Book 13: 《子路》 Zi Lu
《子路》 Passage 13.30
子曰：「以不教民戰，是謂棄之。」
Legge Translation (1861)
The Master said: "To lead an uninstructed people to war, is to throw them away."Word by word
- 子曰 zǐ yuē
the Master said
- 子 honorific title: the Master, referring to Confucius
- 曰 said, spoke — introduces the Master's words
- 以 yǐ
coverb marking means: with, using
Several translators recast the coverb construction as a main verb of leading or sending rather than a preposition; Roberts and Watson restructure the clause and leave it without a distinct span.
- 不教 bù jiào
untrained, not instructed
- 不 not — negates the following verb
- 教 to teach, instruct, train
- 民 mín
the common people, the populace
- 戰 zhàn
to go to war, fight, wage battle
- 是謂 shì wèi
this is called, this means
- 是 demonstrative pronoun: this, referring back to what was just described
- 謂 to call, term, be spoken of as
是 anaphorically restates the preceding clause as subject.
- 棄 qì
to abandon, discard, throw away
- 之 zhī
them, the people
A text file for Anki 2.1.55 or later: File → Import. The cards go to the deck “Analects”, tagged by passage, and importing again updates them instead of adding copies.
Discussion
No one has started on this passage yet.
Start the discussion in r/analects