Analects 10.15: 鄉黨 (Xiang Dang)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 10 presents Confucius through the details of his conduct: how he speaks among neighbors and officials, receives guests, moves through a ruler’s court, dresses, prepares for ritual, and eats. Clothing, gesture, pace, and expression change with the occasion. The later scenes include gifts, illness, a fire, a friend’s death, and encounters calling for respect. Ease at home and readiness to respond both belong to the portrait. The final, difficult scene turns to a pheasant’s flight and a repeated praise of timeliness.
Analects 10.15
朋友死、無所歸、曰、於我殯。朋友之饋、雖車馬、非祭肉不拜。
When a friend died with no one to take charge, he said, “Let him be laid out at my home.” For gifts from friends, even a carriage and horses, he did not bow unless the gift was sacrificial meat.
Commentary
philology Taking charge before burial 殯 concerns the body laid out or coffined before burial. “At my home” keeps the offer of a place in 於我. Legge gives the broader undertaking to bury the friend and supplies the absence of dependable relations. The Chinese says that there is nowhere to turn; the translation leaves open why no one else can take charge.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium
ritual Why sacrificial meat receives a bow The second sentence sets a costly carriage and horses beside sacrificial meat. The meat alone calls for the bow. Its connection with a sacrifice gives the gift a significance that its material value cannot explain. The distinction is stated within friendship, where the preceding sentence has already shown a substantial commitment.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium