1. [In the third month, when the moon began to wane, the duke of Chow commenced the foundations and proceeded to build the new great city at L? of the eastern States. The people from every quarter assembled in great harmony. From the How, Teen,Nan, Ts'ae, and Wei domains, the various officers stimulated this harmony of the people, and introduced them to the business there was for Chow. The duke of Chow encouraged all to diligence, and made a great announcement about the performance of the words.]
THE NAME OF THE BOOK.—康誥, 'The Announcement to the prince of K'ang.' Of the ten sons of king Wǎn, the ninth was called Fung (封),generally spoken of as K'ang Shuh (康叔). According to the analogy of the titles of the other brothers,—Kwan Shuh, Ts'ae Shuh, &c., we must conclude that K'ang was the name of Fung's appanage, somewhere within the imperial domain. Ma Yung and Wang Suh expressly affirm this. The only ancient scholar who expressed a different opinion was K'ang-shing, who thought that K'ang was the honorary posthumous title of Fung (康為號謚). Be this as it may, the Book is the Charge addressed to K'ang, or to the prince of K'ang,on his appointment to the principality of Wei (命為衛侯), the chief city of which was Chaou-ko, which had been the capital of Show. Wei extended westward from the pres. sub. dep. of K'ae (開州), dep. of Ta-ming in Chih-le, to the borders of the pres. depp. of Wei-hwuy and Hwae-k'ing, in Ho-nan.
That the Book should be called an 'Announcement,'and not a 'Charge' (like the preceding), has occasioned various doubts about it,—and with reason. The title is no doubt taken from the occurrence of the word announcement in the last clause of what stands as the first paragraph (乃洪大誥治); but it will be seen immediately that there are strong grounds for believing that that paragraph is out of its place, and should be removed to that beginning of Bk. XIII., 'The Announcement concerning Lǒ.'
Wang Pih observes that the Book might very well be named 康叔之命, or 孟侯之命 (from the occurrence of 孟侯, in the 2d par.) Its name, however, is 康誥, and that has the sanction of Mencius, who makes express reference to it, in Bk. V., Pt. II. iv., 4. We have it even so designated thrice in 'The Great Learning:'—Comm. i., 1; ii., 2; ix., 2. This carries up very nearly to Confucius himself. If we affirm, as I think we must do, the opinion of the scholars of Sung, that the lst paragraph does not belong to this Book but to Bk. XIII, we must say what they have not done,—what they would not have ventured to say, even if they had seen to what their argument would lead,—that the great sage here made a mistake in coupling and arranging the tablets of the Shoo.
The Book is found in both the texts.
THE DATE OF THE ANNOUNCEMENT; AND ITS AUTHOR. The one of these points depends very much upon the other. The prefatory note says:—'King Ching with the role of the remnant of Yin. Withreference to this, there were made "the Announcement to K'ang", "The Announcement about Wine," and "The Good Materials". According to this account, then, the appointment of the prince of K'ang, in connection with which this Charge was delivered to him, was made by king Ching, or rather by the duke of Chow, acting in the king's name. And it was not till the time of the Sung dynasty that this view was called in question. Sze-ma Ts'een repeatedly affirms it. He says:—'Tan, the duke of Chow, having received the commands of king Ching, attacked and slew Woo-kǎng, and then divided the territory of Yin into two parts, appointing the viscount of Wei to one of them, over the principality of Sung, and the prince of K'ang to the other, over Wei.' (周公旦承成王命, 伐誅武庚, 分殷地為二, 一封微子啟于宋一, 封康叔于微. See Maou K'e-ling,尚書廣聽錄; and also the 史記, 衛康叔世家, and 宋微the 子世家左傳). Moreimortantstillisthetestimonivenin, unde r thpe 4th yea r o f d uke Ting (定公四年y g;— B.C. 505), where it is said that after king Woo had overthrown the dynasty of Shang, king Ching settled the empire by means of the regent, the duke of Chow, and that the duke appointed his brother the prince of K'ang over seven of the clans of the domain of Yin,with his seat of government in its capital (封於殷墟).
This view, I have said, was current and uncontradicted for many centuries. Under the dynasty of Sung, Soo Tung-po was the first to throw out the idea that the first paragraph had erroneously found its way into this Book from among the tablets of the'Announcement about Lǒ'. About the same time, Woo Yih (吳棫; he is also called 才老) and other scholars came to the conclusion that the speaker in the Book was king Woo, and not the duke of Chow. Choo He adopted their views, and was followed by his disciple Ts'ae Chin, who sets forth the grounds of them in the following way:—
First, the prince of K'ang was king Ching's uncle (叔父), and could not be called by him 'younger brother',as is the case in the par. 1. To the reply to this that the duke of Chow was really the speaker, and might so address Fung, he responds that the duke of Chow prefaced all the Charge with 'The king says,' and the words therefore should only be those appropriate to the lips of the king.
Second, if he Charge were given by the duke of Chow, how do we account for the fact that while there are many references in the Book to king Wǎn, there is not one to king Woo? And the same question may be asked with reference to the two Books which follow.The words of par. 4,—寡兄朂, have indeed been explained of king Woo, the duke of Chow so speaking of him. But if we suppose that Woo was the speaker,he might very well so describe himself. On the supposition that the duke of Chow was the speaker,the language is contrary to all rule and propriety.
Third, it has been urged that at the time of the overthrow of Shang, Fung was still young, and unfit to be entrusted with an important govt.; and hence that his appointment took place subsequently, under king Ching. But when king Woo obtained the empire, he was about 90 years old. The ten sons of king Wǎn, so often referred to, were all by the same mother; Woo was the second of them:—could there be one among them, when Woo was ninety, too young to be entrusted with an important administration? This point is too clear to need to be fortified by other considerations which Ts'ae has adduced.
It cannot be denied that there is much force in the two first of these points. We must assent also to Ts'ae's view of the age of the prince of K'ang. He was no doubt old enough to have received an appointment on the conquest of Shang. But other reasons might have prevented his being invested with a principality which would take him from the imperial court. One such reason, quite sufficient, is suggested in the passage of the 左傳 which has been referred to. It is there said,that, while the duke of Chow was prime minister under the new dynasty, the prince of K'ang was minister of Crime;—and this agrees with the prominent place which the subject of punishments occupies in our Book. The two other points, however, remain;—the general style of the Announcement, and particular expressions in it. For many years, when reading the Shoo without thinking of such critical matters as are now in hand, and without regard to commentator, I got the impression that the speaker in the text must be king Woo; —see the note in 'The Great Learning,'Comm., Ch. i.
2. "The king speaks to this effect:—"Head of the princes, my younger brother, little one, Fung."
3. It was your greatly distinguished father, the king W?n, who was able to illustrate his virtue and be careful in the use of punishments.
4. He did not dare to show any contempt to the widower and widows. He employed the employable,and revered the reverend; he was terrible to those who needed to be awed:—so getting distinction among the people. It was thus he laid the first beginning of thesway of our small portion of the Empire, and the one or two neighbouring countries were brought under his improving influence, until throughout our western regions all placed in him their reliance.
But I now give in my adhesion to the older view. The authority of the 左傳, as old as the time of Confucius,and of the Preface, is not to be set aside. The 王若曰 at the beginning, and the 王若 throughout the paragraphs,assimilate the Book closely to the others in which the duke of Chow is undoubtedly the speaker. It will be seen in the notes that some explanation can be given of the most difficult expressions; and it is hardly competent for us to try the language of a man like the duke of Chow by our ideas of the way in which are ought to have spoken. Maou applies here, with considerable force, the saying of Mencius, that 'it is not every ordinary man who can understand the conduct of superior men.' (君子所為, 眾人不識).
It still remains to make a remark or two on THE FIRST PARAGRAPH. It speaks of the bounding and completion of the city of Lǒ, shieh was one of the later labours of the duke of Chow, and is commonly referred to the 7th car of king Ching. As the scholars of Sung wished to make out that the Charge to the prince of K'ang was delivered by king Woo, it was necessary they should remove from it this paragraph;—as was done by Soo Tung-po in the manner which I have related above. But while disssenting from their view of the early origin of the Charge, and not hampered therefore in that respect by the par., I must still maintain the correctness of Shih's decision regarding it.
First, it is appropriate at the commencement of the 'Announcement concerning Lǒ;' while there it is altogether out of place. What had the building of Lǒ to do with the investiture of Fung with the principality of Wei? In the body of the Charge, moreover, there is not a word having reference to Lǒ, or the reasons which had led the duke of Chow to project the establishment of that new city. Second, the appointment of Fung was to Wei, and must have been comtemporaneous with the appointment of the viscount of Wei to the government of Sung. It must have taken place in the 3d or 4th year of king Ching, some years before the building of Lǒ.
Gan-kwǒ felt these difficulties, and tried to meet them by supposing that some other noble or nobles had been appointed to rule 'the remnant of Yin,' during the years that elapsed between the suppression of Woo-kǎng's rebellion and the building of Lǒ; and that the result having proved unsatisfactory, the prince of K'ang was then called to the task. This supposition is without any historical ground of support; and Lin Che-k'e prefers the view of a scholar Wang, (王博士),who supposed that Fung had been appointed to Wei immediately after the suppression of the rebellion, but that the Charge in this Book was not given to him till the time when Lǒ was built. But this solution is to the full as unsatisfactory as that of Gan-kwǒ. The knot cannot be loosed, it seems to me;—why should we hesitate to cut it, by removing the first par. from this Bk. to the 13th? We have seen, indeed, that but for the occurrence of the word 'announcement' in this par.,the Book would hardly have been called by its present name; and yet that name was current in the time of Confucius. The sage himself perhaps misplaced the paragraph, or more probably left it, as he found it, in the wrong place. A Chinese critic would not allow this;—a foreign student may say it, when the weight of evidence seems to require him to do.
CONTENTS. The key-note of the whole Book is in the clause 明德慎罰,—'the illustration of virtue and the careful use of punishments,' in the 3d paragraph. It has been divided into five chapters. The first three parr. (not including par. 1) celebrate the exhibition of those two things, which was given by king Wǎn, whereby he laid the foundations of the imperial sway of his House, and afforded an example for all his descendants. Parr. 5—7 inculcate on Fung how he should illustrate his virtue, as the basis of his good govt. of the people intrusted to him. Parr. 8—19, inculcate on him how he should be careful in the use of punishments, and set forth the happy effects that would ensue from his being so. Parr. 20—22 insist on the influence of virtue, as being superior in govt. to that of punishments, and how punishments should all be regulated by the ruler's virtue. The last chapter, parr. 23, 24, winds the subject up with a reference to the uncertainty of the appointments of Heaven, and their dependence for permanence on the discharge of the duties they require from those, on whom they have lighted.
P. 1. See on the 'Announcement concerning Lǒ.
Ch. I. Pp. 2—4. THE DUKE OF CHOW, ADDRESSING FUNG AS HIS YOUNGER BROTHER, SETS FORTH TO HIM THE ADMIRABLE QUALITIES OF THEIR FATHER h stt王若曰,—seehehook.fWAN.217Btteonparo..The 'king' is king Ching. 孟=長, 'the eldest', 'the first'. It is here= 'chief'; and 孟侯=諸侯之長, 'Head of the princes'. Acc. To the Le Ke, Bk. 王制, Pt. ii., p. 2, every 州 or province of the empire, embracing 210 國or States, was under the authority of a chief or 伯. We may conclude therefore that Fung had been invested with that dignity. Fuh-shang has said, indeed, that the son of the emperor when 18 years old, was styled孟侯 (天子之子, 年十八, 稱孟侯); and K'ang-shing supposes that it is king Ching who is thus addressedin the text. This is one of the extravagances which we are surprised to find men like K?ang Shang and Wang Ming-shing adopting and defending at the present day. 朕其弟=朕之弟. King Woo might thus have addressed Fung; king Ching could not thus address him. We must believe that, while the duke of Chow spoke as the representative of the young emperor, his nephew, he addressed Fung from the stand-point of his own relation to him. 小子, 封,—小子 is often used in the Shoo by emperors, whether old or young, in mock humility, as a depreciatory designation of themselves. In the 'Great Announcement', p. 7, we found it interpreted of the princes of States. Here it is spoken to Fung and not by him; and we must take it as the language of kindly, brotherly feeling. Fung was either younger than either King Woo, or the duke of Chow; but we cannot suppose that ha was under 70 when he was appointed to Wei. 3. —明德慎罰,these words form the text of the whole Charge. Ts'ae, in illustration of them, quotes from the 左傳, 成二年:—明德慎罰, 文王所以造周也, 明德, 務崇之謂也, 慎罰, 務去之謂. With 克明德 we may compare the 克明俊德, Canon of Yaou, p.2. The whole tenor of this Book, however, makes it more natural to understandthe 德 here of king Wǎn's own virtue as seen in his administration of government. 4. 鰥寡,—see 'The Great Announcement', p. 7; et al. 不敢侮鰥寡=the 不虐無告, 'Counsels of Yu', p. 3. 庸=用, 'to employ'. 祗=敬, 'to reverence'. 庸庸, 祗祗, 威威=用其所當用, 敬其所當敬, 威其所當威. 顯民 is a consequence flowing from the virtues just described,=故德著於民; andall that follows, down to 時敘, sets forth the further results of Wǎn's conduct thus acknowledged by the people. 肇造我區夏=始造我區域於中夏. 區者小室之名,'區 is the name of a small house.' Here it is employed to denote the original seat of the House of Chow, asbut a small territory in the great empire. 惟時怙冒,—the old interpreters put a stop at 怙, and read 冒 along with the clause that follows. I have followed Ts'ae in joining 冒 with 怙. He says:—罄西土之人, 怙之如父,冒之如天, 'the people of all the west relied on him as a father, and looked up to him as to Heaven'. I think the rhythm of the clauses is thus preserved better, and there is no more difficulty in interpreting 冒 than there is if we join it to 聞. It is used for 'a covering for the head'; and generally as= 'to cover'. W?n's influence was like the gracious overshadowing of the firmament.聞于上帝,—we must understand the virtue or the fame of W?n as the subject of the verb 聞. 帝休,— 'God approved'. The simple 帝 takes the place of 上帝; and both those names are immediately exchanged for the vague designation of 'Heaven'.
The fame of him ascended up to the High God, and God approved. Heaven gave a great charge to king W?n, to extermine the great dynasty of Yin, and receive its great appointment, so that the various States belonging to it and their peoples were brought to an orderly condition. Then your unworthy elder brother exerted himself;—and so it is that you, Fung, the little one, are here in this eastern region.' "
5. "The king says, 'Oh! Fung, bear these things in mind.
殪=滅, 'to exterminate'. 戎=大, 'great'. 厥邦厥民惟時敘=萬邦萬民, 各得其理, 莫不時敘. It is an exaggeration to speak of W?n's influence as having thus extendedover all the empire; but we cannot find much fault with it in the circumstances. —乃寡兄勖,those who understand the speaker to be king Woo find no difficulty in his thus speaking of himself as 寡德之兄,'your brother of slender virtue'. See the use of 寡人 as a designation of themselves by the princes of States in Mencius, I., Pt. I., iii., 1; et al. The language has been a stumbling block, however, to those who maintain that it is employed of king Woo and not by him. Gan-kw? made 寡兄 to= 寡有之兄, 'our brother whose match is rarely to be found'. But this is a very unlikely expansion of the phrase, and devised to get over the difficulty so strongly felt by a Chinese. I do not see any serious obstacle to our understanding it as in the translation. Why might not the duke of Chow, once at least in his life, speak thus of one brother to another? He had taken himself 'a great part' in all the exploits of Woo; to speak of him was much the same as to speak of himself. We like him all the better for eschewing the fiattering tongue. 在茲東土=得以享爵位, 在此東方.Wei was not only east from Ching's capital, but it was the eastern part of the territory of which Woo-k?ng had been permitted to retain the sway.
Ch. II. Pp. 5—7. HOW THE PRINCE OF K'ANG SHOULD CULTIVATE HIS VIRTUE, AND MANIFEST IT IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF HIS GOVERNMENT. 5. Fung should follow the example of king W?n; gather up lessons from the former kings and wise men of Yin; and from the sage monarchs of remote antiquity. 今民將在祗遹乃文考, 紹聞衣德言,—it will be seen, from the translation, that I understand a 治 before 民, by which 民 is governed. This is after the example of Gau-kw?, Lin Che-k'e, Ts'ae, and others. Then, 遹=述, 'to transmit'; 衣=服, 'to put on',= 'to carry into practice',—as in 'The Charge to Yuě', Pt. ii. p. 12,說乃言惟服. The 'Daily Explanation' has:—今汝治民,將敬述文考之緒, 務取所聞之德言, 繼紹而服行之, 如衣之被身, 遵循勿替, 可也.
Now your management of the people will depend on your reverently following your father W?n;—do you carry out his virtuous words which you have heard, and clothe yourself with them. Moreover,where you go, seek out extensively among the traces of the former wise kings of Yin what you may use in protecting and regulating their people. Again, you must more remotely study the old accomplished men of Shang, that you may establish your heart, and know how to instruct the people. Further still, you must seek out besides what is to be learned of the wise kings of antiquity, and employ it in the tranquillizing and protecting of the people. Finally, enlarge yourthoughts to the comprehension of all Heavenly principles, and virtue will be richly displayed in your person, so that you will not render nugatory the king's charge.' "
K?ang Shing takes 民 in the nominative, and suppose that 在 is a verb=視, 'to regard', 'to look at';—compare its use in the 'Canon of Shun', p. 5. He also takes衣 as=殷, the name of the dynasty. In this way he makes the whole=今民將視汝之敬述乃文考, 紹文考所聞殷之德言, 汝當以民為念. This view is certainly no improvement on the other. 往敷至乂民,—往=之國, 'when you go to your State'; 敷求=廣求, 'seek out extensively'.
汝丕至知訓,—耉成人, comp. in the 'Viscount of Wei', p.5, 咈其耉長, 舊有位之人. The course of thought in the paragraph, however, leads us to think of the old accomplished men of a former time, such as E Yin and Foo Yuě, by whom the best monarchs of the Shang dynasty had been directed. 惟 is used as a verb,=思, 'to think of' 'to study' ,.宅心=處心, 'to settle your heart',—to bring it to its proper resting place. 知訓=知所以訓民,—'know how to instruct the people'.
別求至保民,—Fung is here sent to the earliest sages and monarchs of the empire,—Yaou, Shun, and Yu. 別求聞由,—'you must elsewhere enquire, that you may learn from and follow'. 由=行. 弘于天, 云云,—it is not easy to say what is the meaning of 弘于天. Lin Che-k'e says:—'To the other injunctions is still subjoined this 弘于天. Now 弘 means to widen and enlarge. The critic S?ě says, "Every man has his heavenly nature, which is in him as a fire that has just been kindled, or a spring which is just issuing forth. What is required is the widening and enlarging of it." This explanation is correct. Step by step the prince of K'ang is carried on to take his rule and pattern from Heaven, after which there is nothing to be
added.' I suppose this is the correct view. 'Heaven' is used as the comprehensive designation of all true right principles. The translation has taken its form from the words of Woo Ch'ing,—又當擴充其德一, 與天為, 若德足乎已, 則王之命汝者, 永不廢矣.