Analects 10.18: 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 10.18
色斯舉矣、翔而後集。曰、山梁雌雉、時哉時哉。子路共之、三嗅而作。
At a look, the bird rose; it circled before settling. The Master said, “That hen pheasant on the mountain ridge—what timing, what timing!” Zilu gestured toward it. It sniffed three times, then rose.
Commentary
philology The bird and its moment The opening leaves its subject unnamed. The hen pheasant named in the next sentence supplies the bird for the English. 色 is read as a human look or expression that prompts flight. 山梁 can evoke a mountain ridge or a bridge in the hills. The repeated 時哉 praises timeliness; whether this concerns the season or the bird’s moment to act is left open.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium
translation Who rises at the end? Legge takes 共之 as Zilu making a gesture toward the bird and makes the bird the subject of 三嗅而作. The translation follows that sequence, retaining the unusual sniffing rather than replacing it with an unexpressed call. Reading 共 as presenting or offering something would change the scene and could make the final subject a person. The terse Chinese does not settle the action or the change of subject securely.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium