CHAPTER V. CONFUCIUS AND HIS IMMEDIATE DISCIPLES. His ancestry. SECTION I. LIFE OF CONFUCIUS. 1. And have you foreigners surnames as well?' This question has often been put to me by Chinese. It marks the ignorance which belongs to the people of all that is external to themselves, and the pride of antiquity which enters largely as an element into their character. If such a pride could in any case be justified, we might allow it to the family of the K'ung, the descendants of Confucius. In the reign of K'ang-hsî, twentyone centuries and a half after the death of the sage, they amounted to eleven thousand males. But their ancestry is carried back through a period of equal extent, and genealogical tables are common, in which the descent of Confucius is traced down from Hwang-ti, in whose reign the cycle was invented, B. C. 26371. The more moderate writers, however, content themselves with exhibiting his ancestry back to the commencement of the Châu dynasty, B.C. 1121. Among the relatives of the tyrant Châu, the last emperor of the Yin dynasty, was an elder brother, by a concubine, named Ch'i2, who is celebrated by Confucius, Ana. XVIII. i, under the title of the viscount of Wei. Foreseeing the impending ruin of their family, Ch'i withdrew from the court; and subsequently he was invested by the emperor Ch'ăng, the second of the house of Châu, with the principality of Sung, which embraced the eastern portion of the present province of Ho-nan, that he might there continue the sacrifices to the sovereigns of Yin. Ch'î was followed as duke of Sung by a younger brother, in whose line the succession continued. His great-grandson, the duke Min3, was 1 See Mémoires concernant les Chinois, Tome XII, p. 447 et seq. Father Amiot states, p. 501, that he had seen the representative of the family, who succeeded to the dignity of in the ninth year of Ch'ien-lung, A. D. 1744. The last duke, not the present, was visited in our own time by the late Dr. Williamson and Mr. Consul Markham. It is hardly necessary that I should say here, that the name Confucius is merely the Chinese characters 3 (Kung Fu-tsze, 'The master K'ung') Latinized. 2啟 愍公. followed, B.C. 908, by a younger brother, leaving, however, two sons, Fû-fû Ho1 and Fang-sze2. Fû Ho3 resigned his right to the dukedom in favour of Fang-sze, who put his uncle to death in B.C. 893, and became master of the State. He is known as the duke Lî, and to his elder brother belongs the honour of having the sage among his descendants. Three descents from Fû Ho, we find Chăng K'âo-fû", who was a distinguished officer under the dukes Tâi, Wû, and Hsüan® (B.C. 799-728). He is still celebrated for his humility, and for his literary tastes. We have accounts of him as being in communication with the Grand-historiographer of the kingdom, and engaged in researches about its ancient poetry, thus setting an example of one of the works to which Confucius gave himself". K'âo gave birth to K'ung-fû Chiâ, from whom the surname of K'ung took its rise. Five generations had now elapsed since the dukedom was held in the direct line of his ancestry, and it was according to the rule in such cases that the branch should cease its connexion with the ducal stem, and merge among the people under a new surname. K'ung Chia was Master of the Horse in Sung, and an officer of wellknown loyalty and probity. Unfortunately for himself, he had a wife of surpassing beauty, of whom the chief minister of the State, by name Hwâ Tú, happened on one occasion to get a glimpse. Determined to possess her, he commenced a series of intrigues, which ended, B. C. 710, in the murder of Chiâ and of the ruling duke Shang 10. At the same time, Tû secured the person of the lady, and hastened to his palace with the prize, but on the way she had strangled herself with her girdle. An enmity was thus commenced between the two families of K'ung and Hwâ which the lapse of time did not obliterate, and the latter being the more powerful of the two, Chiâ's great-grandson withdrew into the State of Lû to avoid their persecution. There he was appointed commandant of the city of Fang11, and is known 厲公 tone), which seems to have been used in those times in a manner equivalent to our Mr. ‘正考甫; 甫 is used in the same way as see note 3. 戴,武,宣,三公 7 See the 魯語, and 商頌詩序; quoted in ·孔災嘉華督 Chiang Yung's (7) Life of Confucius, which forms a part of theËD‡. #防 in history by the name of Fang-shu'. Fang-shû gave birth to Po-hsiâ, and from him came Shu-liang Hêh3, the father of Confucius. Hêh appears in the history of the times as a soldier of great prowess and daring bravery. In the year B. C. 562, when serving at the siege of a place called Pêh-yang1, a party of the assailants made their way in at a gate which had purposely been left open, and no sooner were they inside than the portcullis was dropped. Hêh was just entering; and catching the massive structure with both his hands, he gradually by dint of main strength raised it and held it up, till his friends had made their escape. Thus much on the ancestry of the sage. Doubtless he could trace his descent in the way which has been indicated up to the imperial house of Yin, nor was there one among his ancestors during the rule of Châu to whom he could not refer with satisfaction. They had been ministers and soldiers of Sung and Lû, all men of worth, and in Chăng K'âo, both for his humility and literary researches, Confucius might have special complacency. to his first public employments. B. C. 551-531. 2. Confucius was the child of Shû-liang Hêh's old age. The soldier had married in early life, but his wife brought him only From his birth daughters, to the number of nine, and no son. By a concubine he had a son, named Măng-p'î, and also Po-nî, who proved a cripple, so that, when he was over seventy years, Hêh sought a second wife in the Yen family", from which came subsequently Yen Hui, the favourite disciple of his son. There were three daughters in the family, the youngest being named Chăng-tsâi'. Their father said to them, 'Here is the commandant of Tsâu. His father and grandfather were only scholars, but his ancestors before them were descendants of the sage sovereigns. He is a man ten feet high, and of extraordinary prowess, and I am very desirous of his alliance. Though he is old and austere, you need have no misgivings about him. Which of you three will be his wife?' The two elder daughters were silent, but Chăng-tsâi said, 'Why do you ask us, father? It is for you to determine.' 'Very well,' said her father in reply, 'you will do.' Chăng-tsâi, accordingly, became Hêh's wife, and in due time gave ·防权. '伯夏,‘叔梁纥. ‘僵陽. ‘孟皮, 一字伯尼. 顏氏 '徵在.‘其人, 身長十尺. 6 See, on the length of the ancient foot, Ana. VIII. vi, but the point needs a more sifting investigation than it has yet received. birth to Confucius, who received the name of Ch'it, and was subsequently styled Chung-ni1. The event happened on the twenty-first day of the tenth month of the twenty-first year of the duke Hsiang, of Lû, being the twentieth year of the emperor Ling, B. C. 5522. The birth-place was in the district of Tsâu 3, of which Hêh was the governor. It was somewhere within the limits of the present department of Yen-châu in Shan-tung, but the honour of being the exact spot is claimed for two places in two different districts of the department. The notices which we have of Confucius's early years are very scanty. When he was in his third year his father died. It is related of him, that as a boy he used to play at the arrangement of 'Z,714. The legends say that Chăng-tsâi, fearing lest she should not have a son, in consequence of her husband's age, privately ascended the Nî-ch'iû hill to pray for the boon, and that when she had obtained it, she commemorated the fact in the names— Ch'iû and Chung-nî. But the cripple, Măng-p'î, had previously been styled Po-nî. There was some reason, previous to Confucius's birth, for using the term nî in the family. As might be expected, the birth of the sage is surrounded with many prodigious occurrences. One account is, that the husband and wife prayed together for a son in a dell of mount Nî. As Chăng-tsai went up the hill, the leaves of the trees and plants all erected themselves, and bent downwards on her return. That night she dreamt the black Ti appeared, and said to her, 'You shall have a son, a sage, and you must bring him forth in a hollow mulberry tree.' One day during her pregnancy, she fell into a dreamy state, and saw five old men in the hall, who called themselves the essences of the five planets, and led an animal which looked like a small cow with one horn, and was covered with scales like a dragon. This creature knelt before Chăng-tsai, and cast forth from its mouth a slip of jade, on which was the inscription,-'The son of the essence of water shall succeed to the decaying Châu, and be a throneless king.' Chăng-tsâi tied a piece of embroidered ribbon about its horn, and the vision disappeared. When Hêh was told of it, he said, 'The creature must be the Ch'i-lin.' As her time drew near, Chăng-tsâi asked her husband if there was any place in the neighbourhood called 'the hollow mulberry tree.' He told her there was a dry cave in the south hill, which went by that name. Then she said, 'I will go and be confined there.' Her husband was surprised, but when made acquainted with her former dream, he made the necessary arrangements. On the night when the child was born, two dragons came and kept watch on the left and right of the hill, and two spirit-ladies appeared in the air, pouring out fragrant odours, as if to bathe Chăng-tsai; and as soon as the birth took place, a spring of clear warm water bubbled up from the floor of the cave, which dried up again when the child had been washed in it. The child was of an extraordinary appearance; with a mouth like the sea, ox lips, a dragon's back, &c. &c. On the top of his head was a remarkable formation, in consequence of which he was named Ch'iû, &c. See the, Bk. lxxviii.—Sze-mâ Ch'ien seems to make Confucius to have been illegitimate, saying that Héh and Miss Yen cohabited in the wilder ness (A). Chiang Yung says that the phrase has reference simply to the disparity of their ages. 2 Sze-mâ Ch'ien says that Confucius was born in the twenty-second year of duke Hsiang, B.C. 550. He is followed by Chû Hsî in the short sketch of Confucius's life prefixed to the Lun Yu, and by 'The Annals of the Empire' (###), published with imperial sanction in the reign of Chiâ-ch'ing. (To this latter work I have generally referred for my dates.) The year assigned in the text above rests on the authority of Kû-liang and Kung-yang, the two commentators on the Ch'un-Ch'iû. With regard to the month, however, the tenth is that assigned by Kû-liang, while Kung-yang names the eleventh. 3 Tsau is written 郰,鄹,陬, and 鄒. sacrificial vessels, and at postures of ceremony. Of his schooling we have no reliable account. There is a legend, indeed, that at seven he went to school to Yen P'ing-chung1, but it must be rejected as P'ing-chung belonged to the State of Ch'i. He tells us himself that at fifteen he bent his mind to learning2; but the condition of the family was one of poverty. At a subsequent period, when people were astonished at the variety of his knowledge, he explained it by saying, 'When I was young, my condition was low, and therefore I acquired my ability in many things; but they were mean matters3.' When he was nineteen, he married a lady from the State of Sung, of the Chien-kwan family, and in the following year his son Lî was born. On the occasion of this event, the duke Châo sent him a present of a couple of carp. It was to signify his sense of his prince's favour, that he called his son Li (The Carp), and after wards gave him the designation of Po-yü (Fish Primus). No mention is made of the birth of any other children, though we know, from Ana. V. i, that he had at least one daughter. We know also, from an inscription on her grave, that he had one other daughter, who died when she was quite young. The fact of the duke of Lû's sending him a gift on the occasion of Li's birth, shows that he was not unknown, but was already commanding public attention and the respect of the great. It was about this time, probably in the year after his marriage, that Confucius took his first public employment, as keeper of the stores of grain, and in the following year he was put in charge of the public fields and lands. Mencius adduces these employments in illustration of his doctrine that the superior man may at times take office on account of his poverty, but must confine himself in such a case to places of small emolument, and aim at nothing but the discharge of their humble duties, According to him, Confucius, as keeper of stores, said, 'My calculations must all be right-that is all I have to care about;' and when in charge of the public fields, he said, 'The oxen and sheep must be fat and strong and 1 ● 晏平仲 2 Ana. II. iv. 3 Ana. IX. vi. ‘娶宋之开官氏. *名曰鯉, 而字伯魚 6 . This is Mencius's account. Sze-mâ Ch'ien says 嘗為季氏吏, but his subsequent words 料量平 show that the office was the same. Mencius calls this office, while Sze-mân Ch'ien says 爲司職吏 |
