《子罕》 Passage 9.5

the Master, Confucius

endangered, in mortal danger

traditional account (包咸 in the 集解): the people of Kuang mistook Confucius for Yang Hu, the rebellious Ji-family steward who had once ravaged Kuang and whom he resembled, and surrounded him; 朱熹 reads 畏 as having a wary heart, 劉寶楠 as being detained, and the translators split the same way.

locative preposition: in, at

Kuang, a place in the state of Wey

said, spoke

King Wen, the Zhou sage-king, father of the conqueror King Wu

• 文 Wen, name of King Wen, founder of the Zhou dynasty
• 王 king, as a royal title

already dead, deceased

• 既 already
• 沒 dead, deceased, passed away

culture, cultural legacy, civilization

Legge idiosyncratically renders wén here as 'the cause of truth' rather than 'culture'; this is the passage's load-bearing term, repeated as 斯文 through the rest of the saying.

...is it not the case that...?, rhetorical question frame

• 不 not
• 乎 interrogative final particle

Watson converts the rhetorical question into a plain declarative ('remains here with me'), so the negative-interrogative frame has no counterpart in his rendering.

resides here, is lodged here

• 在 to reside in, be present in, be lodged in
• 茲 here, this place

Heaven, the celestial power that sanctions moral and cultural order

Ames & Rosemont leaves tiān untranslated rather than rendering it as 'Heaven'.

conditional/topic clause frame: if...were the case

• 之 subordinating particle marking the subject of a following clause
• 也 final particle marking a conditional or topic clause

intend to

destroy, cause to perish

this culture, this cultural legacy

• 斯 this, referring to the culture just named
• 文 culture, civilization, the cultural legacy of the Zhou

one who dies later, Confucius's self-reference; those who come after

• 後 after, later, subsequent
• 死 to die
• 者 nominalizing particle: one who, those who

孔安國 in the 集解 and 朱熹 both take 後死者 as Confucius's modest self-reference, 'the one who dies after King Wen'; Legge's 'a future mortal' follows them, Peimin Ni and Ames & Rosemont widen it to 'we latecomers', and Lau, Watson and Chin read posterity in general.

not be able to, cannot

• 不 not
• 得 to be able to, to get to

participate in, share in, take part in

read yù, the verb 'take part in', not the conjunction; 朱熹 marks 與 here as 去聲. Slingerland restructures the clause so Heaven is the giving subject ('given it to those of us'), leaving no word for 與.

locative preposition marking the object of participation: in

this culture, this cultural legacy

• 斯 this, referring to the culture just named
• 文 culture, civilization, the cultural legacy of the Zhou

sentence-final particle of assertion

unlike the other 也 in this passage, this one is not part of a 之...也 conditional frame.

Heaven, the celestial power that sanctions moral and cultural order

conditional/topic clause frame: if...were the case

• 之 subordinating particle marking the subject of a following clause
• 也 final particle marking a conditional or topic clause

not yet

destroy, cause to perish

this culture, this cultural legacy

• 斯 this, referring to the culture just named
• 文 culture, civilization, the cultural legacy of the Zhou

the people of Kuang

• 匡 Kuang, a place in the state of Wey
• 人 people, men, the inhabitants of a place

what can be done to...?, rhetorical question of helplessness

• 其 rhetorical modal particle intensifying a question: what indeed
• 如 to do something about, to deal with
• 何 what, in a 'what can be done about...' question

me, I (object pronoun, Confucius referring to himself)