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邦人不稱

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Text ID
KR2p0086
Date
-350–-250
Dynasty
戰國

Bāng Rén Bù Chēng 邦人不稱

The People Did Not Praise Him (modern editorial title from the text’s refrain)

(anonymous; excavated bamboo manuscript, no attributable author)

About the work

Bāng Rén Bù Chēng 邦人不稱 is a historical anecdote text preserved on approximately 10 bamboo strips from the Shanghai Museum corpus of Warring States Chǔ 楚 manuscripts, published in 馬承源 Mǎ Chéngyuán ed., 《上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書》 vol. 9, Shànghǎi gǔjí chūbǎnshè 上海古籍出版社, 2012. Its central figure is Shè Gōng Zǐgāo 葉公子高 (ca. 530–470 BCE), the celebrated Chǔ minister and military officer famous in the transmitted tradition for his role in the Bái Gōng revolt (479 BCE) and for the proverbial phrase about a man who professed to love dragons but fled when a real one appeared. The text presents three episodes, each structured by the refrain “the people of the state did not praise him” (bāng rén bù chēng 邦人不稱), deploying a paradoxical rhetoric of un-praise to convey the depth of Shè Gōng’s genuine virtue.

Abstract

Opening and framing. The text begins with an address: ”… are you not a gentleman (jūnzǐ 君子)? Therefore [what follows is] not pressing [him] to the limit of his destiny (zhì mìng 至命). [Someone] said: ‘Heaven brought calamity (huò 訛=禍) upon the Chǔ state; my lord roams in exile, [yet] his awesome presence [still shines]… [but he] has no [claim to] fame — therefore people do not know of it.‘” This framing positions Shè Gōng’s three acts as examples of virtue that refuses self-promotion.

Episode 1: The flight of King Zhāo (strips 1–3). “Accompanying King Zhāo of Chǔ in his flight (jiù Zhāo wáng zhī wáng 就昭王之亡): meeting the king at Suí 隨; fighting at Shì 澨; fighting at Jīng (ford) 津; fighting at Cháng — [Shè Gōng] three times fought and three times stopped [pursuing enemies] (三戰而三止). And the people of the state did not praise him for bravery (bāng rén bù chēng yǒng 邦人不稱勇焉).”

This episode refers to the flight of King Zhāo 楚昭王 (r. 516–489 BCE) before the Wú 吳 army’s invasion of the Chǔ capital Yǐng 郢 in 506 BCE, a major crisis extensively treated in the Zuǒzhuàn 左傳 (Dìng 定 4). Shè Gōng stopped the pursuit of enemies at each engagement rather than pressing for total victory — yet the people did not praise him as brave.

Episode 2: The Bái Gōng revolt (strips 3–6). “Upon the Bái Gōng calamity (Bái Gōng zhī huò 白公之禍): hearing that the Chief Minister (lìng yǐn 令尹) and the General (sīmǎ 司馬) were both dead, [Shè Gōng] was about to go to Yǐng. The elders of Shè all remonstrated: ‘You cannot; you must go with troops.‘” Shè Gōng Zǐgāo replied: “Without regaining the king, I will certainly die. What use is an army?” So he mounted a relay chariot and set out in five chariots alone toward Yǐng.

Upon arriving, without having yet found the king, the Lady Zhāo 昭夫人 said to him: “Sons of the former lord are gathered outside… Your words go too far; perhaps [one should] choose from among them and enthrone [one] — the state already having a king, would that not also be good?” Shè Gōng replied: “Ten thousand kings — what confusion to present and offer! And yet to make both these [options] into one ruler for the state — even the king himself is small compared to that; my first fear is that the king will not survive to the end of the age and protect the state.”

After speaking, he put on sacrificial garments and halted [the Lady]. The Cài Great Priest (Cài dà zhù 蔡大祝) stopped [her]; waiting until the state’s ruler had been ceremonially capped and robed, [Shè Gōng] came out to the Cài Great Priest, leaped, and prostrated twice, saying: “Today I leaped; having lost the state, perhaps [we] shall regain it.” The king then bestowed on him a field of 100 fǔ (畛 = field strips) in the Western Guǎng district. Shè Gōng declined, saying: “The king’s minister — his requests have never not been granted.” He refused the reward.

“After being appointed Chief Minister, he declined; appointed General, he also declined, saying: ‘Shè is far away — it cannot be [my] residence.’ So he provisionally assumed the role of General but did not take up its substance — and the people of the state did not praise him as glorious (bāng rén bù chēng róng 邦人不稱榮焉).”

Significance. The text of Bāng Rén Bù Chēng is significant for several reasons. First, it provides an account of the Bái Gōng revolt and its aftermath from a perspective that is distinctively Chǔ-internal and concerned with the ethics of counsel and reward. Second, the rhetorical structure — three acts of genuine virtue, none praised by ordinary people — is a Warring States argumentative device that paradoxically glorifies the figure by asserting that worldly praise is inadequate to his merit. Third, the text preserves details about Shè Gōng’s behavior in the revolt crisis not found in the Zuǒzhuàn account (Āi 哀 16). Shè Gōng Zǐgāo is also the figure in the received Lǚshì chūnqiū 呂氏春秋 and other texts associated with the proverb about those who love dragons but flee real ones (the dragon here = Confucius, in the Xīnjì 新序 version), so this text adds an important dimension to the reception of his historical memory.

Translations and research

  • 馬承源 ed., 《上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書》 vol. 9, Shànghǎi gǔjí chūbǎnshè, 2012 — editio princeps.
  • Pines, Yuri. Envisioning Eternal Empire. University of Hawai’i Press, 2009.
  • Shaughnessy, Edward L. Rewriting Early Chinese Texts. SUNY Press, 2006.
  • Schaberg, David. A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography. Harvard University Asia Center, 2001 — on the rhetorical structure of historical anecdote in early China.

Other points of interest

The Bái Gōng revolt (白公之禍) of 479 BCE, which forms the context of episode 2, is one of the major domestic political crises of the Spring and Autumn period. Bái Gōng Shèng 白公勝, a Chǔ prince, seized the capital Yǐng and killed the Chief Minister Zǐxī 子西 and the General Zǐqī 子期 before being defeated by Shè Gōng. This text’s account — in which Shè Gōng arrives alone with five chariots, engages in a constitutional debate with the Lady Zhāo about whether to appoint a new king, and ultimately restores the legitimate ruler — supplements and complicates the Zuǒzhuàn account (Āi 16) in important ways.

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