Text of Confucianism Part 02

SR No.: 007676
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: James Legge
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1882
Total Pages: 2405
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 43 MB

Page 424

CHAP. 7. APPENDIX III.
397 Chapter VII. 49. Was it not in the middle period of antiquity that the Yi began to flourish? Was not he who made it familiar with anxiety and calamity ?
50. Therefore (the roth diagram), Li, shows us the foundation of virtue; (the 15th), Hsien, its handle; (the 24th), Fa, its root; (the 32nd), Hăng, its solidity; (the 41st), Sun, its cultivation; (the 42nd), Yi, its abundance; (the 47th), Khwăn, its exercise of discrimination ; (the 48th), Zing, its field; and (the 57th), Sun, its regulation.
51. In Li we have the perfection of harmony; in Hsien, we have the giving honour to others,
line of centuries? I believe not. The ideas which it expresses are gratuitously and wantonly thrust into this text of the Yi. Khien' and 'Khwăn' are not spoken of thus. If the latter half of the paragraph be unintelligible, this interpretation of the former would make the whole disgusting.
In paragraph 46 the writer passes from the work of Fo-hsî to that of king Wăn and his son, and the composition of the written Yi is referred to 'a decaying age,'--the age, namely, of the tyrant Kâu. Then king Wăn and the duke of Kâu, it is said, deploring the degeneracy of their times and the enormities of the government, indicated, by their treatment of the ancient symbols, their sense of right and wrong, and the methods by which the prevailing evils might be rectified.
Paragraphs 47 and 48 follow and expand the meaning of 45. The editors of the imperial edition say that the former sentence of 47 is the sequel of 45, and the latter of 46, bringing us finally to the explanations and decisions of king Wăn, as the most important portion of the Yi. Ku Hsî, moreover, observes that throughout the chapter, as well as in the chapters that follow, there must be many characters wanting in the text, while there are many also that are doubtful. This is specially the case with 48. Where the order of the characters has been disarranged merely, correction is easy; but where characters are evidently missing, attempts to fill the lacunae are merely guess-work.
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