Johannes Lotze presented aspects of his ongoing research on the multilingual imperial tradition in China. Lotze first summarized his previous research, especially his PhD thesis "Translation of Empire" (winner of the inaugural 2018 Bayly Prize of the Royal Asiatic Society) and upcoming first monograph, titled Multilingual Empires: Ming China’s Language Policies and the Hybrid Imperial Tradition. Lotze's current research developed out of these earlier projects, adopting a longue durée approach to examine a succession of partly under-researched formations in the history of China and Inner Asia that are variously known as ‘hybrid,’ ‘steppe,’ ‘nomadic,’ ‘conquest,’ ‘non-Chinese,’ ‘non-Han,’ or ‘alien regimes’: the Kitan Liao 遼 (916–1125), Tangut Xia 夏 (1038–1227), Jurchen Jin 金 (1115–1234), Mongol Yuan 元 (1271–1368), and Manchu Qing 清 (1636–1912). The impact of these states was far too long marginalized, although their histories added together constitute about half of the history of ‘China.’ Lotze argued that multilingualism and language policies provide an important focus here, as all of these regimes introduced new languages to the Sinitic world, invented new scripts, promoted bilingualism, and sponsored systematic translation efforts. To what extent, then, was there a process of cumulative learning? Can hybrid regimes be described as constituting their own tradition? And what was their impact on the so-called Chinese dynasties? In his presentation, Lotze focused on four of his future research avenues, titled "Imperial language-learning ideologies and practicalities," "Translation as collaboration," "Translating desire," and "Multilingual 'displays' and the fiction of universal rule." Finishing with a reflection on multilingualism as a symbolic mode of empire, Lotze argued that studying multilingual imperial inscriptions, we must be on our guard against celebrating the multilingualism of the past in a naive and anachronistic way, complimenting Mongol or Ming rulers on their open-minded and progressive views. Multilingual elites were the conditio sine qua non of every well-running empire, and the physical juxtaposition of specific scripts and languages was hardly impartial or arbitrary, but rather one strategy in producing the fiction of universal rule.
Image:
Hexaglot "Sulaiman Stele" produced by a workshop of the Mongol Yuan empire in the year 1348, commemorating benefactors to a Buddhist temple near Dunhuang, many of them of Chinese, Mongol, and Tibetan descent. Here, the mantra Om mani padme hum is inscribed in six scripts: Sanskrit (Lantsa script), Tibetan, Mongolian (Phagspa script), Uyghur, Tangut, and Chinese.