Book 5: 《公冶長》 Gong Ye Chang
《公冶長》 Passage 5.18
Legge Translation (1861)
The Master said: "Zang Wen kept a large tortoise in a house, on the capitals of the pillars of which he had hills made, and with representations of duckweed on the small pillars above the beams supporting the rafters. — Of what sort was his wisdom?"Word by word
- 子曰 zǐ yuē
the Master said
- 子 Master, honorific title for Confucius
- 曰 said, spoke
- 臧文仲 zāng wén zhòng
Zang Wenzhong, a grandee of Lu
- 臧 surname (of the Lu minister Zang Wenzhong)
- 文 posthumous epithet meaning accomplished, cultured
- 仲 second-born (ordinal sibling rank); element of a personal name
A senior Lu minister whom Confucius elsewhere also faults; Legge shortens the name to 'Zang Wen'.
- 居 jū
to house, keep (an animal in a dwelling)
- 蔡 cài
a large tortoise (kept for divination)
Peimin Ni retains 'Cai' as a place-name label for the tortoise breed; other translators substitute a size or ceremonial adjective.
- 山節 shān jié
mountain-shaped bracket or capital carved atop a pillar
- 山 mountain, hill, as a carved decorative motif
- 節 capital or bracket atop a pillar (architectural term)
Such ornament was reserved for the Son of Heaven's ancestral temple (包咸: 天子廟飾), so a Lu grandee using it for a tortoise-house was a usurpation; that, not the tortoise, is the evidence behind the verdict on his wisdom.
- 藻梲 zǎo zhuō
duckweed or water-plant motif painted on a rafter strut
- 藻 aquatic plant, duckweed, as a painted decorative motif
- 梲 short post or strut above a crossbeam (architectural term)
- 何如 hé rú
what sort of, how (rhetorical interrogative)
- 何 what, how (interrogative)
- 如 to be like; in a question, indicates manner: how, what sort
何如…也 forms a rhetorical question implying a negative judgment: how could this count as wisdom?
- 其 qí
his, its (referring to Zang Wenzhong)
Peimin Ni and Roberts substitute a general demonstrative ('this') rather than an explicit pronoun.
- 知 zhì
wisdom, discernment
Read zhì, the early graph for 智 'wisdom' before the two characters differentiated.
- 也 yě
final particle closing the rhetorical question
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