Hexagram 07, line 5

田有禽.利執言.無咎.長子帥師.弟子輿尸.貞凶.

Tian 田: ‘to hunt’.

You qin 有禽: ‘there is a catch’.

These first three characters probably deal with the royal hunt, a theme which is often mentioned in the oracle bone inscriptions, and in these inscriptions the phrase tian qin 田禽, ‘at the hunt there will be a catch’ is mentioned frequently. In his influential paper Rising from Blood-Stained Fields: Royal Hunting and State Formation in Shang Dynasty China, Magnus Fiskesjö talks in detail about the meaning and usage of these two characters: Continue reading

Hexagram 07, line 4

師左次.無咎.

Zuo 左: in its ordinary meaning ‘the left side’, but already on oracle bones used as a loan for zuo 佐, ‘to assist, to help’.  and you 佑, ‘to assist, to protect’. The 漢語大詞典 says, ‘用兵則居次方位’: ‘in military operations it is the second position’. When you station an army ‘at the left’ you do not want it to attack directly, you only want it to support and protect the attacking division.

Ci 次: to station troops (軍隊駐扎).

The army is stationed at the left (the assisting/protecting side).
No curse from the ancestors.

Hexagram 07, line 3

師或輿尸.凶.

Huo 或, ‘there is’. See also hexagram 1, line 4. The regular meanings of huo are ‘perhaps’ and ‘someone’. But in old texts it is often used with the meaning of you 又/有, ‘there is, to have’. That this is plausible is seen in the Chujian text of hexagram 58, line 1 and hexagram 17, line 1: the received text has huo while the Chujian text has you 又, a common loan for you 有, ‘there is’. Also, at the first line of hexagram 8 the Mangwangdui text says …冬來池, where the received text says …終來它. These examples show that reading huo 或 as you 有 is plausible and acceptable.

Yu 輿, ‘to carry by cart’. But also ‘many people’ (眾, 多). By extension ‘a cartload’:

『吾力足以舉百鈞』, 而不足以舉一羽; 『明足以察秋毫之末』, 而不見輿薪…
My strength is sufficient to lift three thousand catties, but it is not sufficient to lift one feather; my eyesight is sharp enough to examine the point of an autumn hair, but I do not see a waggon-load of firewood…

金重於羽者, 豈謂一鉤金與一輿羽之謂哉?
Gold is heavier than feathers; but does that saying have reference, on the one hand, to a single clasp of gold, and, on the other, to a waggon-load of feathers?
(Mengzi 孟子, tr. James Legge)

鼓之以道德,征之以仁義,輿尸、血刃,皆所不為也.
They urged people on with the Dao and De, and tamed them with ren and yi. Cartloads of corpses and bloodstained knives—these were not of their doing.
(Yuan and Qian 淵騫, tr. Jeffrey S. Bullock)

Shi 尸, ‘corpses, dead bodies’.

The army has cartloads of corpses. Inauspicious.

 

Hexagram 07, line 2

在師中.吉.無咎.王三錫命.

Ximing 錫命: Appointments granted by the king.

Here the king three times grants an appointment. In the Zhouli 周禮 there are nine appointments mentioned, the jiuming 九命, each giving greater awards:

[The jiuming 九命 are] an array of official ranks ascribed to ancient times and often revived by subsequent Chou dynasties, in which the 9th honor (i.e., rank 9) was highest and the first honor was lowest.
(C. Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles In Imperial China, p. 176)

(…) The nine appointments were 受職 to receive official duties, 受服 to receive uniform, 受位 to receive rank, 受器 to receive equipments, 賜則 to bestow regulations,賜官 to bestow official title, 賜國 to bestow fief, 作牧 to be shepherd, and 作伯 to be leader.
(David Y. Hu, Chinese-English Dictionary of Chinese Historical Terminology; p. 469)

 The translations that Hu provides for each appointment are somewhat simplistic, for instance zuomu 作牧 does not mean that you are just a shepherd, you were governor of a state and were allowed to go on punitive expeditions without the king’s consent – ‘to be shepherd’ is merely a metaphor for this task.

Amid the army. Auspicious. There is no blame from the ancestors. Three times the king awards an imperial appointment.

Hexagram 07, line 1

師出以律.否臧凶.

Shi 師: army, armed forces.

Chu 出: to go out, set forth

 律: statutes, regulations; pitch-pipes.

In the field of Yi translators it isn’t decided whether  should mean ‘law, regulations, statutes’ or whether it should have the meaning of ‘pitch-pipes’. Both options are plausible within the context of the line text. The choice between both meanings is also found in the study of  in oracle bone inscriptions. There is a sample of an inscription in which shi, ‘army’ is linked with  just as in line 1 of hexagram 7 (click image to enlarge): Continue reading