Category Archives: Translation notes

利永貞.

Yong zhen 永貞: long-term (長久) divination:

戊寅卜貞我永.
Crack-making on day 15,  divines for my long-term prognosis.
(Heji 合集 248)

Several oracle bone inscriptions end with a character or phrase denoting the auspiciousness of the received oracle, like ji 吉 or da ji 大吉 (see for examples Heji 合集 27013, 27020, 27041, 27973, 28142, 28663). Sometimes we find the character yong 永 as such an end note, probably denoting an auspicious long-term divination (Heji 合集 6108 臼, 6527 臼, 6855 反, 10199 反, 17555 臼, 21381).

Favourable long-term divination.

大君有命開國承家.小人勿用.

Dajun 大君: ‘great ruler’, respectful title for the king:

大君若不棄書之力… (…)  惟大君命焉.
O great ruler, if you have not forgotten the zealous duty of Shu… (…) It is for you, O great ruler, to issue your command.”
(Zuo Zhuan 左傳, tr. James Legge, p. 491)

湯及太甲、祖乙、武丁，天下之大君.
Tang, as well as Tai Jia, Zu Yi and Wu Ding were the great rulers below heaven.
(Kongcongzi 孔叢子)

Compare with a similar sentence in Yanzi Chunqiu 晏子春秋:

夫汤、太甲、武丁、祖乙，天下之盛君也.
Now Tang, Tai Jia, Wu Ding and Zu Yi were the grand rulers below heaven.

You ming 有命: receive an order or appointment, often as a reference to tianming 天命, a mandate of Heaven to the (self-titled) ruler, but also used in a more general sense, ‘to receive an order (from the king)’.

Kaiguo 開國: establish a feudal state (建立諸侯國). The Shanghai Museum manuscript and the Mawangdui manuscript have qi 啓 for kai 開. The Shanghai Museum manuscript has bang 邦 for guo 國:

For qi bang 啟邦, “to open the country,” R (=the received text HM) reads kai guo 開國, kai 開 replacing qi 啟 to avoid a Han-dynasty taboo on the name of Liu Qi 劉啟, Emperor Jing 景 (r. 156-141 B.C.), and guo 國 replacing bang 邦 to avoid a taboo on the name of Liu Bang 劉邦, Emperor Gaozu 高祖 (r. 202-195 B.C.). M (= Mawangdui manuscript HM) reads qi guo 啟國, observing the taboo on the name of Liu Bang, but not on that of Liu Qi, while F (= Fuyang manuscript) reads as does the Shanghai Museum manuscript.
– Edward L. Shaughnessy, Unearthing the Changes, p. 78

The phrase qi bang 啟邦 is also found in a bronze inscription, where it is read as ‘to expand the country’ (金文常用字典, p. 361; see image in 殷周金文集成 15.9734).

Cheng 承:  continue a heritage (秉承). The Shanghai Museum Manuscript has cheng 丞, a common loan for 承.

Jia 家: ‘family’, but might also refer to the nation or country.

Xiao ren 小人: people of lower standard – commoners, those that are ruled instead of the rulers, those with narrow minds & views.

The great ruler received the order to expand the country and continue the nation he inherited. People of lower standard should not be used (for this).

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 →

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.

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 …冬來或池, where the received text says …終來有它. 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.