Analects 10.6: 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 10.6
君子不以紺緅飾。紅紫不以為褻服。當暑袗絺綌、必表而出之。緇衣羔裘、素衣麑裘、黃衣狐裘。褻裘長、短右袂。必有寢衣、長一身有半。狐貉之厚以居。去喪、無所不佩。非帷裳、必殺之。羔裘玄冠不以弔。吉月、必朝服而朝。
The exemplary person used neither dark purple nor reddish-brown trim, and wore neither pink nor purple for everyday clothes. In hot weather he wore an unlined garment of fine or coarse light cloth, always over an underlayer when he went out. He wore black over lambskin, white over fawnskin, and yellow over fox fur. His everyday fur robe was long, with a short right sleeve. He always had a sleeping garment one and a half times his own height. At home he wore thick fox or raccoon-dog fur. Once mourning was over, he wore all his belt ornaments. Except for the straight, curtain-like skirt, his skirts were cut narrower at the top. He did not wear lambskin and a black cap when paying a condolence visit. On the first day of the month, he always wore court dress to court.
Commentary
ritual Dress changes with the occasion 君子, “the exemplary person,” appears within the continuing portrait of Confucius. The English keeps that title while continuing the book’s “he.” Dress varies with heat, domestic use, mourning, condolence, and attendance at court. The shortened right sleeve and extra length of the sleeping garment give bodily practicality a place beside formal distinctions.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium
translation Colors, layers, and the cut of a skirt 紺 and 緅 name dark colors; the English distinguishes dark purple and reddish brown from the pink and purple of 紅紫. In the summer-clothing clause, 表 is read as wearing the light garment on the outside, over another layer, as Legge also understands it. 帷裳 evokes a skirt hanging like a curtain. “Cut narrower at the top” takes 殺 as reducing the width, following Legge’s narrower upper part and wider lower part. Exact garment construction remains less clear than the contrast.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium