On the first translation of Sanzijing into the Russian

Abstract

Sanzijing or The Three Character Classic was one of the first books for school education in ancient China for hundreds of years. The book contains basic knowledge about Chinese culture, philosophy, geography, history, and the like. It is written in metrical prose: each line consists of three characters and every four lines form one stanza. The book Sanzijing was also important material for teaching Chinese to foreign missionaries who came to China after the 16th century. In this article we compare two Russian translations of this book in two manuscripts in the Department of Manuscripts of the Library of the Academy of Sciences. These two are attributed by V. P. Taranovich and P. E. Skachkov to Illarion K. Rossokhin (1717–1761), a student of the second Russian Ecclesiastic Mission. A comparison of the two translations showed that the text in one manuscript was translated by Rosskhin, while another was translated by another person earlier. The earlier translation is likely to have been completed under Peter the Great: this is evidenced by features of the orthography, lexis, and grammar that were specific to this period. Further, the translations had different purposes: Rossokhin’s translation contained explanations and was aimed at teaching Chinese, while the other was translated word by word and had no clear didactic purpose.