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Both in honor of the earlier Jurchen Jin dynasty in the 12–13th century and his Aisin Gioro clan (Aisin being the Manchu for the Chinese 金 (jīn, "gold")) Nurhaci originally named his state the Great Jin (lit "Gold") dynasty, afterwards called the Later Jin dynasty by historians. His son Hong Taiji renamed the dynasty Great Qing (lit. "Clarity") in 1636. There are numerous competing explanations on the meaning of "Qing," but none has been entirely accepted. The name Qing may have been selected in reaction to the name of the Ming dynasty (明), which consists of the characters for "sun" (日) and "moon" (月), both associated with the fire element. The character Qing (清) is composed of "water" (氵) and "azure" (青), both associated with the water element. This association would justify the Qing conquest as defeat of fire by water. The water imagery of the new name may also have had Buddhist overtones of perspicacity and enlightenment and connections with the Bodhisattva Manjusri.[3] The Manchu name daicing, which sounds like a phonetic rendering of "Da Qing" or "Dai Ching", may in fact have been derived from a Mongolian word that means "warrior". Daicing gurun may therefore have meant "warrior state", a pun that was only intelligible to Manchu and Mongol people. In the later part of the dynasty, however, even the Manchus themselves had forgotten this possible meaning.[4] The state was known internationally as China[5] or the Chinese Empire.[6] In the Chinese-language versions of its treaties and its maps of the world, the Qing government used "Qing" and "China" (simplified Chinese: 中国; traditional Chinese: 中國; pinyin: Zhōngguó) interchangeably.[7] Less commonly, it was also known in the romanization of the time as the Ta Tsing Empire[8][9] from the Chinese for "Empire of the Great Qing" (大清帝国, Dà Qīng Dìguó). After conquering the Ming, the Qing identified their state as "China" (中國, Zhongguo; "Middle Kingdom"), and referred to it as "Dulimbai Gurun" in Manchu.[10][11][12] The Qing equated the lands of the Qing state (including present day Manchuria, Xinjiang, Mongolia, Tibet and other areas) as "China" in both the Chinese and Manchu languages, defining China as a multi-ethnic state, rejecting the idea that China only meant Han areas, proclaiming that both Han and non-Han peoples were part of "China", using "China" to refer to the Qing in official documents, international treaties, and foreign affairs, and the "Chinese language" (Dulimbai gurun i bithe) referred to Chinese, Manchu, and Mongol languages, and the term "Chinese people" (中國人 Zhongguo ren; Manchu: Dulimbai gurun i niyalma) referred to all Han, Manchus, and Mongol subjects of the Qing.[13] When the Qing conquered Dzungaria in 1759, they proclaimed that the new land was absorbed into "China" (Dulimbai Gurun) in a Manchu language memorial.[14][15] The Qing expounded on their ideology that they were bringing together the "outer" non-Han Chinese like the Inner Mongols, Eastern Mongols, Oirat Mongols, and Tibetans together with the "inner" Han Chinese, into "one family" united in the Qing state, showing that the diverse subjects of the Qing were all part of one family, the Qing used the phrase "Zhongwai yijia" 中外一家 or "neiwei yijia" 內外一家 ("interior and exterior as one family"), to convey this idea of "unification" of the different peoples.[16] The Manchu language version of the Convention of Kyakhta (1768), a treaty with the Russian Empire concerning criminal jurisdiction over bandits, referred to people from the Qing as "people from the Central Kingdom (Dulimbai Gurun)".[17] In the Manchu official Tulišen's Manchu language account of his meeting with the Torghut Mongol leader Ayuka Khan, it was mentioned that while the Torghuts were unlike the Russians, the "people of the Central Kingdom" (dulimba-i gurun 中國, Zhongguo) were like the Torghut Mongols, and the "people of the Central Kingdom" referred to the Manchus.[18] |
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