Analects 11.5: 先進 (Xian Jin)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 11 studies the people around the Master through remembered companionship, distinct abilities, rebukes, and grief. The death of Yan Yuan brings intense mourning beside disputes over what a fitting burial requires. Other exchanges test how to judge character, when to act, and what limits service to a ruler must keep. The same advice cannot serve every temperament: one student needs encouragement, another restraint. In the long final conversation, four wishes reveal different ways of imagining a life. The Master’s approval of Dian’s spring outing remains beside his judgment that governing requires ritual and a willingness to yield.
Analects 11.5
南容三復白圭、孔子以其兄之子妻之。
Nan Rong repeated the lines about the white jade tablet three times. Confucius gave him his elder brother’s daughter in marriage.
Commentary
translation Repeating the white jade verses 三復 can be read as repeating three times or as repeated return to the passage; Legge chooses the latter. The English keeps the number. 白圭 names the verse by its white jade tablet, but the verse is not quoted here. The immediate move from recitation to a marriage within Confucius’s family suggests that the attention Nan Rong gives it counts as evidence of character. The earlier Nan Rong passage also reports his marriage to the Master’s elder brother’s daughter, there following praise of his conduct under different kinds of rule.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium