A few lines from the “Pan Geng”: Portraying a “good king” of the archaic era
EDN: FLGOOL
Abstract
The “Pan Geng” chapter of the “Book of Documents” is a unique example of an ancient Chinese text that portrays a king (Pan Geng) giving a speech to a large audience. With the oldest layers of the text probably dating back to the XI–VI cent. B. C., the language of the “Pan Geng” is in many instances abstruse, leading to multiple different interpretations of some of its passages. The hypothesis underlying my research is that in some cases, the interpreter’s choice may be affected by the need to portray Pan Geng as a “good king”, but there is a huge discrepancy between the interpreter’s “good” and the archaic Chinese aristocracy’s “good”. Through grammatical analysis and textual parallels I intend to provide an alternative reading for some of the passages, namely: “Let none of you dare to suppress anything that the small people say in remonstrance” > “Let none of you dare to admit what small people criticize”; “Toiling for your forefathers” > “Rewarding your forefathers”; “If the state is not good, it is because I, the One Man, commit mistakes and crimes” > “If the state is not good, it is because I, the One Man, have failed in applying the punishments” (the latter option, proposed by B. Karlgren, has not yet been accepted by Russian interpreters); “Do I overawe you? (No), by this I take care of and sustain you all” > “Do I not overawe you? [I should, for] by this I take care of and sustain you all”.
Keywords
ancient China,
Shang Shu,
“Book of Documents”,
old Chinese,
ancient Chinese texts,
Confucian classics
Supporting agencies: The article is a part of the RANEPA state assignment research programme.
About the Author
T. A. Safin
The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Timur Alfredovich Safin, Cand. Sci. (History), Senior Researcher, Center for Oriental Studies, School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Institute for Social Sciences
119571, Moscow, Prospekt Vernadskogo, 82
References
1. Cikoski, J. S. (1978). Three essays on classical Chinese grammar (one): An outline sketch of world-classes and sentence structure in classical Chinese. Computational Analyses of Asian & African Languages, 8, 17–152.
2. Dobson, W. A. C. H. (1962). Early archaic Chinese: A descriptive grammar. Univ. of Toronto Press.
3. Hulsewé, A. F. P. (1985). Remnants of Ch’in Law: An annotated translation of the Ch’in legal and administrative rules of the 3rd century B. C., discovered in Yün-meng Prefecture, Hu-pei Province, in 1975. Brill.
4. Karlgren, B. (1948). Glosses on the Book of Documents (2 Vols.). Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities.
5. Karlgren, B. (1950). The Book of Documents. Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 22, 1–81.
6. Maiorov, V. M. (Ed.) (2014). Chtimaia kniga: Drevnekitaiskie teksty i perevod “Shan Shu” i “Malogo predisloviia” (Shu Siui) [The revered book: Ancient Chinese texts and translation of the Shang Shu and the “Small Foreword” (Shu Xu)]. IDV RAN. (In Russian).
7. Nylan, M. (2001). The five “Confucian” classics. Yale Univ. Press.
8. Popova, G. S. (Ed.) (2022). Zapisi Drevnego Kitaia, Vol 1: Shu-tszin (“Kanon zapisei”) [Writings of the ancient China, Vol. 1: Shu-jing (the Canon of Writings)]. IDV RAN. (In Russian).
9. Pulleyblank, E. G. (1995). Outline of classical Chinese grammar. UBC Press.
10. Safin, T. A. (2022) Kul’t Neba v shanskikh gadatel’nykh nadpisiakh [The cult of Heaven in the Oracle Bone Inscriptions]. In I. V. Belaia (Ed.). Velikii smysl vrat v Sokrovennoe: Religii, filosofiia i kul’tura Kitaia: K 60-letiiu S.V. Filonova, Vol. 1. Drevniaia religiia, konfutsianstvo, buddizm (pp. 327–349). IV RAN. (In Russian).
11. Schuessler, A. (2007). ABC etymological dictionary of Old Chinese. Univ. of Hawai’i Press.
12. Starostin, S. A. (1989). Rekonstruktsiia drevnekitaiskoi fonologicheskoi sistemy [The reconstruction of the ancient Chinese phonological system]. Nauka. (In Russian).
13. Starostin, S. A. (2005). Zametki o drevnekitaiskom iazyke [Notes on the Old Chinese]. In S. A. Starostin. Trudy po iazykoznaniiu (pp. 499–528). Iazyki slavianskikh kul’tur. (In Russian).
14. [Sturgeon, D.] (2006). Chinese Text Project. https://ctext.org.
15. Sturgeon, D. (2021, Advance Access publ. 2019). Chinese Text Project: A dynamic digital library of premodern Chinese. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 36(Suppl. 1), i101– i112. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqz046.
16. Vogelsang, K. (2021). Introduction to classical Chinese. Oxford Univ. Press.
17. Wang, Xianqian (Ed.) (1994). Xun zi ji jie [Xun-zi collected commentaries]. Shandong you yi shu she. (In Chinese).
18. Yu, Xingwu (2009). Shuang Jianchi Shang Shu xin zheng; Shuang Jianchi Shi Jing xin zheng; Shuang Jianchi Yi Jing xin zheng [The new evidence for the Shang Shu by Shuang Jianchi; The new evidence for the Shi Jing by Shuang Jianchi; The new evidence for Yi Jing by Shuang Jianchi]. Zhonghua shuju. (In Chinese).
19. Zhong, Weike (2016). Gudai hanyu zidian. Quan xin bian [Ancient Chinese characters dictionary. New edition]. Sichuan cishu chubanshe. (In Chinese).
Review
For citations:
Safin T.A. A few lines from the “Pan Geng”: Portraying a “good king” of the archaic era. Shagi / Steps. 2025;11(3):63-83. (In Russ.) EDN: FLGOOL
Views:
13
Email this article 