Jūn Rén Zhě Hé Bì Ān Zāi 君人者何必安哉
Why Must the Ruler of People Necessarily Be at Ease? (modern editorial title; the phrase may come from a different section of the text not yet recovered)
(anonymous; excavated bamboo manuscript, no attributable author)
About the work
Jūn Rén Zhě Hé Bì Ān Zāi 君人者何必安哉 is one of the texts in 馬承源 Mǎ Chéngyuán ed., 《上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書》 vol. 7, Shànghǎi gǔjí chūbǎnshè 上海古籍出版社, 2008, comprising approximately 7 bamboo strips. The text is a Chǔ court narrative in which Fan Mù 范戊 (here called Fàn Chéng 范乘 — possibly the same person) remonstrates with a Chǔ king (apparently King Zhuāng 楚莊王) about three governance failures he designates as “violations” (huí 回 = 違). The text belongs to the genre of wise remonstrance (jiàn 諫) narratives.
Abstract
Fan Mù requests an audience, reporting to the king that he has three “white jade violations” (bái yù sān huí 白玉三回 — “three [things] like white jade that remain unbroken / three unfulfilled uses”):
First violation (§2): “The state has food-fields of five furrows (wǔ zhèn 五畛), with reed-pipe and panpipe music (yú guǎn 竽管) performed before [the lord] — yet the king, holding Chu, does not listen to the music of drums and bells (gǔ zhōng 鼓鐘). This is the first violation.”
Second violation (§3): “A lord of jade-stone territory, master of hundreds of furrows, [with] palace women numbering in hundreds — the king holds Chu, but has three sons, one of whom shuts the gate and does not come out. This is the second violation.”
Third violation (§4): “The state-music (zhōu tú 州徒?) of these people — no one in the realm refuses it; [this is] what the former kings made for their eyes to observe. The king has made his sacrifices honorable (lóng qí jì 隆其祭) but does not perform the music for [the required ritual context]. This is the third violation.”
The minister then argues (§5): “The former kings did these things [i.e., enjoyed these pleasures] and people called them peacekeepers and benefactors of the people (ān bāng, lì mín 安邦，利民). Now the king has abandoned all the pleasures of his eyes and ears — people say the king is being estranged from the people, as if he were above them. But there is something humans cannot do that spirits can; if the people curse [him] and spirits respond to their curses, even if the king were not to live out his full years, that would be fitting.”
Genre and significance. The text belongs to the genre of paradoxical remonstrance: the minister argues not that the king should be more austere but rather that his excessive austerity — his refusal of music, his son’s seclusion, his failure to perform state music — constitutes political failure by isolating him from his people and weakening his ritual standing. The three “violations” inverted — calling failed pleasures “white jade not yet broken” — is a rhetorically inventive framing. This connects to the broader Warring States discourse on the legitimate pleasures of rulership (compare Mengzi 梁惠王 I.1 on music and hunting).
Translations and research
- 馬承源 ed., 《上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書》 vol. 7, Shànghǎi gǔjí chūbǎnshè, 2008 — editio princeps.
- Pines, Yuri. Envisioning Eternal Empire. University of Hawai’i Press, 2009 — on legitimate and illegitimate ruler pleasures in Warring States discourse.
Links
- Wikipedia (Shanghai Museum bamboo texts): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Museum_bamboo_texts