In 1934, distinguished linguist Ma Xueliang (1913–1998) entered the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Peking University, but due to the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, relocated with the university in 1937 to Kunming where he continued his studies at National Southwestern Associated University. In 1939, Ma was then accepted into the Institute of Humanities at Peking University, and under the mentorship of Fang-kuei Li (1902–1987), researched dialects of minority ethnic groups, with a focus on a systematic study of the Sani language of the Yi peoples. After graduating in 1941, Ma worked as an assistant researcher in the Linguistics Department of the IHP, where he continued to study the Yi language and scriptures in Yunnan. While engaged in this research direction, he collected a significant amount of related literature and documents, a portion of which has become an important collection of the library here at the IHP.
The Archives holds five of Ma Xueliang’s early notebooks, which were most likely written in the 1930s and can be categorized as follows: the first group are notes from the classes of Professors Chen Yinke (1890–1969) and Wei Jiangong (1901–1980); second are his personal reading notes; and the third category are notes from his self-study of French and Tibetan. These early notebooks not only return us to the classrooms of Peking University and National Southwestern Associated University in the 1930s, but also provide a glimpse into the academic formation of a renowned polyglot linguist.