Book 16: 《季氏》 Ji Shi (The Ji Clan)
《季氏》 Passage 16.12
Legge Translation (1861)
The Duke Jing of Qi had a thousand teams, each of four horses, but on the day of his death, the people did not praise him for a single virtue. Bo Yi and Shu Qi died of hunger at the foot of the Shouyang mountain, and the people, down to the present time, praise them."Is not that saying illustrated by this?"
Word by word
- 齊景公 qí jǐng gōng
Duke Jing of Qi, ruler of the state of Qi
- 齊 Qi, name of the state ruled by Duke Jing
- 景 Jing, the duke's posthumous title element
- 公 duke, ruler's title
- 有 yǒu
to have, possess
- 馬千駟 mǎ qiān sì
a thousand teams of four horses
- 馬 horse
- 千 thousand
- 駟 team of four horses harnessed to one chariot
- 死 sǐ
to die, death
- 之 zhī
possessive/modifying particle: of
- 日 rì
day
- 民 mín
the common people
- 無 wú
to lack, have no, be without
- 德 dé
virtue, moral worth
Ames & Rosemont reads this as 'gratitude' and Watson as 'bounty'; the majority read it as virtue, the ruler's moral claim on the people's regard.
- 而 ér
conjunctive particle marking result: so as to, whereby
Ames & Rosemont's 'out of which to' is the one clear exception.
- 稱 chēng
to praise, commend
- 焉 yān
final particle fused with object pronoun: him
- 伯夷 bó yí
Bo Yi, legendary prince who starved rather than serve an unrighteous ruler
- 伯 Bo, honorific for an eldest son or elder brother
- 夷 Yi, a personal name
- 叔齊 shū qí
Shu Qi, Bo Yi's brother, who starved alongside him
- 叔 Shu, honorific for a younger son or younger brother
- 齊 Qi, name element in Shu Qi's name
- 餓 è
to starve, die of hunger
- 于 yú
coverb marking location: at, on
- 首陽 shǒu yáng
Mount Shouyang, where Bo Yi and Shu Qi starved
- 首 Shou, name element of Mount Shouyang
- 陽 Yang, name element of Mount Shouyang
- 之 zhī
possessive/modifying particle: of
- 下 xià
foot, base (of a mountain)
Roberts reads this as 'slope' rather than 'foot'.
- 民 mín
the common people
- 到于今 dào yú jīn
down to the present day, to this day
- 到 to arrive, reach; here marking a temporal endpoint: up to, down to
- 于 coverb marking a temporal endpoint: to, until
- 今 now, the present
- 稱 chēng
to praise, commend
- 之 zhī
object pronoun: them
- 其…與 qí … yú
tentative/rhetorical frame: perhaps it is..., is it not the case that...?
- 其 modal adverb: perhaps, probably
- 與 interrogative/tentative final particle: perhaps, is it not so?
Legge, Slingerland, Peimin Ni, Roberts, and Ames & Rosemont cast the line as a question; Lau uses 'probably' for the same tentativeness; Watson and Chin render it as a flat declarative statement instead.
- 斯之謂 sī zhī wèi
this is what is meant, it is this that is referred to
- 斯 this, this saying
- 之 resumptive particle marking a fronted object
- 謂 to mean, refer to, call
object-fronting construction (斯...之謂), with 之 resuming the fronted 斯. The passage opens without 孔子曰 and 其斯之謂與 points to a saying that is not there: 朱熹, following 胡寅, holds that the couplet 誠不以富, 亦祇以異, misplaced at 12.10, belongs here before 齊景公; Peimin Ni prints it in brackets, Roberts and Watson translate 'the saying', and 楊伯峻 records the proposal without adopting it.
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