dictionary (from before 1737) held in the papers of Theophilus Siegfried Bayer (1694– 1738) in Glasgow University Library’s Special Collections. Part I of the article introduces the Manchu materials found in the papers of T.S. Bayer, a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences from 1726 to his death, and the history of the arrival of the Bayer papers in Glasgow. Previous scholarship on the dictionary is then summarized and possible candidates for its authorship are reviewed. Although it is not possible to identify the author of the dictionary, it is clearly a product of the language-learning activities of the members of the first Russian Ecclesiastical Mission to Peking. Part II will discuss the Manchu and Chinese lexicon of the Bayer collection dictionary and the dictionary’s annotations.