It was difficult to understand Old Manchu, wrtitten in the script without dots and circles, in the Qianlong period. Translation into Standard Manchu was started in 1775. Two versions, namely the Beijing edition and the Mukden edition, were created. Both editions slept deep inside palaces.

Each edition contains both "tongki fuka sindaha hergen i dangse" (archives in the script with dots and circles) and "tongki fuka akū hergen i dangse" (archives in the script without dots and circles). The former is wrtitten in Standard Manchu. The Beijing edition gives commentaries to arcane passages and Manchu translations to the passaged written in Mongolian. The latter is basically written in Old Manchu. Note that because duplications of original archives were eliminated from Manwen Laodang, they are not identical. Some old archives written in Standard Manchu are reduced to Old Manchu but the rest is kept in the original language.