Garden of Eloquence / Shuoyuan說苑

By Liu Xiang and Eric Henry

In 17 BCE the Han dynasty archivist Liu Xiang presented to the throne a collection of some seven hundred items of varying length, mostly quasi-historical anecdotes and narratives, that he deemed essential reading for wise leadership. Garden of Eloquence (Shuoyuan), divided into twenty books grouped by theme, follows a tradition of narrative writing on historical and philosophical themes that began seven centuries earlier. Long popular in China as a source of allusions and quotations, it preserves late Western Han views concerning history, politics, and ethics. Many of its anecdotes are attributed to Confucius’s speeches and teachings that do not appear in earlier texts, demonstrating that long after Confucius’s death in 479 BCE it was still possible for new “historical” narratives to be created.

Garden of Eloquence is valuable as a repository of items that originally appeared in other early collections that are no longer extant, and it provides detail on topics as various as astronomy and astrology, yin-yang theory, and quasi-geographical and mystical categories. Eric Henry’s unabridged translation with facing Chinese text and extensive annotation will make this important primary source available for the first time to Anglophone world historians.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Release date: Jan 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9780295806334

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Andrew H. Plaks and Michael Nylan, Series Editors

Exemplary Figures / Fayan

Yang Xiong, translated and introduced by Michael Nylan

Zuo Tradition / Zuozhuan

Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals

Translated and introduced by Stephen Durrant, Wai-yee Li, and David Schaberg

Garden of Eloquence / Shuoyuan

Liu Xiang, translated and introduced by Eric Henry

GARDEN OF ELOQUENCE

SHUOYUAN

說苑

Liu Xiang 劉向

(79–8 BCE)

TRANSLATED AND INTRODUCED BY

Eric Henry

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS

Seattle

Garden of Eloquence / Shuoyuan was made possible in part by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation.

Additional support was provided by gifts from Michael Burnap, Irene Tanabe, and Ruth Eller.

Copyright © 2021 by the University of Washington Press

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Liu, Xiang, 77 B.C.–6 B.C., author. | Henry, Eric P., 1943– translator.

Title: Garden of eloquence, Shuoyuan 說苑 / Liu Xiang, Eric Henry.

Other titles: Shuo yuan. Selections. English

Description: Seattle : University of Washington Press, 2021. | Series: Classics of Chinese thought | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021000642 (print) | LCCN 2021000643 (ebook) | ISBN 9780295995199 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780295806334 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: China—History—To 221 B.C.—Anecdotes.

Classification: LCC DS736 .L534772513 2021 (print) | LCC DS736 (ebook) | DDC 931/.04—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021000642

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021000643

The paper used in this publication is acid free and meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI z39.48–1984.∞

To the memory of Xiang Zonglu and all the scholars who devoted their lives to the restoration of textual accuracy in the written legacy of early China

Contents

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Chronology of Dynasties

Introduction

Garden of Eloquence / Shuoyuan

1The Way of a Ruler 君道

2The Craft of an Officer 臣術

3Building the Root 建本

4Establishing Integrity 立節

5Prizing Virtue 貴德

6Repaying Favors 復恩

7Principles of Government 政理

8Honoring the Worthy 尊賢

9Upright Remonstrance 正諫

10Diligent Care 敬慎

11Skill in Argument 善說

12The Performance of Missions 奉使

13Judgment and Strategy 權謀

14Impartiality 至公

15Military Affairs 指武

16Aphorisms 談叢

17Miscellaneous Discourses 雜言

18Discrimination 辨物

19The Cultivation of Civil Order 修文

20Returning to the Essence 反質

Appendix: List of Anecdote Titles Created by Translator

Bibliography

Allusions Index

Personal Name Index

Place Name Index

Topics and Motifs Index

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the University of North Carolina for awarding me a Grier-Woods Fellowship, which freed me from teaching responsibilities in the spring of 2008 and thus enabled me to complete my translations of the last several books in Garden of Eloquence. I am also grateful to Professor Tang Huisheng of Nanjing Shifan Daxue, who, on one occasion when I was far from my library, went to extraordinary lengths to procure on short notice a copy of Shangshu dazhuan that I needed to consult (he at length found a copy on a graduate student’s flash drive) and to Li Tianshi, also of Nanjing Shifan Daxue, who supplied me with a copy of Shuoyuan jiaozheng from his institution’s library that I could use while traveling elsewhere in China. E. Bruce Brooks of the University of Massachusetts Warring States Project looked at the manuscript as I was writing it and made valuable suggestions. David Pankenier of Lehigh University, an expert in early Chinese astronomy, gave me some absolutely crucial assistance in translating item 18.2, which concerns that subject. Michael Nylan of the University of California, Berkeley, was particularly meticulous in critiquing my text, raising innumerable points in every section of the text. Every book in this translation has benefited greatly from my (often strenuous) discussions with her. Professor Michael Loewe was willing to serve as a sounding board with regard to difficult passages in several anecdotes. I am also greatly beholden to Susan Stone, whose astute copy editing for the University of Washington Press saved me from many errors, inconsistencies, and other problems. I have benefited as well from the observations of Zhu Baoqing of Beijing Shifan Daxue, Yoav Ariel of the University of Tel Aviv, and two anonymous readers for the University of Washington Press. Spencer Smith gave me substantial and timely assistance in preparing the bibliography. I am grateful to Dr. Jefffrey Tharsen of the University of Chicago for creating a special font so that eight particularly rare characters not in the Unicode set could be displayed in this book. I am also indebted to various barristas working in the downtown Caribou Cafe in Chapel Hill who over many years provided a pleasant environment in which I could sip coffee and work on Garden of Eloquence.

It is inevitable that a work of this scope will contain more than a few errors, and for those I beg to accept complete responsibility. I hope also that readers will be forthcoming in drawing these errors to my attention.

Abbreviations

ABBREVIATIONS USED FOR PERSONAL NAMES

ABBREVIATIONS USED FOR SOURCES OF COMMENTS IN TEXTUAL NOTES

Chronology of Dynasties

Introduction

More than any other individual, Liu Xiang 劉向 (79–8 BCE), a scholarofficial of the late Former Han (206–9 BCE), is responsible for rescuing from oblivion and putting into definitive form the written legacy of preimperial and early imperial China. As such, his influence on the subsequent development of Chinese culture was all pervasive and inescapable. It is scarcely possible to discuss any of the perennial themes of Chinese thought without quoting from texts that, had it not been for Liu Xiang, would never have existed or would have existed in a different and probably vastly inferior form. The philosopher Xunzi, for example, lived and wrote two centuries before Liu Xiang, but before Liu Xiang there was no book called Xunzi 荀子; rather, there were a hundred or so loose documents authored by Xunzi in the imperial library, some of which were duplicates of each other and most of which were endangered. It was Liu Xiang who gave shape to this mass of material and in so doing made it available to future generations. Similarly, Huainanzi 淮南子, the vast compendium of Daoist and syncretist thought originating in the court of Liu An 劉安 in the mid-second century BCE, owes its current existence as a book to Liu Xiang. And Intrigues of the Warring States (Zhanguoce 戰國策), the indispensable collection of legends and rhetoric of the Warring States and early Han, exists only because Liu Xiang used the contents of six poorly preserved precursor texts that were rapidly becoming unusable to create a new book. Zhuangzi 莊子, Liezi 列子, and The Annals of Yanzi (Yanzi chunqiu 晏子春秋) are three more books that owe their present form—and perhaps present existence—to Liu Xiang. It was he also who first collected the writings that record legends concerning the career and (alleged) theories of the early-seventh-century statesman Guan Zhong 管仲 (ca. 720–645). This became Guanzi 管子, the only early Chinese text that talks at length about economics. The list goes on and on. The Classic of Filial Piety (Xiaojing 孝經), Book of Rites (Liji 禮記), Assorted Accounts of Women (Lienüzhuan 列女傳), New Collation (Xinxu 新序), and Garden of Eloquence (Shuoyuan 說苑) all owe their existence to the editorial work of this one man.

Liu Xiang began this work at the age of fifty-three in 26 BCE, when, as collator of documents within the palace, he was charged by Emperor Cheng with creating definitive versions of canonic, philosophic, and poetic texts. After his death at the age of seventy-one in 9 BCE, his work was carried forward by his youngest son, Liu Xin 劉歆 (50 BCE–23 CE). But that son eventually (in 26 CE) was swept to destruction by the political currents of his times, committing suicide after the execution of his own three sons—Liu Xiang’s grandsons.

The huge contributions to the preservation and development of Chinese culture detailed above were all made in the course of a career fraught at every point with personal insecurity of the most radical kind. Liu Xiang had been imprisoned and condemned to death at a young age for the perceived crime of attempting to delude the emperor, and in the course of his life he saw friends, patrons, and colleagues on every side pay with their lives for their activities and opinions. To a modern person, the lives of early Chinese statesmen, like the lives of their counterparts in ancient Rome, read like an endless sequence of horrors. It is hard for people of our era to see how anyone living under such conditions could have maintained a devotion to moral principle and intellectual advancement—to anything, in fact, beyond the mere preservation of life—and yet, in countless instances, they seem to have done just that. To those statesmen, no doubt, life at the Han court and at earlier courts still in historical memory seemed normal—they had never known anything different. The ferocious demands imposed on the individual by the conditions of life in those times is reflected in an utterance that appears in item 4.2 of this book: If a person cannot willingly embrace heavy tasks, cannot be content with poverty and hardship, and cannot hold death in contempt, then I shall not believe him if he still says, ‘I am able to act righteously.’ Liu Xiang himself is described in his Hanshu 漢書 biography as being an easy-going man free of personal pride who liked to spend his days working on his texts in the imperial library and his nights observing the stars, sometimes forgoing sleep to do so.

The fact that Liu Xiang’s work took place in the imperial library, however, did nothing to insulate him from the political conflicts that raged in the Han court; and his work as a collator was not exclusively aimed at the preservation and transmission of manuscripts, though that did become the chief value of his work to posterity. Liu Xiang held strong views on all the issues of the day, addressed memorials to the emperor on a number of occasions, and did his best to influence the opinions of his colleagues as well. By rescuing the legacy of the past as a manuscript collator, he could help to disseminate correct doctrine, which might in turn help to ameliorate conditions at court. It was partly because he was offended by the excessive power and bad behavior of certain empresses and their relatives that he assembled the noteworthy actions that constitute Assorted Accounts of Women. His desire to improve the political climate of his time is particularly plain in the work to which we shall now turn our attention.

GARDEN OF ELOQUENCE

Though I have chosen to represent the original title of this work, Shuoyuan 說苑, with the words Garden of Eloquence, Christian Schwermann has demonstrated in a recent article that what the word shuo actually signifies in this context is illustrative examples. ¹ Thus, the most literal possible English representation of the title in English would be Garden of Illustrative Examples or even Anthology of Illustrative Examples. I feel that the word eloquence, however, does not seriously misrepresent the content of the book. The author-compiler placed weight on rhetorical excellence, and the book he assembled and partly wrote contains a great many finely honed speeches, some expository and some persuasive.

Presented to the throne in 17 BCE, when Liu Xiang was sixty-two years old, the work is a collection of seven-hundred-odd items of varying length, mostly quasi-historical anecdotes and narratives. It is divided into twenty books under diff ent subject headings that collectively examine all aspects of statecraft and set forth practices of rulers and statesmen that in the compiler’s view will be most conducive to the strength of a dynasty. Thus, to choose but one example, in the first item of book 2, The Craft of an Officer, Liu Xiang details the six proper behaviors and the six perverse behaviors in the conduct of an officer. One who observes the former, he says, will gain glory, whereas one guilty of the latter will suffer shame. A sage officer is able to see the significance of the tiniest signs and omens in his surroundings; an honest officer expresses himself in an open and objective manner and is assiduous in encouraging the good inclinations of his ruler and rescuing him from bad ones; a loyal officer rises early and retires late, is content with humble status, and never tires of recommending worthy men for service; a prescient officer foresees success and failure, takes early steps to avert defeat, repairs gaps and turns disasters into blessings; an officer of integrity abides by the documents and laws of the state, renounces stipends, declines rewards, and refuses gifts; and a true officer is able to brave a ruler’s displeasure, does not shrink from punishment, and is willing to die so that the state may be safe. A perfunctory officer, in contrast, rests in the enjoyment of his status and seeks to advance his private prosperity while neglecting public affairs; a sycophantic officer praises everything his ruler says and does, while at the same time seeking things his ruler will like and offering them up to him, so that he may enjoy the pleasures of sound and sight; a dishonest officer, though diligent, glib and ingratiating on the surface, is full of treacherous schemes and is inwardly envious of worthy men; a conniving officer is one who uses his intellect to cover up his lapses and uses his gifts of speech to present elegant and pleasing arguments that change with every circumstance; a bandit officer monopolizes and abuses power and seizes control of state affairs so as to put others at his mercy; and an officer who ruins the state uses evil means to plunge his ruler into unrighteousness and colludes with others to surround his ruler with ignorance.

Except for books 17 and 18, Aphorisms and Miscellaneous Discourses, all twenty books in Garden of Eloquence have titles that speak directly to the goal of achieving enlightened government: The Way of a Ruler, The Craft of an Officer, Building the Root, Establishing Integrity, Prizing Virtue, Repaying Favors, Principles of Government, Honoring the Worthy, Upright Remonstrance, Diligent Care, Skill in Argument, The Performance of Missions, Judgment and Strategy, Impartiality, Military Affairs, Discrimination, The Cultivation of Civil Order, and Returning to the Essence. Thus, all aspects of statecraft, as understood in Han times, are dealt with in a multifaceted fashion.

Among the tools of statesmanship, Liu Xiang placed paramount importance on skill in speech; hence the title of this collection. It was upon this skill, he felt, that the survival or destruction of states, dynasties, and individuals depended. Thus, quoting Xunzi, he says in book 11, In making speeches, one must be steady and serious in setting forth one’s subject, poised and sincere in dealing with it, strong and tenacious in developing it, ready with quotations and examples in illustrating it, clear and orderly in one’s analysis of it, and animated and emphatic in delivering it. You must cherish, prize, esteem, and revere your subject. If you proceed in this way, your speeches will seldom fail to achieve their proper effect. This is known as ‘making precious what one regards as precious.’

Garden of Eloquence has always been a popular source of allusions and quotations. It is particularly valuable as a source for Han dynasty views concerning history and ethics. Many of the items, for example, attribute to Confucius speeches and doctrines that do not appear in earlier texts. The work moreover shows that, as late as the end of the Western Han, China’s first long-lasting imperial dynasty, narrative lore pertaining to the Spring and Autumn era and the Warring States era was in a fluid state—it was still possible for new quasi-historical narratives to be created and for existing ones to be further developed. The principal contributions of Garden of Eloquence in this area were in fact all adopted by the late Ming literatus Feng Menglong 馮夢龍 (1574–1646) in his vernacular-language romance concerning the preimperial history of China: Chronicle of the States of the Eastern Zhou (Dong Zhou lieguo zhi 東周 列國志). Thus, a spectacular episode beginning near the conclusion of chapter 104 of that work, in which Mao Jiao 茅蕉, a wanderer from Qi, braves death in a cauldron of boiling water so as to admonish the future Qin Shi Huangdi 秦始皇帝 concerning his unfilial treatment of his mother the empress dowager is based squarely on item 9.8 in Garden of Eloquence. And the episode in chapter 53 of Lieguo zhi in which King Zhuang of Chu (Chu Zhuang-wang 楚莊王) makes an inspired decision during the course of a banquet not to expose and execute a man who makes a pass at his concubine Xu Ji 許姬, and in consequence gains a loyal and talented commander, derives from item 6.10 in Garden of Eloquence. In modern times, Feng’s novel has appeared in the guise of attractively illustrated children’s books, not to mention movies, stage dramas, and TV shows—so the dissemination of these from Garden of Eloquence has been very wide.

The items in Garden of Eloquence that constitute the Han dynasty’s contribution to the narrative matter of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods should not be regarded as historical documents. They do not bear testimony to the events and conditions of those eras; rather they bear testimony to the prevailing nature of narrative entertainment among the elite classes during the Han dynasty—which is in itself a precious historical datum. Even the older narratives of Zuozhuan 左傳 (Zuo tradition) (quite a few of which appear with greater of lesser degrees of embellishment in Garden of Eloquence) have more to do with conditions, concepts, and concerns of the Warring States era than to those of the Spring and Autumn period. In many cases, the stories in Garden of Eloquence that are of Han provenance do not even qualify as good pseudohistory—they are full of obvious chronological and other impossibilities. For example, in 5.24, Mengchang Jun 孟嘗君, a figure from the late fourth century BCE, is received in Qi 齊 by Guan Zhong, a seventhcentury-BCE figure. In 8.27 Kongzi 孔子 (Confucius) discusses the mid-fifth-century-BCE downfalls of the clans of Fan 范 and Zhonghang 中行, which occurred several decades after his own death (this anachronism is repeated from Lüshi chunqiu 呂氏春秋). In 9.4, Jiu Fan 舅犯, the loyal follower of Lord Wen of Jin (Jin Wen-gong 晉文公), appears a hundred years after his own death as an admonisher of Lord Ping of Jin (Jin Ping-gong 晉平公). In 10.5, Laozi 老子 has a meeting with Shang Rong 商容, a learned refugee from the court of the wicked King Zhòu 紂 of the Shang. But Shang Rong’s alleged dates are several centuries earlier than Laozi’s alleged dates. In 13.7, Yanzi 晏子 (d. 500 BCE) is made to predict an event—the destruction of Ju 莒 by Chu 楚—that did not occur until 437. And so on.

Garden of Eloquence is far from being unique among early Chinese texts in its indifference to historical plausibility—anachronisms of the same or greater magnitude occur even in Records of the Historian (Shiji 史記). In fact, no Chinese repository of historical narrative of provenance later than Zuozhuan and Guoyu 國語 is free of them; rather, they become more and more frequent the later the text. What does this show? It shows that scholar-officials of the Han, no matter how learned—and some, like Liu Xiang, were enormously learned—did not have a concept of history that corresponds at all to what modern people mean by the term. For a man of the Han, history is what I or somebody else has heard. History, in other words, was not the name of a developmental process, but rather an agglomeration of discrete occurrences, each meaningful in relation to a constant set of values and concepts but not connected, except through random analogy, to each other. That this was true of Liu Xiang is clearly shown by another one of his projects: the compilation of a book in eleven scrolls (pian 片) based on a document he found in the imperial library in which the seventh-century-BCE Guan Zhong explains third-century-BCE theories concerning the five phases (wu xing 五行) and the operation of yin and yang to the tenth-century-BCE ruler King Wu of Zhou (Zhou Wu-wang 周武王). Although this may seem outrageous to a modern student of history, to expect a group of ancient people to entertain concepts that did not become current until nearly two millennia after their deaths would be to commit an anachronism even greater than the ones that afflict many stories in Garden of Eloquence. In fairness to Liu Xiang and the various scholar-officials who wrote the items he chose for inclusion in Garden of Eloquence, one must note that not all their impossibilities originated with them. In 8.20, Jie Zitui 介子推, an officer of Jin 晉 who was a famously high-principled follower of Prince Chong’er 重耳, appears impossibly as the prime minister of Chu. The Sichuan scholar Xiang Zonglu 向宗魯 (1895–1941), principal editor and annotator of Shuoyuan jiaozheng 說苑校證, shows through an analysis of parallel texts, however, that this mistake did not exist in the original text; it was introduced in the Tang by some unknown copyist.

Plainly, it was not the intent of Liu Xiang or any other Han compiler of books to achieve historical veracity—even if they had had the concept, they would have lacked the tools to pursue such a goal. Rather, his intent was to put together a resource book for rulers and officers: a vast compendium of examples useful to anyone seeking to improve his administrative procedures.

Garden of Eloquence is also particularly valuable to scholars of early China as a repository of items that originally appeared in other early collections mentioned in the Hanshu bibliographical chapter Yiwenzhi 藝文志 that are no longer extant, such as Shi Kuang 師曠, Yi yin 伊尹, Yin wenzi 尹文子, Wuzi 吳子, Zisizi 子思子, Hejian Xian-wang shu 河間獻王書, Yushi chunqiu 虞氏春秋, Zengzi 曾子, and Zhou chunqiu 周春秋.

Liu Xiang’s usual procedure was to draw the items in Garden of Eloquence from preexisting sources; most of the twenty books, however, begin with one or more items of an introductory nature that do not appear elsewhere and thus seem to have been written by Liu Xiang himself. This is the case with book 2, The Craft of an Officer; book 3, Building the Root; book 4, Establishing Integrity; book 6, Repaying Favors; book 7, Principles of Government; book 8, Honoring the Worthy; book 9, Upright Remonstrance; book 10, Diligent Care; book 11, Skill in Argument; book 12, The Performance of Missions; book 13, Judgment and Strategy; book 14, Impartiality; book 15, Military Affairs; book 17, Miscellaneous Discourses; and book 19, The Cultivation of Civil Order. Sometimes items consisting of unattributed philosophical reflections occur in the middle of books; these also appear to be by Liu Xiang. Five books lack a general introduction: book 1, The Way of a Ruler; book 5, Prizing Virtue; book 16, Aphorisms; book 18, Discrimination; and book 20, Returning to the Essence." The number of items in each book ranges from twenty-one in book 12 to fifty-seven in book 17. Book 16 is a special case, both because it consists of aphorisms rather than narratives and because the division between items there is in many cases uncertain. In this translation, the contents of this book are divided into eighty-one items.

Book 18, Discrimination, contains many highly detailed items on topics such as astrology, yinyang theory and quasi-geographical mystical categories, such as the Five Sacred Mountains. Many of these items exist today only in Garden of Eloquence. The items in book 19, The Cultivation of Civil Order, consist largely of expositions of lore pertaining to civil administration, such as the conduct of sacrifices, the organization of public ceremonies, the distribution of rewards, the maintenance of appropriate facial expressions, the relationship of raiment to official functions, and the like. A noteworthy feature of this work is the extensive attention it gives to the use of music as a means of achieving social order. These ideas are laid out in seven items, several very long, appearing near the end of book 19 (36 to 41 and 43). These items are here titled Huang Di Establishes the Rules of Music, On the Roles of the Different Musical Instruments, On the Role of Music in Inciting Men to Correct Behavior, On the Role of Music in Ordering Society, On the Emotive Origins and Effects of Music, On the Significance and Role of the Tones of the Scale, and On the Emotive Power of Music. No other early Chinese work contains such a complete discussion of the nature and uses of music, and the ideas expressed in these items have continued to have a deep and not always benign influence on government policies with regard to music down to the present day, not just in China but in other East Asian countries as well.

Although the majority of items in Garden of Eloquence celebrate values and stress concepts that can readily be characterized as Confucian, the work is by no means exclusively Confucian in nature. Item 15.3, for example, is a cautionary tale about a ruler who, though humane and just, goes down to destruction because he lacks military savvy. In purely Confucian stories, humanity and justice lead (with tiresome regularity) to strength and success, not doom and failure. Book 20 is devoted to items that stress the advantages of frugality and simplicity, and, in a number of these instances, this virtue is carried to un-Confucian extremes. In 20.20, for example, a son is praised for acceding to his father’s dying request that he be put into his coffin naked. As will be noted below, the entirety of book 20 was for a time thought to be lost, and it was recovered only subsequent to the first reconstitution of the text in the Song dynasty.

EDITIONS USED

The present translation is based primarily on Shuoyuan jiaozheng, edited and annotated by Xiang Zonglu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1987). This edition has notes that exhaustively discuss each and every one of the thousands of textual problems that afflict the work. These discussions include accounts of all suggestions and solutions offered by earlier scholars over the past several hundred years. Another edition of Garden of Eloquence that I consulted is Shuoyuan quanyi 說苑全議, translated and annotated by Wang Ying 王鉠 and Wang Tianhai 王天海 (Guiyang: Guizhou chubanshe, 1992). That edition includes a translation into modern Chinese and a set of notes that includes glosses on many words. In all textual matters it relies, very properly, on the Xiang Zonglu edition.

TEXTUAL HISTORY

Garden of Eloquence was transmitted exclusively through the production of manual copies for more than a thousand years until, in the early Song dynasty, no complete copy could be found. In the mid-Song the scholar Zeng Gong 曾鞏 (1019–1083) was able to reconstitute most of the first nineteen books from partial copies in the possession of acquaintances. Book 20 was later recovered from a text obtained from Korea. Zeng Gong’s edition (with book 19 split into two parts to make twenty books) is no longer extant. The earliest printed edition to survive into modern times appeared in 1126, the last year of the Northern Song; it had twentytwo columns of characters per page. This edition, however, has been largely unavailable to scholars, and its present whereabouts are unknown. Xu Jianwei 徐建委 in his Shuoyuan yanjiu 說苑研究 (2011), says that a copy used to exist in the Dalian Library (p. 46). Two later recensions, however, were directly based on this 1126 edition: one was a Yuan dynasty edition published in 1303, a copy of which resides in the Shanghai Library, and the second was a Ming dynasty hand copy of unknown provenance, which is preserved in the National Library of China and which has been photographically reproduced in the Sibu congkan collection. Xiang Zonglu observes in his preface that this version of the text, which he calls the Ming transcript edition (Ming chaoben 名抄本), has more correct readings than any other edition from the traditional period, a fact that can be observed in detail in his textual notes. Xiang also regularly refers in his notes to the Song edition, by which he means a Southern Song edition that appeared in the Xianheng 咸淳 reign period (1265–74) under the imprimatur of Zhenjiang Fuxue 鎮江府學. He also regularly refers to the Yuan edition mentioned above and to many others, including a Ming Chufu 楚府 edition, a Chengrong 程榮 edition, a Fan 范 edition, a Ju 局 edition, a Jingchang 經廠 edition, a Wang 王 edition, and a Japanese edition that he refers to as the Guan 關 edition, after the pen name of the editor, Guan Jia 關嘉.

Until recent times, all editions of the text were gravely afflicted with problems arising from the accumulation of errors made by copyists. That the text can now be read with a reasonable degree of ease is due to the painstaking work of many generations of Chinese textual scholars, who compared every item in the work with all the parallel texts they could locate. Among these scholars, a particularly great contribution was made by Lu Wenchao 盧文弨 (1717–1796), whose Shuoyuan jiaozheng 說苑 校正, completed in 1787, was collected along with more than a dozen other collated works in Baojingtang congshu 抱經堂叢書 (1782–97; reprint 1923). Another early figure who worked on the text was Sun Zhizu 孫志祖 of Hangzhou (1737–1801). Guan Jia, the Japanese editor mentioned above, includes many comments and emendations in his edition of Garden of Eloquence, titled Ryū Kyō Zeien sanchu 劉向說苑纂注, of 1794. Guan Jia in turn had frequent occasion to refer to the observations of two earlier Japanese scholars, Shibui Kotoku 澀井孝德 and Dazai Tokuo 太宰德夫. Other scholars who have done extensive work on the text include Yu Yue 俞樾 (1821–1907), whose Dushu yulu 讀書餘錄 has many suggested emendations; Sun Yirang 孫詒讓 (1848–1908), whose emendations appear in a work titled Zha yi 札迻; and Liu Shipei 劉師培 (1884–1919), whose work can be found in Liushi jiaobu 劉氏 斠補. Many general philological issues were also illuminated by Wang Niansun 王念孫 (1744–1832) in his Dushu zazhi 讀書雜誌, and his studies of individual works often deal with phrases that have analogues in Garden of Eloquence.

The work of all the above people was consolidated and greatly advanced by Xiang Zonglu, whose Shuoyuan jiaozheng edition is used for this translation. Xiang amassed many more sources of parallel texts than any previous scholar, and his systematic approach coupled with his immense powers of recall resulted in a stunningly fine piece of scholarship. His work on this text occupied him for ten years, from 1922 to 1931, during which time he held a position as a household tutor in Wuhan. Aside from different early editions of the text itself, encyclopedias and collectanea of early imperial times were a key factor in the work of collation. These works often preserved versions of the individual items in Garden of Eloquence that were free of errors that later crept into successive versions of Garden of Eloquence itself. Among the sources of parallel texts, Taiping yulan 太平御覽, (984 CE) proved to be particularly useful owing to its extreme compendiousness; in a great many instances this work contains not just one but several versions of particular items in Garden of Eloquence. Other important sources included four Tang dynasty works: Qunshu zhiyao 群書治要 (631 CE), compiled by Wei Zheng 魏徵; Yiwen leiju 藝文類聚 (624 CE), compiled by Ouyang Xun 歐陽詢 and others; Beitang shuchao 北堂書鈔 (c. 610 CE), compiled by Yu Shinan 虞世南 (558–638); Zhenguan zhengyao 貞觀政要 (c. 700 CE), compiled by Wu Jing 吳競 (670–749); and the Song dynasty work Shileifu 事类赋, compiled by Wu Shu 吴淑 (947–1002). Aside from such collectanea, parallel versions of items in pre-Qin and early Han texts such as Zuozhuan, Guoyu, Xunzi, Yanzi chunqiu, Lüshi chunqiu, Guanzi, Zhanguoce, Han Feizi 韓非子, Liji 禮記, Shangshu dazhuan 尚書大傳, Shiji, Kongzi jiayu 孔子家語, Han Shi waizhuan 韓詩外傳, Chunqiu fanlu 春 秋繁露, Xinxu 新序, Yantielun 鹽鐵論, and Huainanzi were also regularly used as a basis for emendation. The foregoing are just a few of the chief works consulted by the textual editors of Garden of Eloquence; references to many other books can be found in the textual notes that accompany the Chinese texts in this dual-language edition.

Xiang Zonglu is extraordinarily thorough in establishing his editorial points. He never abandons a suggestion until he has marshaled every possible shred of evidence to support it, and this thoroughness often causes his notes to have a value that greatly transcends their application to Garden of Eloquence itself. One could write a series of highly revisionist articles on the early history of China simply by making use of Xiang’s textual notes. An example can be found in his notes to 1.8 in which he marshals ample textual evidence demonstrating the fallaciousness of the commonly held idea that, during the minority of King Cheng of Zhou (Zhou Cheng-wang 周成王), his uncle the Duke of Zhou assumed only the functions and not the title of the Zhou king. His quotations clearly show that in Han and earlier times it was believed that he assumed the title as well as the role of king. Another place where Xiang shows his respect for evidence and independence of thought is in a comment on 5.2 that mentions the number of states (seventy-two) that Kongzi was alleged to have visited in the course of his travels. Xiang lists all of the early tabulations of that number, which varies some from text to text, giving the source for each. Having done this, he observes: "Although it is possible that Kongzi may have traveled and had audiences with different rulers, to say that he visited seventy states seems an exaggeration. If one adds up the number of specific places he is said to have visited or passed through in the Analects and other texts, the number comes to less than ten."

PROCEDURES OBSERVED IN CREATING THIS TRANSLATION

TEXT DIVISIONS

The division into items in this translation follows Xiang Zonglu’s Jiaozheng edition (Zhonghua shuju) except in book 16, which consists of aphorisms. There I adopt the divisions used in the Quanyi edition (Guizhou renmin chubanshe), which clusters many of the aphorisms into paragraphs. This arrangement, it seems to me, makes for easier and more interesting reading.

TITLES AND APPENDIXES

Though each of the twenty books has a title in the Chinese original text, the many items that compose these books do not. In this translation, however, I have created a title for each item to help the reader find his or her way around the text. I strove to put into each of these titles a brief indication of the nature of the item; Thus, book 1 begins with items that I title Musicmaster Kuang Discusses Rulership with Lord Ping of Jin, Yin Wen Discusses Rulership with King Xuan of Qi, King Cheng of Zhou Admonishes Bo Qin, and so on. A series of appendixes to this book provide indexes of place names, personal names, allusions, and topics and motifs that appear in the text

NOTES TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS

The notes to the translation provide basic information concerning individuals, place names and other proper names, allusions, and unusual expressions that appear in the text. Since dates referred to are nearly always BCE, BCE is generally omitted in the notes.

NOTES TO THE CHINESE TEXT

The notes to the Chinese text are essentially textual notes. These comprise annotations from Xiang Zonglu’s Jiaozheng edition, glosses of words and expressions from the Quanyi edition, and occasional comments of my own. The last textual note under each Chinese item provides an account of all parallel, variant, or related items that appear elsewhere in the extant written legacy. Unless otherwise noted, these lists of parallel texts are the work of Xiang Zonglu.

I identify all notes from the Jiaozheng edition by the name of the author of the note, either Xiang Zonglu or (occasionally, in the last three books) Qu Shouyuan 屈守元. Xiang had been dead for forty-six years when his annotated edition of Garden of Eloquence finally went to press in 1987. It was his friend Qu Shouyuan who oversaw the book’s publication. Xiang had completed a five-volume fair copy of his manuscript. Unfortunately, the last of these volumes was lost in the course of being moved from place to place during the tumultuous years of the war with Japan; Qu says it fell into a river. Qu still had Xiang’s rough copy of this volume to work from, so the flow of Xiang’s annotations continues without serious interruption in the last several books; Qu found it desirable, however, to add occasional notes of his own in this part of the work.

Xiang and Qu regularly refer to themselves and others by their courtesy names (Liu Xiang, for example is referred to as Zi Zheng 子政). I have replaced all courtesy names with the actual names of the people concerned. Also, in their citations of items and passages in other works, Xiang and Qu, like their scholarly predecessors, provide only the name or number of a major division within the text concerned, which makes it difficult to track down the passages concerned. These citations are regularly replaced here with more precise information. So, for example, a citation that appears in Xiang’s notes as Lüshi chunqiu, Chongyan, appears in this book as Lüshi chunqiu 18.2 (Chongyan); similarly, Zhuangzi, Zhile, appears as Zhuangzi, Waipian 11 (Zhile), and so on. In cases where I have been able to determine the section number of the item to which Xiang or some other annotator refers, I supply, in parentheses after the number, a pinyin transliteration of the title of the item but no characters. In cases where a section number is not available, I supply both transliteration and characters for the item title.

Xiang was much given to the use of partial titles for often cited works. When he refers to Zazhi or Shiji, for example, he expects the reader to know that he means Wang Niansun’s Dushu zazhi and Huangfu Mi’s Diwang shiji. In this book such partial titles are replaced, to the fullest extent possible, with full titles included in the bibliography together with names of authors or compilers who produced them. Included in Xiang’s notes are quotations from a wide array of notes by previous textual scholars, which he sometimes supports and sometimes refutes, usually on the basis of new information that escaped the attention of the earlier scholars. Xiang’s occasional mistakes in citing passages are noted in this book, just as Xiang noted mistakes by his predecessors. I identify notes drawn from the Quanyi edition by "SQ, whereas my own notes are identified by EH."

ALLUSIONS INDEX

Items in Garden of Eloquence often quote passages from other works. It sometimes happens that these quoted passages either do not appear or appear with diff ent wording in the transmitted versions of those works, so they are of particular concern to people interested in the evolution of texts. The allusions index is arranged by the titles of the works alluded to and provides a convenient means for checking on allusions that appear in the work.

PERSONAL NAME INDEX

The personal name index includes every named individual who appears in Garden of Eloquence. Personages who are not well known are briefly characterized: for example, Bi Xi 佛肸 (domestic officer of the Fan clan in Jin). Both in this and the three other indexes, locations in the text are given in terms of the book and item numbers in which the name or topic appears.

PLACE NAME INDEX

The place name index includes both names of large geographical entities (or states), such as Qi and Chu, and names of particular, often obscure, towns, rivers, and mountains. A brief description of the location is generally given. Many of the items in Garden of Eloquence concern Kongzi, who was a man of Lu, or refer to Yanzi, a man of Qi. In this index, however, I do not treat items concerning Kongzi as references to the state of Lu except in cases where the item in question says something specific about that state; the same principle is followed with regard to Yanzi in the citations under Qi. In a number of cases (Zhou, Qi, Chu, Qin, Lu), the citations under a state name are narrowed by era. Also, I have included a few names of dynasties, even though these entities are not strictly speaking places, under the assumption that readers might find it convenient to have, for example, a list of items concerning Han dynasty events.

TOPICS AND MOTIFS INDEX

The identification of topics and motifs is necessarily a subjective matter, so I make no pretense that this index is either authoritative or complete. I have, however, attempted in the index of topics and motifs to indicate some of the main themes in Garden of Eloquence and to provide an indication as well of the range of topics dealt with in the work. Perhaps, also, this index can serve the reader as a framework within which to add further notes and categories.

SPECIAL SPELLINGS

Wey In the period covered by Garden of Eloquence, frequent reference is made to two different states the names of which in modern Mandarin have come to be identical in sound and hence identical in pinyin spelling: Wei 衛 and Wei 魏. The first state was wedged between the more southerly vertical borders of Jin and Qi, and had been founded soon after the Zhou conquest of Shang; the second was farther west and came into being as the result of the division of Jin into three successor states—Wei, Han, and Zhao—in 451 BCE, a division that was formally recognized by the Zhou court in 403. In order to prevent confusion, the Jin successor state is represented throughout this book as Wey rather than Wei. The phonetic feature that in ancient times distinguished the name of this state from Wei actually had nothing to do with the final; the difference lay rather in the initial: it began with an ng before proceeding to a w glide, followed by the final vowel. This initial ng no longer exists in Mandarin but can still be heard in many Chinese dialects and in Sino-Vietnamese. In the last-named language, Wey is pronounced as Ngụy and Wei as Vệ.

Zhòu This work makes frequent reference to King Zhou (Zhou-wang 紂王), the last ruler of the Shang dynasty, a figure portrayed in legend as a spectacularly evil and inept ruler. This Zhou, if written without a tone mark in pinyin transliteration, is identical in appearance to the name of the dynasty that succeeded the Shang: the Zhou 周. To avoid confusion, the name of the evil king is written with a fourth tone diacritcal mark (Zhòu) throughout this translation, whereas the name of the dynasty is written with no mark.

Hán This work also makes frequent reference to a polity named Han (Han guo 韓國) that arose at the start of the Warring States period and endured throughout that period. The name of this state, if written without a tone mark in pinyin transliteration is identical in appearance to name of the dynasty that arose about twenty years after the end of the Warring States period: the Han 漢. Again, to avoid confusion, the name of the state appears with a second tone diacritical mark (Hán) throughout this translation, whereas the name of the dynasty appears without a mark.

STYLISTIC AND SYNTACTIC ISSUES

My aim throughout this translation has been to create reasonably natural-sounding English sentences that convey the meaning inherent in the Chinese sentences that they represent. Many adjustments are necessary to achieve this result. Classical Chinese is extremely concise. One cannot duplicate this conciseness in English, or for that matter in any modern language, including Chinese, without sounding impossibly affected. The English sentences of this translation therefore contain many words that are not literally there in the original sentences but that nevertheless express meanings that are in the original. Some scholars think that translators should put all such extra words in brackets. If the original sentence says, They then returned, for example, and the translated sentence says, They then returned to their states, adherents of this school believe that the expression to their states in the translation ought to be enclosed in brackets. This rule, if consistently applied, would mean that the reader would be stumbling across brackets in every other line. This would create a fussy effect that has no analogue in the original text. I therefore do not bracket any word that expresses a meaning inherent in the original. It is occasionally necessary, however, to add phrases that express something other than a meaning inherent in the original text—for example, to guard against possible misunderstanding. For such phrases I do use brackets.

Another difference between classical Chinese and modern English is that the former is extremely tolerant of and in fact thrives upon exactly repeated rhetorical patterns. English is less tolerant of such repetition. Classical Chinese wants to be rhetorically repetitive, whereas English wants to be rhetorically varied. In this translation I have therefore introduced some variety in certain patterns that, if replicated with an exactitude equal to the original, would start to sound mechanical in English.

Garden of Eloquence, for example, contains a great many items, amounting to perhaps 10 to 20 percent of the entire content, that begin in this fashion: Personage A, addressing personage B, said ‘xyz.’ In the original text, this pattern never varies. Item 1.2, for example, begins as follows: Qi Xuan-wang, addressing Yin Wen, said: ‘What are the affairs of a ruler like?’ 齊宣王謂尹文曰：「「人君之事何如？」. The rules of English do not forbid the use of this structure; however, English has many patterns, not just one pattern, that are used to convey such information; therefore, rigid adherence to a single pattern, if it occurs frequently, begins to sound unnatural in English. Thus, I found it expedient in the translation to represent the sentence just quoted as ‘Tell me about rulership,’ said King Xuan of Qi to Yin Wen. This seems to me more immediate and vivid as well as more idiomatic in English, though this pattern too could become obnoxious if repeated too often. To put the issue in more general terms, I think that, when one is engaged in translating language x into language y, it is in general a bad idea to make the syntax of language y replicate the syntax of language x; in other words, one should not use something that sounds unnatural in the second language as a representation of something that sounds natural in the first language.

Another instance of a repetitive pattern in the original involves the word shan 善. In some 10 to 20 percent of the items in Garden of Eloquence, rulers use this word as an exclamation when they have just listened to some particularly persuasive piece of rhetoric. The word itself might be interpreted as good or excellent. To represent this word by a single English word that does not vary throughout the text, however, produces an oppressively stiff and mechanical effect. I therefore represent Shan! with such expressions as Well said! or Well seen! or Well proposed! or Fine idea! depending on the general drift of the narrative.

NAMES IN PRE-QIN CHINA

It is customary, when using pinyin to write Chinese names, to observe certain conventions of capitalization and spacing that serve to demonstrate aspects of structure in the names concerned. In a name such as Wang Guobao, for example, Wang is capitalized because it is the surname, and Guobao is capitalized because it is the given name. The syllable bao is not capitalized and follows Guo without a break because it is the second element in a single name. This is eminently logical. Unfortunately, the names of pre-Qin personages (who form the bulk of the dramatis personae in Garden of Eloquence) are not in general amenable to these conventions. Lord Zhuang of the state of Zheng, for example, had an officer with a name consisting of three elements: Ying 穎, Kao 考, and Shu 叔, in that order. One’s first impulse is to apply the familiar conventions and write the name as either Ying Kaoshu, or Yingkao Shu. But which is right? There is in fact no rational basis for preferring either form, though one can think of hypotheses supporting one or the other. Ying occurs in the name because the person concerned was a border warden in a place called Ying. Kao can mean elder, so one might interpret the first two syllables as the Ying elder. That would support the spelling Yingkao. Shu (literally second-born), however, often appears as the final element in the names of people charged with administering cities—in that case the pattern is often Name-shu, so one might interpret the last two syllables as overseer Kao, which would support the spelling Kaoshu. Since it is not possible to make a firm decision with regard to these possibilities, the name of this individual and those of a great many others are represented in this translation with each syllable capitalized: Ying Kao Shu. This, I note in passing, is precisely the convention used in the present day by two East Asian peoples who also have Chinese-style names: the Koreans and the Vietnamese.

When a name ends in a suffix that clearly carries a meaning, such as gong, wang, or fu (father), I set it off with a hyphen.

RENDERINGS OF GONG

It has been customary since the days of James Legge to represent the gong 公 that occurs in the temple designations of territorial lords as duke. Gong does in fact mean duke in some contexts. It is perfectly proper to translate an expression such as Song-gong as the duke of Song just as it is proper to translate Qi-hou as the marquis of Qi, Zheng-bo as the count of Zheng, Chu-zi as the viscount of Chu," and so on. Most of the territorial lords of the Spring and Autumn era, however, were not dukes, even though the element gong appears honorifically in their temple designations. I therefore represent gong not as duke but as lord when the word appears in a temple designation. Qi Huan-gong, for example, is rendered as Lord Huan of Qi. In terms of feudal rank, Huan-gong was a marquis.

COURT RANKS

Zaixiang 宰相 is rendered as prime minister and lingyin 令尹 (the Chu equivalent of a zaixiang) as chief counselor. An attempt is made to distinguish between qing 卿 and daifu 大夫 by calling the former high ministers or ministers and the latter court officers or officers. Gongzi 公子 (sons of territorial lords) are called princes. Wangzi 王子 (sons of Zhou kings) are also called princes. Taizi 太子 (sons designated as future heirs to a throne) are called heirs apparent or heir-sons. Gongsun (grandsons of territorial rulers) and wangsun (grandsons of Zhou kings) are called by their original Chinese titles.

NAMES OF WOMEN

Names of noblewomen of the Spring and Autumn era follow a convention unique to that era: the surname comes last, and the element preceding the surname is not a true given name but an identifying sobriquet of some kind. Thus, the name Ai Jiang 哀姜 means the lady of the house of Jiang who came to an unfortunate end, and the name Bao Si 褒姒 means the lady of the house of Si who came from Bao city, and so on. In order to reflect this structure orthographically, such names are not hyphenated in this book, and both the first and second elements are capitalized. Women who are not members of the aristocracy almost never appear in this work, and, when they do, they are not named, so no problem of nomenclature arises.

DESIGNATIONS SUCH AS KONGZI AND YANZI

In names such as Kongzi, Yanzi, Jianzi, and Xiangzi, the concluding zi is an indication of high status. At first I entertained the idea of representing such names as Master Kong, Master Yan, and so on. It seemed to me, however, that this produced an effect of archness in English that did not correspond to any quality in the original text, so at length I decided simply to transliterate all such designations and to keep the zi connected with the preceding syllables without hyphens.

RENDERINGS OF JUNZI 君子

In classical Chinese the word junzi usually denotes a person of superior moral and intellectual attainment; in that sense, the junzi is regularly contrasted with the xiaoren 小人, or petty person, who is deficient both in judgment and in standards of behavior. Occasionally, however, junzi means only a person occupying a high or commanding position in society, and it is correspondingly possible for xiaoren to refer in such instances to a person who does not enjoy such status. Terms such as superior man and noble man have been used by others to represent junzi in the word’s usual sense; this translation, however, most often uses man of quality, as more fully embodying the content of the word, though occasionally man of discernment may appear instead of man of quality depending on whether the passage in question emphasizes the moral or the intellectual qualities of the person thus denoted. When a junzi appears in a text as judge or commentator on some affair, man of discernment sometimes seems more appropriate than man of quality. In cases where the word refers merely to social status, neither of the foregoing translations will do; one must then say something like a person in high position.

As seen here and in the paragraphs that follow, it is often necessary to use different words in different places to represent a single Chinese word, especially in cases where the word is highly culture bound and has no English equivalent. To deal with such situations by establishing a single all-purpose English equivalent is like trying to keep a zither in tune by gluing its pegs in place (an image that I here borrow from 8.32 in the present work).

RENDERINGS OF SHI 士

The meaning of shi evolved over time. Therefore, the way the word is represented in this translation depends in part on the era in which the narrative concerned is set. The oldest meaning of the word with which we need be concerned here was something like man-at-arms, that is, a rank-and-file member of the martially skilled aristocracy. In the statement shi wei zhi ji zhe si 士為知己者死, attributed to the late Spring and Autumn figure Bi Yu Rang, the word still means man-at-arms; thus, we have A man-at-arms dies on behalf of the one who knows [appreciates] him. When, several centuries later, Sima Qian 司馬遷 (ca. 145–86) used an almost identical sentence—shi wei zhi ji zhe yong 士 為知己者用—the word no longer meant man-at-arms but something like scholar-official or more generally gentleman; thus, we have A gentleman acts on behalf of the one who knows [appreciates] him. I have frequently represented shi in this translation as man-of-service, meaning a man whose background and attainments make him suitable for recruitment either as an officer at court or an officer in an army. It is sometimes tempting to translate shi as officer, but shi were usually not officers; they were instead aspirants to office. It is also tempting at times to translate shi as scholar, since shi were by definition well steeped in the lore proper to their social and political functions—but they were not scholars in the sense of people dedicated to the disinterested pursuit of knowledge; they were instead dedicated to the careers of their sponsors or dedicated to certain ideals of behavior. In other words, their knowledge, for all its thoroughness, was goal-oriented, not truth-oriented.

RENDERINGS OF SHI 史

Many of the figures who appear in the anecdotes collected this work are referred to as shi (a third-tone word, unlike the fourth-tone shi discussed above) and are sometimes further characterized as "shi of the right" (you shi 右史), "shi of the left" (zuo shi 左史), "shi of the exterior" (wai shi 外 史), or "shi of the interior (nei shi 內史). They appear sometimes as figures who make and keep written versions of court memoranda or utterances of the ruler and sometimes as people in charge of archives of such material. It is likely that the people who made the entries that make up the Annals (Chunqiu 春秋) were shi. Very often, however, shi appear in this work not as annalists or archivists, but as wise men who make predictions based on omens, celestial phenomena, or various pieces of arcane lore. There is no good English term for a court figure who served in all these different capacities. In general, I have used archivist or chief archivist except in cases where this results in a clumsy or mystifying sentence, in which case I use diviner or annalist. These figures are regularly referred to as "shi such-and-such" (e.g., shi Qiu). They appear in the name index with the name first and the title second: for example, Qiu, Archivist.

RENDERINGS OF REN 仁

Ren, which has no English equivalent, has been at the center of much difficulty in translation. It denotes an instinctive and quasi-magical ability to grasp the interiority of other people. It is the noun for the faculty of comprehension for which zhi 知 in the expression zhi ren 知人—to deeply grasp, comprehend, or appreciate another—is the verb. It was regarded as one of the classical virtues and as a necessary precondition for the exercise of yi 義, right or generous action (see below). Unfortunately, I have in general been able to think of nothing better to represent ren than empathy. I dislike empathy because it suggests something soft and fuzzy. Ren was not fuzzy; rather it was a clearly defined ability that not only lay at the basis of social relations but was seen as crucial to the survival of rulers and others in positions of authority.

RENDERINGS OF YI 義

Like the previous word, yi denotes one of the classical virtues and involves a cluster of concepts that are remarkably impervious to representation in English. Its most salient quality is its basis in action; it denotes a thing that cannot exist until