The Manchus, a Tungusic-speaking people of Manchuria, conquered China in the 17th century and founded the Qing dynasty, which ruled the empire until 1912. While adopting many Chinese institutions, the Manchu rulers preserved and codified their own shamanic traditions. From the same culture comes one of the most fascinating texts of Eurasian shamanic literature: the tale of the Nisan shaman.
The tale
The Tale of the Nisan Shaman (in Manchu Nišan saman-i bithe) has come down to us in several Manchu-language manuscripts, discovered and studied between the late 19th and the 20th century. The story, also widespread in oral form among various Tungusic peoples, tells of a journey to the afterlife.
The plot, in its essential lines, is as follows:
- A rich lord, who has already lost one son, has a second, Sergudai Fiyanggū, who dies suddenly during a hunt.
- The father, in despair, seeks a shaman able to bring him back to life, and is directed to a young widow, the shaman Nisan.
- Nisan agrees, enters trance with the help of an assistant who drums and sings, and sets off for the realm of the dead.
- On the journey she crosses a river, pays the guardians, passes gates and barriers, accompanied by her helper spirits in the form of animals and birds.
- She reaches the city of Ilmun Han, lord of the dead, who has taken the boy's soul. With the help of her spirits, who turn into birds, Nisan seizes it and carries it away.
- On the way back she meets her dead husband, who asks her to bring him back to life. His body has already decayed and he cannot return; when he threatens her, Nisan throws him into the city of the dead.
- Nisan also meets a female divine figure who governs births and destiny, and sees the punishments of the dead.
- Back in the world of the living, she returns the soul to the boy's body, and he awakens.
What the text tells us
The tale is precious because it presents, in narrative form, many elements that ethnographers described in the sessions of the Tungusic peoples:
| Element of the tale | Correspondence in practice |
|---|---|
| The assistant who drums and sings | the helper's role in real sessions |
| The river to be crossed | the geography of the afterlife in Siberian cosmologies |
| Animal and bird spirits | the shaman's helper spirits |
| Bargaining with the guardians | negotiation with the powers, with offerings |
| Retrieving the soul | one of the shaman's traditional tasks |
The ending of the tale, in some versions, is bitter: Nisan's mother-in-law, learning that her daughter-in-law refused to bring her husband back to life, denounces her to the emperor, and Nisan's instruments are thrown into a well. Scholars have read this ending as a reflection of the tensions between shamanism and the state and religious authorities.
Court shamanism
Alongside popular shamanism, the Qing dynasty developed a court shamanism, controlled and ritualised. In 1747, under the Qianlong Emperor, an official code of the Manchu rites dedicated to the spirits and to Heaven was published, fixing the prayers, offerings, calendars and gestures of the rites.
Characteristic elements of this imperial shamanism:
- the tangse, the shamanic shrine of the imperial family in Beijing, where dynastic rites were performed;
- rites in the palace, with offerings of pork, prayers in the Manchu language and the raising of a sacred pole in the courtyard;
- the role of female and male shamans attached to the court, often women from Manchu families.
This shamanism was very different from Nisan's: it involved no journeys to the afterlife, but regulated prayers and offerings, in the service of dynastic continuity and Manchu identity.
Two faces of one tradition
The coexistence of a ritual court shamanism and an ecstatic popular shamanism is one of the most studied themes of Manchu history. The rulers wanted to preserve the traditions of their forefathers, but feared the uncontrollable forms of the rite. The codification of 1747 also answered this need: to preserve memory while limiting improvisation.
A text worth reading
The tale of Nisan has been translated into several European languages and is regarded as one of the great shamanic narratives of East Asia. For Studio Esoterico Cornelio it is a text of rare beauty: a courageous shaman, the journey into the realm of the dead, the painful choice of letting go of one who cannot return.
In short
- The Manchus founded the Qing dynasty and preserved their shamanic traditions.
- The Tale of the Nisan Shaman tells of a shaman's journey to the realm of the dead.
- Nisan retrieves a boy's soul from Ilmun Han and refuses to bring back her husband.
- In 1747 the Qing codified the court shamanic rites, also performed at the tangse.
- Manchu shamanism had an official face and a popular one, often in tension.
