The Sacred books of China: The texts of Confucianism
Confucius | Legge, James, 1815-1897, tr
5 \- $s. MK^: km ■T*c»' -y ■Si'-', ife* V P^ ^^ ^^'/ m i^^:M/;''-^'^'< ■■■' ,^ &. ^^"1%^ . n<A' -2 ■-'< -^l! > ^^.V' v..'w ■,; < v., 'y !'/,'. plliili "' ■:;■■■■■;;,;■;■',.:, Pi'f;!;;' V/if>.:'fV'fv\'X-'^''ir"-'V.<!\V----' PRINCETON, N. J. S BL 1010 .S3 V.3 Shelf., The Sacred books of China THE SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST [0 Uontron MACMILLAN AND CO. PUBLISHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY OF THE / SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST TRANSLATED BY VARIOUS ORIENTAL SCHOLARS AND EDITED BV F. MAX MULLER VOL. Ill AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1879 \_All rights reservecf^ THE SACRED BOOKS OF CHINA THE TEXTS OF CONFUCIANISM TRANSLATED,^BY JAMES ^LEGGE PART I THE SHU KING THE RELIGIOUS PORTIONS OF THE SHIH KING THE HSIAO KING AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1879 [All rights reserved'] CONTENTS. PAGB Preface " xiii THE SRtJ. Introduction. CHAP. I. The Nature and History of the ShCt , . . . i Meaning of the name Shu King. The Shu existed as a collection of documents before Confucius. Number of documents in it in his time. The Preface ascribed to him. The sources of the Shu. Destruction of the classical litera- ture by the emperor of K'Mn. Recovery of the Shu. II. The Credibility of the Records in the ShC . . 12 Are the records reliable or not .'' The Books of A'au ; of Shang ; of Hsia. The Books of Thang and Yii are professedly later compilations ; legendary ; based on ancient documents. The Tribute of Yii. Yao, Shun, and Yii are all historical personages. III. On the Chronology of China, and the Principal Eras in the Shx) 20 No detailed chronological system can be made out from the Shu. Attempts at systematic chronology began in the Han period. Ancient method of determining the length of Chinese history. The period of the A'au dynasty ; of the Shang ; of the Hsia ; of Yio and Shun. A Chart by the Rev. Professor Pritchard, representing the principal zodiacal stars above the horizon of any place in central China, about the year B. c. 2300 ; with note, and table of the apparent positions of the principal stars in B. C. 2300, B.C. 1500, a.d. I, A. d. iooo, and a. d. 1878 . . . 27-30 Part I. The Book of Thang. The Canon of Yao 3' Vlll CONTENTS. Part II. The Books of Yii. BOOK ^^^^ 1. The Canon of Shun • -37 2. The Counsels of the Great Yii 46 3. The Counsels of Kao-yao 53 4. The Yi and A"! 56 Part III. I, The Tribute of Yii. The Books of Hsia. Section i. 2. The Speech at Kan 3. The Songs of the Five Sons 4. The Punitive Expedition of Yin 64 72 76 78 Part IV. The Books of Shang. 1. The Speech of Thang , .. 2. The Announcement of isTung-hui. 3. The Announcement of Thang 4. The Instructions of i. 5. The Thai KiL Section i ,, „ ii „ „ iii .. 6. The Common Possession of Pure Virtue 7. The Pan-kang. Section i » ii • • « iii 8. The Charge to Yiieh. Section i 9. The Day of the Supplementary Sacrifice 10. The Chief of the West's Conquest of Li 11. The Count of Wei .... to Kao 3ung 84 86 89 92 95 97 99 100 104 108 III 113 115 116 118 120 121 Part V. The Books of Kav. I. The Great Declaration. Section i The Speech at Mu. The Successful Completion of the War The Great Plan The Hounds of Lii. The Metal-bound Coffer 125 127 129 131 133 137 149 151 CONTENTS. IX 7. The Great Announcement. 8. The Charge to the Count of Wei 9. The Announcement to the Prince of Khang 10. The Announcement about Drunkenness 11. The Timber of the Rottlera 12. The Announcement of the Duke of Shao 13. The Announcement concerning Lo 14. The Numerous Officers 15. Against Luxurious Ease 16. The Prince Shih .... 17. The Charge to A'ung of 3hai 18. The Numerous Regions 19. The EstabHshment of Government 20. The Officers of A'au. 21. The A^iin-zt/ian .... 22. The Testamentary Charge. 23. The Announcement of King Khang 24. The Charge to the Duke of Pi. 25. The A'iin-ya .... 26. The Charge to A'y^iung 27. The Marquis of Lii on Punishments 28. The Charge to the Marquis Wan 29. The Speech at Pi 30. The Speech of the Marquis of KK\x\ PAGE 156 161 164 171 179 181 188 196 211 213 219 226 231 234 243 245 250 252 254 265 267 270 THE SHIH. Introduction. CHAP. I. The Name and Contents of the Shih The meaning of the character Shih. The contents. Only the pieces of the fourth Part have professedly a religious character. Classification of the pieces from their form and style. 275 II. The Shih before Confucius, and what, if any, were his Labours upon it 280 Statement of Sze-ma A7/ien ; in the Records of the Sui Dynasty; of A'u Hsi. View of the author. Groundlessness of AVnen's statement. What Confucius did for the Shih. CONTENTS. III. The Shih from the Time of Confucius till the General Acknowledgment of the Present Text 285 From Confucius to the rise of the KKm. dynasty. The Shih was all recovered after the fires of Khm. Three different texts :— of Lu ; of Kh\ ; of Han Ying. The text of Mao. IV. The Formation of the Collection of the Shih; HOW IT came to be SO SMALL AND INCOMPLETE; THE Interpretation and Authors of the Pieces ; one Point of Time certainly indicated in it ; and THE Confucian Preface 290 The theory of the Chinese scholars about a collection of poems for governmental purposes. The music-master of the king got the odes of each state from its music-master ; and the collected poems were disseminated throughout the states. How the Shih is so small and incomplete. The authors of the pieces. The year B. c. 776 clearly indicated. The Preface to the Shih. Odes of the Temple and the Altar. 1, The Sacrificial Odes of Shang 2. The Sacrificial Odes of A'au. Decade i n iii 3. The Praise Odes of Lu 303 313 320 328 336 The Minor Odes of the Kingdom. Decade i. Odes 5, 6, 9 347 iv. Odes 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 349 V. Odes I, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9 358 vi. Odes 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 3^4 vii. Odes i, 6 373 viii. Ode 5 V^ The Major Odes of the Kingdom. Decade i. Odes i, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10 „ ii. Odes i, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10. „ iii. Odes i, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 1 1. 396 410 Lessons from the States. Book 2. Odes 2, 4 . 43° „ 3. Odes 4, 15 433 „ 4. Odes I, 3, 6 434 CONTENTS. XI PAGE Book 5. Ode 4 437 „ 6. Odes I, 9 438 „ 10. Odes 8, II 440 „ II. Ode 6 442 „ 15. Ode I 444 THE HSIAO. Introduction. CHAP. I. The Name of the Classic ; its Existence before the Han Dynasty ; its Contents, and by whom it was WRITTEN 449 Meaning of the character Hsiao. Was the treatise called the Hsiao King by Confucius? It existed before the Han dynasty during the time of the A'au. It came, probably, from the school of 3ang-5ze. II. The Recovery of the Hsiao under the Han Dynasty, and its Preservation down to the Publication of the Commentary of the Thang Emperor Hsuan Bung 45^ Recovery of the Hsiao. The shorter or modern text. The old or longer text. Was another copy in the old text dis- covered ? Can we fully rely on the copies catalogued by Liu Hin? From Khung An-kwo to the emperor Hsuan 3ung. The emperor's work. Hsing Ping's work. III. Criticism of the Hsiao since the Thang Dynasty 458 Works on the old text by Sze-m£ Kwang and Fan 3u-yu. Sceptical criticism ;— views oi Kn Hsi and Wu A7;ang. Con- clusion regarding the genuineness and integrity of the Hsiao. Note on the translation. 1. The Scope and Meaning of the Treatise. 2. Filial Piety in the Son of Heaven 3. Filial Piety in the Princes of States. 4. Filial Piety in High Ministers and Great Officers 5. Filial Piety in Inferior Officers .... 6. Filial Piety in the Common People. 7. Filial Piety in Relation to the Three Powers. 465 467 468 469 470 471 472 Xll CONTENTS. Filial Piety in Government The Government of the Sages An Orderly Description of the Acts of Filial Piety. Filial Piety in Relation to the Five Punishments Amplification of ' the All-embracing Rule of Conduct ' in Chapter I Amplification of 'the Perfect Virtue' in Chapter I Amplification of 'Making our Name Famous' in Chapter I Filial Piety in Relation to Reproof and Remonstrance The Influence of Filial Piety and the Response to it The Service of the Ruler ...... Filial Piety in Mourning for Parents .... 474 476 480 481 482 483 483 484 486 487 Transliteration of Oriental Alphabets adopted for the Trans- lations of the Sacred Books of the East .... 489 PREFACE. While submitting here some prefatory observations on the version of the Shu King presented in this volume, I think it well to prefix also a brief account of what are regarded as the Sacred Books of the Religions of China. Those religions are three: — Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. I. I begin with a few words about the last. To translate any of its books does not belong to my province, and more than a few words from me are unnecessary. It has been said that Buddhism was introduced into China in the third century B. C. ; but it certainly did not obtain an authorita- tive recognition in the empire till the third quarter of our first century ^. Its Texts were translated into Chinese, one portion after another, as they were gradually obtained from India ; but it was not till very long afterwards that the Chinese possessed, in their own language, a complete copy of the Buddhist canon ^. Translations from the Sanskrit constitute the principal part of the Buddhistic literature of China, though there are also many original works in Chinese belonging to it. * I put the introduction of Buddhism into China before our Christian era thus uncertainly, because of what is said in the article on the history of Buddhism in China, in the Records of the Sui Dynasty (a.d. 5S9-61S), the compilers of which say that before the Han dynasty (began b. c. 202) Buddhism was not heard of in China. They refer to contrary statements as what 'some say,' and proceed to relate circumstances inconsistent with them. It is acknowledged on all sides that Buddhist books were first brought to China between a. d. 60 and 70. ^ Mr. Beal (Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese, pp. i, 2) says that ' the first complete edition of the Buddhist Canon in China dates from the seventh century ; that a second and much enlarged edition cf it, called the Southern Collection, was prepared in a. d. 1410 ; that a third edition, called the Northern Collection, appeared about a.d. 1590; which again was renewed and enlarged in the year 1723.' XIV PREFACE. 11. Confucianism is the religion of China par excel- lence, and is named from the great sage who lived in the fifth and sixth centuries B. C. Confucius indeed did not originate the system, nor was he the first to inculcate its principles or enjoin its forms of worship. He said of him- self (Analects, VII, i) that he was a transmitter and not a maker, one who believed in and loved the ancients ; and hence it is said in the thirtieth chapter of the Doctrine of the Mean, ascribed to his grandson, that ' he handed down ( the doctrines of Yao and Shun, as if they had been his ) ancestors, and elegantly displayed the regulations of Wan and Wu, taking them as his models.' In fulfilling what he considered to be his mission, Con- fucius did little towards committing to writing the views of antiquity according to his own conception of them. He discoursed about them freely with the disciples of his school, from whom we have received a good deal of what he said ; and it is possible that his accounts of the ancient views and practices took, unconsciously to himself, some colour from the peculiar character of his mind. But his favourite method was to direct the attention of his disciples to the ancient literature of the nation. He would neither afiirm nor relate anything for which he could not adduce some document of acknowledged authority. He said on one occasion (Analects, III, ix) that he could describe the ceremonies of the dynasties of Hsia (B.C. 2205-17^7) ^"^d Yin (B.C. 1766-1123), but did not do so, because the records and scholars in the two states of iTau, that had been assigned to the descendants of their sovereigns, could not sufficiently attest his words. It is an error even to /suppose that he compiled the historical documents, poems, and other ancient books from various works existing in his time. Portions of the oldest works had already perished. His study of those that remained, and his exhortations to his disciples also to study them, contributed to their preser- vation. What he wrote or said about their meaning should be received by us with reverence ; but if all the works which he handled had come down to us entire, we should have been, so far as it is possible for foreigners to be, in PREFACE. XV the same position as he was for learning the ancient reli- gion of his country. Our text-books would be the same as his. Unfortunately most of the ancient books suffered loss and injury after Confucius had passed from the stage of life. We have reason, however, to be thankful that we possess so many and so much of them. No other litera- tjire, comparable to them for antiquity, has come down to us in such a state of preservation. But the reader must bear in mind that the ancient books of China do not profess to have been inspired, or to con- tain what we should call a Revelation. Historians, poets, and others wrote them as they were moved in their own minds. An old poem may occasionally contain what it says was spoken by God, but we can only understand that language as calling attention emphatically to the state- ments to which it is prefixed. We also read of Heaven's raising up the great ancient sovereigns and teachers, and variously assisting them to accomplish their undertakings ; but all this need not be more than what a religious man of any country might affirm at the present day of direction, help, and guidance given to himself and others from above. But while the old Chinese books do not profess to contain any divine revelation, the references in them to religious views and practices are numerous ; and it is from these that the student has to fashion for himself an outline of the early religion of the people. I will now state what the books are. First, and of greatest importance, there is the Book of Historical Documents, called the Shu and, since the period of the Han dynasty (began B.C. 202), the Shu King. Its documents commence with the reign of Yao in the twenty-fourth century B. C, and come down to that of king Hsiang of the A'au dynasty, B.C. 651-619. The earliest chapters were not contemporaneous with the events which they describe, but the others begin to be so in the twenty- second century B. C. The reader will find a translation of the whole of this work without abridgment. Second, and nearly as important as the Shu, there is the Shih, or the Book of Poetry. It contains in all 305 XVI PREFACE. pieces, five of which are of the time of the Shang dynasty (called also the Yin), B.C. 1 766-1 123. The others belong to the dynasty of Ka.u, from the time of its founder, king Wan, born B.C. 1231, to the reign of king Ting, B.C. 606- 586. The whole is divided into four Parts, the last of which is occupied with ' Odes of the Temple and the Altar.' Many pieces in the other Parts also partake of a religious character, but the greater number are simply descriptive of the manners, customs, and events of the times to which they belong, and have no claim to be in- cluded in the roll of Sacred Texts. In this volume will be found all the pieces that illustrate the religious views of their authors, and the religious practices of their times. The third work is the Yi, commonly called the Book of Changes. Confucius himself set a high value on it, as being fitted to correct and perfect the character of the learner (Analects, VII, xvi) ; and it is often spoken of by foreigners as the most ancient of all the Chinese classics. But it is not so. As it existed in the time of the sage, and as it exists now, no portion of the text is older than the time of king Wan, mentioned above. There were and are, indeed, in it eight trigrams ascribed to Fu-hsi, who is gene- rally considered as the founder of the Chinese nation, and whose place in chronology should, probably, be assigned in the thirty-fourth century B.C. The eight trigrams are again increased to sixty-four hexagrams. To form these figures, two lines, one of them whole ( ) and the other divided ( ), are assumed as bases. Those lines are then placed, each over itself, and each over the other ; and four bino- grams are formed. From these, by the same process with the base lines, are obtained eight figures, — the famous tri- grams. Three other repetitions of the same process give us successively sixteen, thirty-two, and sixty-four figures. The lines in the figures thus increase in an arithmetical progression, whose common difference is one, and the num- ber of the figures increases in a geometrical progression, whose common ratio is two. But what ideas Fu-hsi at- tached to his primary lines, — the whole and the divided ; what significance he gave to his trigrams ; what to the PREFACE. XVU sixty-four hexagrams, — if indeed he himself formed so many figures ; and why the multiphcation of the figures was stayed at sixty-four : — of none of these points have we any knowledge from him. There is some reason to believe that there were texts to the hexagrams under the dynasties of Hsia and Shang, but none of them have been preserved. It may be that king Wan and his equally famous son, the duke of Kku, adopted much of what they found already existing, and incorporated it with their own interpretations of the figures ; but they, and they alone, are accepted as the authors of the text of the Yi. King Wan, we are told, at a time when he was imprisoned by the tyrannical sove- reign with whom the dynasty of Shang or Yin ended, took in hand the ever-changing hexagrams, and appended to each a brief explanation of the meaning which the trigrams composing it suggested by their union to his mind ; and in some cases the practical course in affairs to which that meaning should direct. His son did for the separate lines of each hexagram what Wan had done for the whole figure. Confucius is said to have entered into their labours about 600 years afterwards. Several appendixes are ascribed to him, in which there is an attempt to explain the origin of the Fu-hsi figures, and many of the interpretations of Wan and his son. The early linear figures ; the notes of Wan and the duke of Ka.u ; and the Confucian appen- dixes : — these constitute the Yi. The work was from the first intimately connected with the practice of divination, which, we know from the Shu, entered largely into the religion of the ancient Chinese. This goes far to account for its obscure and enigmatical character ; but at the same time there occur in it, though in a fragmentary manner, so many metaphysical, physical, moral, and religious utterances, that the student of it is gradually brought under a powerful fascination. In conse- quence, moreover, of its use in divination, it was exempted by the superstitious tyrant of K/iin from the flames to which he condemned all the other Confucian literature in B.C. 213. It has thus come down to us entire, and a trans- lation of the whole of it will be given. [I] b XVIU PREFACE. An additional interest belongs to the Yi as the fountain- head from which the comparatively modern philosophers of the Sung dynasty (began A. D. 960) professed to draw what has been called their ' atlieo-political ' system. As an appendix to the translation of the Yi, there will be given an outline of that system, and an attempt will be made to test the correctness of the interpretation of this classic by its authors. The fourth of the great classics is the Li K\, or the Record of Rites ; but it is only one of a class that we may denominate the Constitutional and Ritual Books of ancient China, especially under the ATau dynasty. They are often mentioned together as 'the Three Rituals.' The first of them is called ATau Li, the Rites of ATau, and also Kk\x Kwan, the Officers of iTau, which latter is the better name for it. It is the official book of the iTau dynasty. The prevailing opinion is that it was the production of the duke of /f au; and if it were not composed in its present form by him, it contains, no doubt, the substance of the regulations which he made for the administration of the government, after the dynasty of Shang had passed, through the achieve- ments of his father and brother, into that of iTau. Under the various departments in which that administration was arranged, it enumerates the principal and subordinate officers belonging to each, and describes their duties. After the fires of AVnn, the work was recovered nearly complete in the first century B. c. A good translation of the whole work was published in 1851, at Paris, by M. Edouard Biot. The second Ritual Collection bears the name of I Li, which has been translated ' the Decorum Ritual,' and ' the Rules of Demeanour.' It was recovered earlier than the former, and is as voluminous. It consists of the rules by which a scholar or officer should regulate his behaviour on social and state occasions. It has not yet, so far as I know, been translated into any European language. The third Collection, more voluminous than either of the others, was made also under the Han dynasty. In the first century B.C., it was an immense compilation of 214 books arranged in five divisions. The 214 were reduced PREFACE. XIX to eighty-five by Tai Teh, a scholar of the time, and his eighty-five again to forty-six by a cousin, called Tai Kk^ng. Three other books were added to these towards the end of the Han period, forming forty-nine in all, which have come down to us under the title of Li K\, or 'the Record of Rites,' and have long constituted by imperial authority one of the five King. An abridgment of this work was trans- lated by M. J. M. Gallery, at Turin, in 1853, with the title, — 'Li K% ou Memorial des Rites, traduit pour la premiere fois du Chinois, et accompagne de notes, de commentaires, et du texte original.' Gallery's work, how- ever, contains only thirty-six of the forty-nine books of the Li K\, and most of those thirty-six in a condensed form. Whether it will be possible to give in these Sacred Books of the East translations of the whole of these Rituals ; and if that be not possible, by what principles to be guided in the selection of portions of them : — these are questions to be determined after further deliberation. Many passages contain more of the mind of Gonfucius himself on the sacrificial worship of his country, and the ideas underlying it, than we find elsewhere. But it must not be forgotten that these ritual books do not throw so valuable a light on the ancient religion of Ghina as the older Shii and Shih. They belong to the period of the A"au dynasty, and do not go back as contem- poraneous records to the dynasties beyond it and the still remoter age of Yao and Shun. The views of Gonfucius, moreover, as given in them, do not come to us at first hand. They were gathered up by the Han scholars five and six centuries after his death, nor can we be sure that these did not sometimes put ideas of their own into the mouth of the sage, and make additions to the writings which were supposed, correctly or incorrectly, to have come from his immediate disciples. We owe the fifth and last of the Kings of Ghina to Confucius himself. It is what he called K/mn AV/iQ, or ' the Spring and Autumn,' a very brief chronicle compiled by him of the annals of his native state of Lu for 242 years, from B.C. 723 to 481. But there is not much to be b 2 XX PREFACE. gleaned from it for the Sacred Texts ; and if we were to launch out into the three supplements to it of 3o Kh'\yx- ming, Kung-yang, and Ku-liang, the result would not repay the labour. A translation of the whole of 3o's supplement, much the most important, is given in my work on the Kh\m Kkm, published at Hong Kong in 1872. There is another short treatise attributed to Confucius, — the Hsiao Kingj or 'Classic of Filial Piety.' Though not like one of the five great works that have been described, it was the first to receive the denomination of a King, — and that from the lips of the sage himself, — if the account which we have received of the matter is to be relied on. This little work does not come to us, like the Khxxn Khixx, as directly from the pencil of Confucius, but in the shape of conversations between him and his disciple 3ang-jze, put on record in the first place, probably, by some members of 3ang's school. No portion of the ancient literature has more exercised the minds and engaged the attention of many of the emperors of successive dynasties. The Hsiao seems to me an attempt to construct a religion on the basis of the cardinal virtue of Filial Piety, and is open to criticism in many respects. A translation of it is given in the present volume. The classical books are often spoken of as being 'the five King' and 'the four Shu.' The King have all been separately referred to above; the four Shu is an abbrevia- tion for the Shu or Books of the four Philosophers. The first is the Lun Yii, or 'Discourses and Conversations,' occupied chiefly with sayings of Confucius and conversations between him and many of his disciples. The second is the Works of Mencius, perhaps the greatest thinker and writer of the Confucian school after the Master. I hope to be able to give both these works. The third of the Shu is the Ta Hsio, or 'Great Learning,' ascribed, like the Hsiao, to 3a"g-jze. The fourth is the ^ung Yung, or ' Doctrine of the Mean,' the production of 3ze-sze, the sage^s grandson. Both of these treatises, however, are taken from the Li K\. The whole of the Four Books were translated and published by me in 1861. PREFACE. XXI III. The third Religion in China is what is called Taoism. It was, like Confucianism, of native origin, and its acknow- ledged founder was Li R, called also Li Po-yang, and, after his death, Li Tan. More commonly he is designated Lao- jze, translated by some ' the Old Philosopher,' and by others ' the Old Boy' from a fabulous story that his mother carried him in her womb for seventy-two years, so that when he was at length cut out of it, his hair was already white. His birth is referred to the year 604 B. C, so that he was between fifty and sixty years older than Confu- cius. There are accounts, hardly reliable, of interviews and discussions between the two men. Lao-jze^s system often goes with English writers by the name of Rationalism ; but if that name be retained, the term must be taken in quite a peculiar sense. His doc- trine was that of the Tao, but it is not easy to determine what English term will best express the meaning of the Chinese character. The only record which we have of Lao-jze's views is the Tao-teh King, or ' Classic of Tao and Virtue,' a treatise of no great length. It was published at Paris in 1842, with a translation in French, by the late Stanislas Julien, under the title of ' Le Livre de la Voie et de la Vertu.' Appealing to the views of i^Twang-jze and other writers of the Taoist school, M. Julien says that ' Le Tao est depourvu d'action, de pensee, de jugement, d'intel- ligence,' and adds that ' it appears impossible therefore to take it for the primordial reason, the Sublime Intel- ligence, which created and rules the world.' A translation in English was published, in 1868, by the Rev. Dr. Chalmers of Canton, under the title of ' the Speculations in Metaphysics, Polity, and Morality, of " the Old Philosopher." ' Dr. Chalmers retains the term Tao in his English Text, and says, ' I have thought it better to leave the word Tao untranslated, both because it has given the name to the sect, — the Taoists, — and because no English word is its exact equivalent. Three terms suggest themselves, — the Way, Reason, and the Word ; but they are all liable to objection. Were we guided by etymology, " the Way" would come nearest to the original, and in one XXIV PREFACE. lators. Could it be that my own view of Ti, as meaning God, had grown up in the heat of our controversies in China as to the proper characters to be used for the words God and Spirit, in translating the Sacred Scriptures? A reader, confronted everywhere by the word God, might be led to think more highly of the primitive religion of China than he ought to think. Should I leave the names Ti and Shang Ti untranslated ? Or should I give for them, instead of God, the terms Ruler and Supreme Ruler? I could not see my way to adopt either of these courses. The term Heaven (yC^, pronounced Thien) is used everywhere in the Chinese Classics for the Supreme Power, ruling and governing all the affairs of men with an omni- potent and omniscient righteousness and goodness ; and this vague term is constantly interchanged in the same paragraph, not to say the same sentence, with the personal names Ti and Shang Ti. Thien and Ti in their written forms are perfectly distinct. Both of them were among the earliest characters, and enter, though not largely, as the phonetical element into other characters of later for- mation. According to the oldest Chinese dictionary, the Shwo Wan (a. d. ioo), Thien is formed, ' by association of ideas,' from yi ( — •), 'one,' and ta (y^), 'great,' meaning — what is one and undivided, and great. Tai Thung, of our thirteenth century, in his remarkable dictionary, the Liu Shu Ku, explains the top line of it as indicating 'what is above,' so that the significance of the character is ' what is above and great.' In both these dictionaries Ti (ffj) is derived from -L- or -^ (shang), 'above,' or 'what is above : ' and they say that the whole character is of pho- netical formation, in which I am not able to follow them^; * It is said in the Shwo Wan that the phonetical element in Ti is y(\.; but this is pronounced 3hze. Neither in form nor sound is there any similitude between it and Ti. An error, probably, has crept into the text. Dr. Chalmers, in his treatise on ' the Origin of the Chinese,' attempts (p. 1 2) to analyse the character into its constituent parts in the following way : — ' The peculiar nature of the Chinese written language has done good service in stereotyping the primi- PREFACE. The preceding is a brief abstract of the reasoning by which I was determined to retain the term God for Ti and Shang Ti in this volume, excepting in the cases that have called for these observations. But in the account of Ti which I have adduced from Tai Thung, it is said that 'the sovereign is also called Ti ;' and most of my readers know that Hwang Ti (^^ ^*) is the title of the emperor of China. How did this application of the name arise ? Was it in the first place a designation of the ruler or emperor ; and was it then given to the Supreme Power, when the vague Heaven failed to satisfy the thinker and worshipper, tive belief in one Supreme Ti (^Rp j, who is ~7r* "great," over, and » " ruling," heaven ( ' ^ = > — » ) and earth (| | ). ' This is ingenious, but not entirely satisfactory. The three last steps are so ; but the finding ~^ (great) in the top part of ^fr does not in the same way carry conviction to the mind. ' Thien 3ze, ' the Son of Heaven,' is a common designation of the sovereign of China. Originally 3^^ performed in the expression the part of a verb, and Thien 3ze was equivalent to 'he whom Heaven sons,' that is, considers and treats as its son. See the second line of the ode, p. 318. XXVI PREFACE. and he wished to express his recognition of a personal Being who was to himself his almighty ruler? If these questions be answered in the afifirmative, Ti would be a name applied to the Supreme Being, just as we rise from the paternal relation among ourselves and call him Father. Or, on the other hand, was Ti the designation of the Supreme Lord and Ruler, corresponding to our God, and was it subsequently applied to the earthly ruler, thereby deifying him, just as the title Divus was given to a Roman emperor ? I believe that it was in this latter way that Ti came to be used of the sovereigns of China ; and therefore in again publishing a translation of the Shu, I resolved, that where the appellation is given in it to Yao and Shun, and it is only to them that it is given, I would retain the Chinese term instead of rendering it, as formerly, by ' emperor.' The following are the reasons which weighed with me in coming to this resolution : First, the first really historical sovereign of China who used the title of Hwang Ti was the founder of the AV/in dynasty ; and he assumed it in B. c. 221, when he had sub- jugated all the sovereignties into which the feudal kingdom of KsLU had become divided, and was instituting the despotic empire that has since subsisted. The Kau dynasty had continued for 867 years, from B.C. 1 1 22 to 256, and its rulers had been styled Wang or kings. Kau superseded the dynasty of Shang or Yin, that had endured for 644 years, from B.C. 1766 to 1123; and its rulers had similarly been styled Wang or kings. Shang superseded the dynasty of Hsia, which had lasted for 439 years, from B.C. 2205 to 1767, and its rulers had been styled Wang, or kings, and Hau, or sovereigns. Thus, from the great Yu, B.C. 2205 to B.C. 221, that is, for nearly 2000 years, there was no Ti or emperor in China. During all that time the people had on the whole been increasing in numbers, and the nation growing in territory ; — how did it come to pass, that the higher title, if it had previously existed, gave place to an inferior one ? PREFACE, XXVIl Prior to the dynasty of Hsia, with the exception of the period of Yao and Shun, the accounts which we have of the history of China have been, and ought to be, pronounced ' fabulous ' and ' legendary.' The oldest documents that purport to be historical are the books in the Shu about Yao and Shun, and even they do not profess to be con- temporaneous with those personages. The earlier accounts open with a Phan-ku, in whose time ' heaven and earth were first separated.' To him succeeded the period of the San Hwang, or Three August Lines, consisting of twelve Celestial, eleven Terrestrial, and nine Human Sovereigns, who ruled together about 50,000 years. After them come a host of different Lines, till we arrive at the W u T i, or Five Emperors. The first of these is commonly said to be Fu- hsi, while he and two others are sometimes put down as the San Hwang, in order to bring in Yao and Shun as the last two of the Tis. I have entered into these details because of the account which we have of the king of A'/zin's assuming the title of Hwang Ti. We are told: — 'As soon as the king had brought the whole countr}^ into subjection, thinking that he united in himself the virtues of the three Hwangs, and that his merits exceeded those of the five Tis, he changed his title into Hwang Ti.' The three Hwangs are entirely fabu- lous, and the five Tis are, to say the least, legendary. That there were either Hwangs or Tis ruling in China before the age of the Hsia dynasty cannot be admitted. Second, it has been stated above, and is shown in the Litroduction to the Shu, pp. 13-19, that the books in the Shu, previous to the Hsia dynasty, are not historical in the sense of their being contemporaneous documents of the times about which they speak. They profess to be compi- lations merely from older documents ; and when they speak of Yao and Shun as Tis, the title T i precedes the name or designation, instead of following it, as it ought to do, according to Chinese usage, if Ti is to be taken in the sense of emperor. Yao Ti would be 'the emperor Yao,' but we have Ti Yao, where Ti performs the part of an adjective. King Wan, the founder of the A'au dynasty, is XXVlll PREFACE. invariably mentioned as Wan Wang, ' Wan the king.' To say Wang Wan would be felt at once by every Chinese scholar to be inadmissible; and not less so is Ti Yao for ' the emperor Yao.' It was the perception of this violation of usage in Chinese composition, five years ago, that first showed me the error of translating Ti Yao and Ti Shun by 'the emperor Yao' and 'the emperor Shun.' It is true that in the early books of the Shu, we have Ti used alone, without the adjunct of Yao or Shun, and referring to those personages. In those cases it does perform the part of a substantive, but its meaning depends on that which be- longed to it as an adjective in the phrases Ti Yao and Ti Shun. If it be ascertained that in these it means 'the Deified,' then when used singly as a noun, it will mean Divus, or the Divine One. Third, the sovereigns of the Hsia, the Shang, and the K^.\\ dynasties, it has been seen, were styled Wang and not Ti. Confucius speaks repeatedly in the Analects of Yao and Shun, but he never calls either of them by the title of Ti. Mencius, however, uses it both of the one and the other, when he is quoting in substance from the accounts of them in the Shu. This confirms the view that the early books of the Shu were current after the middle of the TTau dynasty, very much in the form in which we now have them ; and the question arises whether we can show how the application of the title T i as given in them to Yao and Shun arose. We can. The fourth Book of the Li K\ is called Yiieh Ling, ' the Monthly Record of the Proceedings of Government.' In it certain sacrificial observances paid to the five Tis are distributed through the four seasons. The Tis are Fii-hsi, Shan-nang, Yu-hsiung or Hsien-yiian, inn-thien, and Kao- yang, who are styled Thai Hao (the Greatly Resplendent), Yen Ti (the Blazing Ti), Hwang Ti (the Yellow Ti), Shao Hao (the Less Resplendent), and /Twan Hsii (the Solely Correct) ; with each Ti there is associated in the ceremony a personage of inferior rank, who is styled Shan (|El=a Spirit). The language descriptive of the ceremony is the same in all the caseSj with the exception of the names and PREFACE. XXIX months. Thus the first entry is : — ' In the first month of spring, on such and such days, the Ti is Thai Hao, and the Shan is Kau-mang.' Now this Kau-mang was a son of Shao Hao, several hundreds of years later than Thai Hao, so that the associating them together in this ceremony could only have arisen in later times. However we explain the ceremony thus curtly described ; whether we see in it the growing prevalence of nature- worship, or an illustration of the practice of worshipping ancient heroes and worthies: — Ti appears in the account of it plainly used in the sense of God. In each of the five instances, we have a Ti and a Shan, not an emperor and a spirit^ but a God and a Spirit, — a Spirit standing in the same relation to the God, that KJikw (^^=ra subject or minister) stands in to a ruler. Thus it was that, by a process of deification, the title of Ti came to be given, in the time of the Kkn dynasty, to the great names, fabulous and legendary, of antiquity ; and thus it was that it was applied to the heroes Yao and Shun. It may well be that the title Hwang Ti, used by a Chinese of the present emperor or of any emperor of the past, does not call up to his mind any other idea than that of a human sovereign ; but being satisfied as to the proper signification of Ti as God, and as to the process by which the title came to be applied to the ancient Yao and Shun, I could no longer render it, when used of them in the Shu, by emperor, and elected to leave it untranslated in the present volume. To any unimportant changes of translation it is unneces- sary to refer. The dates B. c. in the introductions and notes are all one year more than in the translations formerly published. They are thus brought into accordance with those of P. Gaubil and the useful Chinese Chronological Tables of the late Mr. Mayers. 