תמונות בעמוד
PDF
ePub

of. The force of extends to the difft. terms in the second clause, and is used as a connective particle. Lin Che-k'e compares its use here with the same in the "Tribute of Yu,' Pt. i., pp. 44 and 51. It is said that Woo gave effect to this solicitude for the instruction of the people by establishing schools,-educational institutions of various kinds; and to make good the provision of food, he enacted the hundred mow allotment and the share system' (see Mencius, III., Pt. I., iii.).

☀––E, ‘to make solid, or real.' The or 'truthfulness' belonged, the critics say, to all his governmental orders, and the fidelity with which they were kept, and the

or

'righteousness,' to all his actions. We have in the 'Daily Explanation:

必守之信而始終不渝

[ocr errors]

representative of the House of Yin to the territory of Sung'; the pres. dis. of Shangkëw), dep. of Kwei-tih, Ho-nan). These appointments were given, not because of services rendered to the new dynasty, as many others were, but from respect to the memories of the great men represented, that the sacrifices to their spirits might not fall into disuse.

[ii]. On the specifications of time in this and the two preceding Books. King Woo proceeded from his capital to the attack of Show on the 3rd day of the 1st month of what is called

his 13th year, B.c. 1121 (Gaubil, 1122); and in cording to the Great Speech,' Pt. i., p. 1), he the 28th day of that month in the spring' (accrossed the Ho at Măng-tsin. Ts'ae Ch'in supposes that the year intended was that of Hea, which has been that of all the dynasties of China since the Han. Now the first month of

the present Chinese year began on the 18th of our February, and the cycle name of the day

was mow-shin(). If we multiply 2984

#solar years, which have elapsed since the 13th of of days from that time up to the end of last

[ocr errors]

, 'to let the robes hang down, and fold his hands ceremoniously before his breast.' The meaning is, that by the excellence of his institutions and example, there was superseded the necessity of any further laborious measures or efforts. The good order of the government fol

lowed as a matter of course.

CONCLUDING NOTES. [i]. On the investitures granted by king Woo. The 歴代

under the year B.C. 1121, gives a list of the principal States into which the empire was divided in the dynasty of Chow;-viz. Loo (), Wei (), Tsae (), Tsin (), Tsaou (曹), Ching (鄭), Woo (吳), Yen (燕)

), Chin (), Sung (), Ts'e (), Ts'oo (楚), and Tsin (秦). I will not here enter into particulars on each of those principalities, as I shall have to speak of most of them in connection with one or other of the following Books. I will now only refer to what is in the Bk., of the Le Kc, Part iii., par. 19, that king Woo, on the overthrow of the Shang dynasty, before he descended from his chariot, invested the representative of Hwang-te with the territory of Kel; the pres. dis. of Ta-hing, [] in the dep. of Shun-t'een); the representative of Yaou with Chuh; the pres. dia. of Ch'ang-ts'ing[], in the dep. of Tse-nan); the representative of Shun with Ch'in ; the name remains in that of the dep. Ch'in-chow, Ho-nan); and when he had descended from his chariot,―i.e., subsequently, he invested the representative of Yu with Ke

;

this name also remains in that of the dis. of K'e, in the dep. of K'ae-fung); and he sent the

Woo's reign, by 365.24224, we obtain the number

Chinese year,1,089,882.84416, or 18164 cycles of days and 42 days more. But it will be found, on calculation, that the first day of new moon in February, 2984 years ago, occurred three days earlier that in the present year. Reckoning back therefore 18,164 cycles and 46 days more from mow-shin of the present year, we come to jinseuh (壬戌), as the first day of the Hen year

in the 13th of Woo's reign; and the view of Ts'ae cannot be sustained.

Reckoning back other 30 days from we come to the day jin-shin (†), as the first day of the first month in the year of Shang; and according to the view of Fan Sze-lin, approved of rather by the editors of Yung-ching's

Shoo, this is the day intended in the classic as

[ocr errors]

the first day of the first month spoken of. It is only one day after sin-maou. It would thus appear that not only is Ts'ae in error in saying that we are to understand that the months in the text are the months of the year of Hea, but that the other commentators are equally mistaken in referring them to the year of Chow. They are those of the year of Shang, beginning with the last month of winter. This conclusion lightens somewhat the difficulty occasioned by the mention of "the spring," in the "Great Speech,' par. 1. This is spoken with reference to the day mow-woo, which certainly was close upon the spring. If it be thought that the whole of the first month is intended to be described as in the spring,' we must believe that in consequence of deficient intercalation, an error of one whole lunation had crept into the calendar by the time of the rise of the Chow dynasty. On suggesting that this might be the case to a very intelligent Chinese scholar, he replied, How can you think that the sages could have blundered so?" But it will be found, from what will be seen in the prolegomena on the subject of the astronomy and chronology of the ancient Chinese, that this was probably the case.

[ocr errors]

萬鹿由流有甲午尙遏淵暴周天步惟

牛于姓臺舊漂敵子師克亂藪殄王后自一

悅之釋杵于味逾相畧子天發土、周、月、 桃乃服 ̧財、 1 財箕 我爽孟子華小物將所于壬 蔡 林偃○發子戎師受津以夏子害有過征辰 沈 之武厥鉅囚衣前率癸濟蠻既虐大名伐旁 考 野修四橋封天徒其亥兆貓獲烝正山商死

文月之比下倒旅陳民罔仁民于大○魄,
歸哉粟 大戈若于無不人,為
人,為商川底
下馬生大墓定攻林商作率敢天今日商翼
弗于明賚式乃于會郊 郊,神俾,祇 惟之日,

服華王于商反後于俟羞惟承逋王有罪癸
山來四容商 以
逃受道

之自海間、政,北,野,休既有帝主無會
陽商而散政血罔命戊神以萃道孫皇

APPENDIX.

THE COMPLETION OF THE WAR, AS ARRANGED BY TS'AE CHIN.

In the first month, the day jin-shin immediately followed the end of the moon's waning. The next day was kwei-ke, when the king in the morning marched from Chow to attack and punish Shang.

Declaring the crimes of Shang, he announced to great Heaven and the sovereign Earth, to the famous hill and the great river, by which he passed, saying, ‘1, Fă, the principled, king of Chow, by a long descent, am about to have a great righting with Shang. Show, the king of Shang, is without principle, cruel and destructive to the creatures of Heaven, injurious and tyrannical to the multitudes of the people, chief of the vagabonds of the empire, who collect about him as fish in the deep, and beasts in the prairie. I, who am but a little child, having obtained the help of virtuous men, presume reverently to comply with the will of God, to make an end of his disorderly ways. The great and flowery region, and the wild tribes of the south and north, equally follow and consent with me. And now, ye spirits, grant me your aid, that I may relieve the millions of the people, and nothing turn out to your shame!"

On the day mow-woo the army crossed the ford of Măng; on the day kwei-hae it was drawn up in array in the borders of Shang, waiting for the gracious decision of Heaven. On the day këǎtsze, at early dawn, Show led forward his hosts like a forest, and assembled them in the wilerness of Muh. But they would offer no opposition to our army. Those in the front inverted their spears, and attacked those behind them, till they fled, and the blood flowed till it floated the pestles about. Thus did king Woo once don his arms, and the empire was greatly settled. He overthrew the existing government of Shang, and made it resume its old course. He delivered the count of Ke from prison, and raised a tumulus over the grave of Pe-kan. He bowed in his carriage at the gate of Shang Yung's village. He dispersed the treasures of Luh-t'ae, and distributed the grain of Keu-keaou, thus conferring great gifts throughout the empire; and all the people joyfully submitted.

In the fourth month, at the first appearance of the moon, the king came from Shang to Fung, when he hushed all the movements of war, and attended to the cultivations of peace. He sent back his horses to the south of mount Hwa, and let loose his oxen in the open country of T'aoulin, showing the empire that he would not use them again.

其喪賢列天其成集小天我王啟若日甸命 而祭 ,位爵 爵休士命予邦命文肇土日庚侯于生 震女肆小懷以考基公鳴戌衛,周。魄, 下信惟五動能予子其撫文王劉呼柴騣○庶 治。明 能分 用 分用厥東其德方王迹克羣望奔丁邦 義重土附征承惟夏克王篤后大走未冡 崇民惟我黃綏厥 九大 成季前惟告執 德五三大昭厥志 志。年,邦 邦其烈先武豆于性 報 建邑我士○大勳勤至王成籩周百 功惟官周周女恭統其誕王于建○越廟工, 垂食惟○王惟天未力膺家太邦王三邦受

After the moon began to wane, the hereditary princes of the various States, and all the officers, received their appointments from Chow.

On the day ting-we he sacrificed in the ancestral temple of Chow, when the chiefs of the imperial domain, and of the teen, how, and wei domains, all hurried about, carrying the dishes. Three days after, he presented a burnt-offering to Heaven, and worshipped towards the mountains and rivers, solemnly announcing the successful completion of the war.

The king spake to the following effect:-"Oh! ye host of princes, the first of our kings founded the State and commenced our territory. The duke Lew was able to consolidate the merits of his predecessor. But it was the king T'ae who laid the foundations of the imperial inheritance. Then king Ke was diligent for the royal House; and my deceased father, king Wăn, completed his merit, and received the great decree of Heaven to soothe the regions of the great bright land. The great States feared his strength; the small States cherished his virtue. In nine years, however, the whole empire was not collected under his rule, and it fell to me, who am but a little child, to carry out his will. Reverently obeying the determinate counsel of Heaven, I pursued my punitive work to the east, to give tranquillity to its men and women. Its men and women brought their baskets full of azure and yellow silks, to show forth the virtue of us the kings of Chow. Heaven's favours stirred them up, so that they came with their allegiance to our great State of Chow.

He arranged the orders of nobility into five, assigning, the territories to them on a threefold scale. He gave offices only to the worthy and employments only to the able. He attached great importance to the people's being taught the duties of the five relations of society, and took care for food, for funeral ceremonies, and for sacrifices. He showed the reality of his truthfulness, and proved clearly his righteousness. He honoured virtue, and rewarded merit. Then he had only to let his robes fall down, and fold his hands and the empire was orderly ruled.

THE BOOKS OF SHANG.

BOOK IV. THE GREAT PLAN.

居民天呼乃箕

可 惟

我相陰箕言子王十 不協隱子日○訪有 知厥下惟嗚王訏三

洪範

1 I. In the thirteenth year, the king went to inquire of the vis2 count of Ke, and said to him “Oh! viscount of Ke, Heaven, unseen, has given their constitution to mankind, aiding also the harmonious development of it in their various conditions. I do not know how their proper virtues in their various relations should be brought forth in due order."

The Name of the Book. The perhaps only made it known that he would flee -to Corea. King Woo respected and admired

Great Plan.’洪大‘great’範一法, his attachment to the fallen dynasty, and invest

ed him with that territory. He now felt con'plan.' Other synonyms of, given in the strained to appear at the court of Chow, when

dict., are 式and 模 both conveying the same

idea of ' plan,' or 'model.' The name, like that of the last Book, is taken from the Book itself. We read in par. 2, that Heaven gave to Yu the Great Plan, with its nine Divisions.' Some

[ocr errors]

would adopt the whole of this,一洪範九

[blocks in formation]

the king took the opportunity to consult him on the great principles of government, and the result was that he communicated this ‘Great Plan, with its nine Divisions.' Being first made public under the Chow dynasty, it is ranked among the Books of Chow.' It is often referred to, however, as one of the ' Books of Shang,' as having emanated from the viscount of Ke, who should properly be adjudged to that dynasty. When we read the Book itself, we see that it originally belonged to the time of Hea, and at least the central portion, or text of it,–par. 4,-should be ascribed to the great Yu.' We have therefore a fragment in it of very ancient learning. How this had come into the possession of the viscount of Ke we cannot tell. It does not seem to have occurred to the Chinese critics to make the inquiry. Whether we should ascribe all the paragraphs from the 5th downwards to the viscount, is also a point on which I cannot undertake to pronounce a posi

tive opinion. Hea Seuen (; Sung dyn.) says that though the words are those of the viscount of Ke, the record of them was made by the historians of Chow.'

That the central portion of the Book, and more or less of the expository part, came down from the times of Hea is not improbable. The use of the number nine, and the naming of the various divisions of the Plan,' are in harmony with Yu's style and practice in his Counsels,' and in what we may call the 'Domesday Book.' We are told that Heaven-God-gave the plan with its Divisions to Yu.' Upon this Gan-kwo says that Heaven gave Yu the mysterious tortoise, which made its appearance in the waters of the Lo, bearing marks on its back well defined, from 1 to 9; and thereupon Yu determined the meaning of those numbers, and completed the nine divisions of the plan.'

This legend has been fathered on Confucius, as we read in the Appendix to the Yih king , Pt i., p. 38, that the Ho

gave forth the Scheme, and the Lo gave forth the Book (or defined characters), which the sages (or sage) took as their pattern', 洛出書聖人則之). If we admit

that these words proceeded from Confucius or were edited by him, while it is absurd enough to speak of the two rivers giving forth the Scheme and the Book, he says nothing of the -Scheme being on the back of a dragon, which has been the current statement for more than 2,000 years, or of the Book being on the back of a tortoise. Moreover, there is no evidence that he meant to connect the Book of Lo' with the Great Plan' at all. We should rather imagine that he supposed the Scheme and the Book to be equally related to the diagrams of the Yih, and to have been both presented to Fuh-he. I hardly know an interpreter, however, but Lin Che-k'e, who has not adopted the statement of Gan-kwo; and the consequence is that the explanations of this Book are overlaid with absurd twaddle about the virtue of numbers as related to Heaven and Earth, to the Yin and the Yang, the cardinal points, &c., &c.. The following figure has been imagined as that which was exhibited to Yu:

[merged small][ocr errors]

the nine open marks, and opposite was the one close mark. The two and the four were at the shoulders; the six and the eight were by the feet. Three and seven were on the left and right, and five were in the centre. Out of those numbers, odd and even, heavenly and earthly, now multiplied, now added together, the whole of the Plan and its Divisions is developed, with a glibness of tongue and a leger-de-plume, which only familiarity with the Yih-king, and the applications of it to astrology, geomancy, and other follies can produce. There is of course no solid learning' () in all this. We shall have to endeavour to treat seriously of it, when we come to the Yih-king, but it should be exploded from the study of "The great Plan.' The Book will be found dark enough in itself, but the viscount of Ke says nothing of occult qualities of numbers, from which the ideas in the different divisions of the Plan could be deduced. It will be my object, therefore, simply to elucidate the meaning of the whole as a scheme of government, intended to guide all rulers in the discharge of their duties.

Near the head of the tortoise, it is said, were

Gaubil says that the Book is a treatise at once of Physics, Astrology, Divination, Morals, Politics, and Religion; and that it has a sufficiently close resemblance to the work of Ocellus between the Great Plan and the curious specithe Lucanian.' There is a shadowy resemblance men of Pythagorean doctrine which we have in the treatise On the Universe. The dissimilarities are still greater and more numerous. More Greek mind, speculative, and the Chinese mind, especially are the different characters of the practical, apparent in the two Works. Where the Chinese writer loses himself in the sheerest about for a rule to be of use in the conduct of follies of his imagining, he would yet grope human affairs. One of the most interesting the Summer palace' near Peking, was a curiosities which were obtained in 1861 from scroll, purporting to be in the handwriting of the emperor K'een-lung, dilating on the meaning of The great Plan,' and the lessons to be general agreement among the critics in assigning learned by sovereigns from it. There is a its place to the Book either among the Counsels' of the Shoo, or among the Instructions.' CONTENTS. I avail myself here, with a little variation, of the account of these given in the 'Complete Digest' of commentaries on the

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Shoo (書經備有).-The whole dividea

itself into three chapters. The first, parr. 1-3, is introductory, and describes how the Great Plan with its Divisions' was first made known to Yu, and came at this time to be communicated to king Woo. The second, in p. 4, contains the Plan and its Divisions. The third, parr. 5--40, contains a particular description of the several Divisions. The whole,' says the writer, exhibits the great model for the govt. of the empire. The fifth or middle division on Royal Perfection is, indeed, the central one of the whole, that about which the Book revolves. The four divisions that precede it show how this royal Perfection is to be accomplished, and the four that follow show how it is to be maintained.'

Ch. I. Pp. 1-3. KING WOO APPLIES TO THE VISCOUNT OF KE FOR INFORMATION ABOUT

41

« הקודםהמשך »