Lúnyǔ (zhèngwén) 論語(正文)
The Analects — base text
recording the sayings of 孔丘 (Kǒng Qiū / Confucius, 551–479 BCE)
About the work
The bare canonical text of the Lúnyǔ in 20 piān — Xué ér 學而, Wèi zhèng 為政, Bā yì 八佾, Lǐ rén 里仁, Gōngyě Cháng 公冶長, Yōng yě 雍也, Shù ér 述而, Tàibó 泰伯, Zǐhǎn 子罕, Xiāng dǎng 鄉黨, Xiānjìn 先進, Yányuān 顏淵, Zǐlù 子路, Xiànwèn 憲問, Wèi Línggōng 衛靈公, Jìshì 季氏, Yáng huò 陽貨, Wēizǐ 微子, Zǐzhāng 子張, Yáo yuē 堯曰. The Kanripo digital text follows the CHANT (Chinese ANcient Texts, CUHK) collation of the Ruǎn Yuán 阮元 1816 (Jiāqìng 21) Nánchāngfǔxué cutting of the Lúnyǔ zhùshū, with its own collation against the standard early-printed witnesses.
Abstract
The Lúnyǔ is a posthumous compilation by Confucius’s disciples and (more probably) grand-disciples, recording the Master’s sayings and dialogues with rulers, ministers, and members of his own circle (Yán Huí 顏回, Zǐlù 子路, Zǐgòng 子貢, Zēngzǐ 曾參, Yǒu Ruò 有若, Zǐxià 子夏, Zǐzhāng 子張, etc.). The 20-piān received text descends from the Lǔ 魯 recension of Zhāng Yú 張禹 (“Zhānghóu lùn” 張侯論), prepared in the late Western Hàn by collation of three earlier branches: the Lǔ Lúnyǔ 魯論語 (20 piān), the Qí Lúnyǔ 齊論語 (22 piān, with the additional Wèn wáng 問王 and Zhī dào 知道), and the Gǔ Lúnyǔ 古文論語 (21 piān, recovered from the wall of Confucius’s family residence under Lǔ Gōng wáng 魯恭王) — all this set out in Liú Xiàng’s 劉向 prefatory remarks preserved at the head of the SBCK Lúnyǔ jíjiě (KR1h0005).
The dating of composition is debated. The traditional Hàn position (followed in the Sìkù tíyào tradition) treats the Lúnyǔ as essentially complete by the early Warring States. Modern philological work — notably E. Bruce Brooks and A. Taeko Brooks, The Original Analects (Columbia, 1998) — argues for a layered composition stretching from ca. 479 BCE down to ca. 250 BCE, with the inner books (3, 4, 6, 7, 13–14) formed earliest and the outer books (16, 18, 19, 20) latest. The notBefore / notAfter fields here bracket this layered window. Whatever the details, the text was largely fixed by the early Hàn and has been the central document of Confucian self-understanding ever since.
The Lúnyǔ was not in the Hàn-period jīng curriculum (the Wǔjīng canon excluded it), being instead one of the Liùyì 六藝 supplementary primers; it was elevated to jīng status in the Northern Sòng (in the 1071 curriculum reforms of Wáng Ānshí), and Zhū Xī’s elevation of it to the Sì shū (with the Mèngzǐ, Dàxué and Zhōngyōng) — see Wilkinson §28.4.4 — fixed it at the centre of the imperial-examination curriculum from 1313 to 1905. The Kanripo digital base of this entry — the bare zhèngwén of the Ruǎn Yuán 1816 Lúnyǔ zhùshū reprint, mediated through the CHANT collation — is the de-facto standard scholarly text.
Translations and research
The Lúnyǔ has been translated into all major European languages many times. Standard English: James Legge, The Chinese Classics I (1861, rev. 1893); Arthur Waley, The Analects of Confucius (Allen & Unwin, 1938; Penguin repr.); D. C. Lau, The Analects (Penguin, 1979); Edward Slingerland, Confucius: Analects, with Selections from Traditional Commentaries (Hackett, 2003); Burton Watson, The Analects of Confucius (Columbia, 2007); Annping Chin, The Analects (Penguin, 2014); Brooks & Brooks, The Original Analects (Columbia, 1998), with their stratigraphic hypothesis. Modern Chinese punctuated edition: Yáng Bójùn 楊伯峻, Lúnyǔ yìzhù 論語譯注 (Zhōnghuá, 1958, rev. 1980); Liú Bǎonán 劉寶楠, Lúnyǔ zhèngyì 論語正義 (Zhōnghuá, 1990) — the standard Qing critical commentary, replacing the medieval zhèngyì of KR1h0007. On Sòng and Yuán reception, Daniel K. Gardner, Zhu Xi’s Reading of the Analects (Columbia, 2003).
Other points of interest
Of a Confucian tradition five centuries deep, only this text and the Mèngzǐ survive as direct disciple-attestations of teaching dialogue: the Dàxué and Zhōngyōng, by contrast, are short topical essays from within the Lǐjì. The Lúnyǔ shares with the Mèngzǐ the dialogue form, but in a far more compressed and aphoristic register; the contrast was already explicit in early reception, with Mencius and Xúnzǐ’s prose ranging far wider than any single Confucian utterance recorded here.
A late-Hàn / early Six-Dynasties tomb-find (the Hǎihūnhóu 海昏侯 cemetery in Jiāngxī, excavated 2011–) has now yielded bamboo strips of the Qí Lúnyǔ recension — notably the lost Zhī dào 知道 piān — with substantial textual variants from the received Lǔ Lúnyǔ. The find is being published by the Jiāngxīshěng wénwùkǎogǔyánjiūsuǒ.
Links
- Lúnyǔ on Chinese Text Project
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §28.4.4.
- E. B. Brooks and A. T. Brooks, The Original Analects (Columbia UP, 1998).