Analects 3.21: 八佾 (Ba Yi)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 3 examines what gives ritual its authority and meaning. Household displays borrow the forms of rulers, while humaneness, restraint, grief, and reverence test what those forms can express. Questions about poetry, inherited rites, sacrifice, and music show understanding at work: a learner carries an image further, the Master asks about everything, and a musical whole holds its parts together. Rulers and ministers each receive a standard of conduct. The book ends by distinguishing beauty from goodness and by asking what high office, ritual, and mourning are worth without the qualities they require.
Analects 3.21
哀公問社於宰我。宰我對曰、夏后氏以松、殷人以柏、周人以栗、曰、使民戰栗。子聞之曰、成事不說、遂事不諫、既往不咎。
Duke Ai asked Zai Wo about the altar of the soil. Zai Wo replied, “The Xia rulers used pine, the people of Yin cypress, and the people of Zhou chestnut, saying, ‘To make the people tremble.’” When the Master heard this, he said, “What is done need not be explained; what has run its course need not be challenged; what is past need not be blamed.”
Commentary
philology Chestnut and trembling Duke Ai asks about 社, the altar of the soil, and Zai Wo answers with three trees. 栗 means chestnut and reappears in 戰栗, trembling. The answer turns that verbal echo into an explanation about making the people afraid. The wordplay is visible in Chinese; it supplies the force of the reply rather than independent proof of why a tree was chosen.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high
politics A rebuke that stops the discussion The second 曰, “saying,” has no stated subject. The trembling may be a purpose Zai Wo attributes to the Zhou, as the English has it, or his own gloss added to the answer. On the latter reading, the Master’s rebuke falls more plainly on him. The closing clauses move through what is done, what has taken its course, and what is past. They cut off further explanation without specifying whether the target is Zai Wo’s answer or the earlier choices it describes.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium