HKBU : History in Data : Tribute Data Curation : Notes and Conventions

Notes and Conventions

The notes and conventions are prepared for reader’s reference to the formats and principles of the database.

Time

Dates are presented in two forms: the original citations of "reign name. lunar month. lunar day" and the Gregorian calendar conversions, rendered by the Academia Sinica Two-Thousand Year Chinese-Western Calendar converter tool (http://sinocal.sinica.edu.tw/), which are organized in the "year-month-day" format.
Abbreviations for imperial reign names are as follows:

Latter Jin Dynasty
後金朝

Nurhaci 努爾哈赤	TM (Tianming) 天命
Hong Taiji 皇太極	TC (Tiancong) 天聰

Qing Dynasty
清朝

For Chinese dates with unspecified days, the default day listed in the Western converted dates is the first (signified by "01" in the Western day column).

Persons and Groups

It is very common to find different Chinese translations for a Manchu name in different Chinese archival materials. To avoid confusion, we use only current academic translation in the database. Researchers may check our glossary for other translation variations.
There are duplicating entries in our database. For example, a person may be identified as belonging to Heilongjiang in an earlier record, but eastern coast in a later one, leaving us with two similar entries. We are unable to check for all of these duplications, and we decided to leave it the way it is. Researchers will have to decide for themselves whether certain similar entries are actually referring to the same person or social group.
The standard orders of listing multiple traits for a person or group in the English version are as follows:

Chinese Name	English Name	Format
黑龍江將軍薩布素	Heilongjiang general Sabsu	Place + Title + Personal Name
華勒台甲喇	Hūwarantai jalan	Tribe or Place Name + Military or Social Unit
巴牙喇部落虎爾噶	Hūrgan of the Bayara tribe	Personal Name of the Tribe Name tribe
使犬部落頭目替爾庫	Dog-rearing tribal chieftain Tirku	Tribe Name tribal chieftain Personal Name
費雅喀地方頭目伊得圖魯	Chieftain Yidetulu from Fiyaka	Chieftain Personal Name from Place
黑龍江索倫部落博穆博果爾	Bomboger of the Solon tribe from Heilongjiang	Personal Name of the Tribe Name tribe from Place
黑龍江地方納爾開	Narkai from Heilongjiang	Personal Name from Place
杜爾伯特部落達爾漢貝勒阿都齊使臣根車布	Gancebu, envoy of Aduci Darhan beile of the Dörbet tribe	Personal Name, envoy of Personal Name Title of the Tribe Name tribe
黑龍江薩哈爾察部落頭目費揚古	Sahalca tribal chieftain Fiyanggū from Heilongjiang	Tribe Name tribal chieftain Personal Name from Place

Personal names have been transliterated into Manchu forms according to the Möllendorff system of transcribing Manchu language into Latin script or into Chinese forms according to the Hanyu Pinyin Romanization system (as indicated by double quotation marks). Group names are presented in the forms that are used conventionally in English-language scholarship.

Items

Items of which the specific quantity is unknown (signified by “0” in the quantity column). Also, if there are some special units for the items, it will be indicated by (xxxx). e.g. Pine nut (ginggen), Boot (pairs).
It is very common to find different Chinese translations for different items in different Chinese archival materials. To avoid confusion, we use only current academic translation in the database. Researchers may check our Database Glossary for other translation variations.
Definitions of Manchu terms, as seen in the Chinese-English-Manchu Glossary, are derived from Jerry Norman’s A Concise Manchu-English Lexicon (Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press, 1978).

Sources

Citations are given for most texts in the "fascicle (juan): page (ye shu)" format, with pages identified as "a" and "b" according to the two-sided arrangement of content on a single bound page.
Citations for modern publications of texts and collections of archival documents in the Chinese version of the dataset adhere to the convention of the Sino-Humanitas Journal.
Citations for modern publications of texts and collections of archival documents in the English version of the dataset follow the Chicago Manual of Style standards.