<Note>On the Booi People under the Imperial Household Department in Mukden as seen in the Hetu Dangse Archives of the Kangxi Period

The Hetu Dangse 黒図檔, currently preserved in the Liaoning Provincial Archives, consists of the documents transmitted between the Mukden-i Nirui Janggin 盛京佐領 (later Mukden Imperial Household Department 盛京内務府) and the General Imperial Household Department 総管内務府 in Beijing or other officials in the Mukden region during the Qing Dynasty. "Hetu" means "horizontal" or "other" in Manchu, and I suggest that the category name "other documents" has mistakenly been applied to the entire archives of the Hetu Dangse. T he Hetu Dangse mainly deals with routine affairs of the Imperial Household, but also contains a large quantity of legal case records, including records concerning marriage, inheritance, and property disputes among the booi 包衣people the people administered by the Imperial Household Department. As a preliminary study on the Hetu Dangse during the Kangxi 康煕 period (1662-1722), this article introduces the main players involved with the archives the booi people and the Mukden-i Nirui Janggin. I first examine the previous studies on the confusing concepts related to the "booi" in the Manchu language and attempt to clarify these terms and concepts. I then look at the function of the Mukden-i Nirui Janggin, which played the central role in recording the Hetu Dangse archives. Lastly, I introduce the general condition of the booi people in the Mukden region, including their administrative system, origins, languages and identity. As the booi people had different origins and lived in a dynamic society with intense linguistic and cultural interaction, it is difficult to precisely fit them into any previously constructed category such as "Banner people" 旗人, "Commoners" 民人, "Manchu" 満洲人, or "Han" 漢人. T he booi people included Manchu and Han people who had lived in the Liaodong 遼東 region before the rise of the Qing as well as Han people incorporated into the booi system during the Qing conquest of China proper. Shortly after the conquest, in the Kangxi period, the previously existing identities of "Han" and "Manchu" were maintained among the booi people, and linguistic diversity also existed among them. At least in the Kangxi period, the booi people did not become a community with a sense of cohesion. Rather it is helpful to understand "the booi people" as an integrated but loose community with an awareness of the differences and mutual influences between the Manchu and Han subgroups