page_title: Jurchen script
section_title: Study of the script
hierarchical_section_title: Jurchen script / Study of the script
caption_attribution_description: English: Inscription of Serven Khaalga (1196), Bayankhutag sum, Khentii Province, Mongolia. Bilingual inscription in Chinese characters and Jurchen script. Spaced 18m apart. Found by Kh.Perlee. Each inscription's height 3m, width 4m. Each inscription has 9 vertical lines with 11-16 characters each. Japanese scholar Kato Shimpei read the first line as "Great Golden Central State O-Giao Jeo-Shio" which he said corresponds to the Jinshi's "Wangyang Changxiang" and the Secret History of the Mongols' "Wangin Chenshiang", a high minister of the Jin Emperor. In the 8th line it says "7th year of Mingchang" which led to the conclusion that the inscription was written in 1196, just after the successful joint Jin-Mongol-Kerait campaign against the Tatars. Genghis Khan collaborated with the Jin against the Tatars and was awarded the title "caut-quri" by Wangin Chenshiang while the Kerait Khan Toghrul was awarded the title "wang khan". Genghis Khan would eventually conquer both the Keraits and the Jin Dynasty.
context_page_description: Jurchen script was the writing system used to write the Jurchen language, the language of the Jurchen people who created the Jin Empire in northeastern China in the 12th–13th centuries. It was derived from the Khitan script, which in turn was derived from Chinese. The script has only been decoded to a small extent.
  The Jurchen script is part of the Chinese family of scripts.
context_section_description: Due to the scarcity of the surviving samples of Jurchen writing, it was often difficult to determine for the 19th-century (or sometimes even 20th-century) scholars, whether a given inscription was in the "large" or "small" Jurchen script, or whether it was in Jurchen script at all. Thus, it was commonly thought in the 19th century by the Chinese and Western researchers that the Da Jin huang di dotong jinglüe langjun xingji (大金皇弟都统经略郎君行记) inscription represented the Jurchen large script until, in 1922, the Belgian missionary L. Ker discovered the Liao Imperial Tombs in Qingling, where this very script was used, in parallel with Chinese text, for the epitaph of Emperor Xingzong of Liao and Empress Renyi. Thus the Khitan script was discovered, and the Jin dynasty's Da Jin huangdi dotong jinglüe langjun xingji inscription, long thought to be written in Jurchen script, turned out to be written in the (still undeciphered) Khitan script and, most likely, Khitan language, after all.
  The pioneering work on studies of the Jurchen script was done by Wilhelm Grube in the end of the 19th century.
caption: Jurchen inscription dated 1196, on a rock in Mongolia
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