第4章

General Preface to The Bedside Chinese Classics

The Four Books and The Five Classics are the funda mental core of Confucianism, which have long been part of Chinese culture together with the thoughts, values and ethics embodied in them. The Four Books includes Confucian Analects, The Works of Mencius, The Great Learning, and The Doctrine of the Mean; and The Five Classics involves The She King (Classic of Poetry), The Shoo King (Book of Historical Documents), The Li Ki(Book of Rites), The Yi King (I Ching) and The Ch＇un Ts＇ew (Spring and Autumn Annals). To some extent, theConfucius classics represented by The Four Books and The Five Classics are the source of Chinese thought and culture over thousands of years, which have shaped China as what the nation it is and the Chinese people as who they are.

We have already stepped out of the ancient times into the modern period. For various reasons, we had once intentionally given up the traditional way of studying and reading these classics. However, the spirit of the classics,lodged in the deep hidden place of each Chinese soul,has never disappeared into thin air; and the candlelight of the thought has never died off, still streaming out in the veins of Chinese people. Nowadays, there is an emphasis on the reflections of reviving Chinese culture,marching on to Chinese tradition and regaining Chinese heritage, which is of course drawn from Chinese people＇s recognition of the inherent cultural source. Obviously,the right way to return to traditions is to reread and study the Chinese classics our ancestors had left behind.

Naturally, today we don＇t review The Chinese Classics as our ancestors did for a better career. Rather, we should adopt an entirely new attitude and methods to read them in a broader context of the global culture. Legge＇s English version of The Four Books and The Five Classics more than one hundred years before should definitely be one of our choices. Legge＇s version especially enjoys its uniqueness. Besides the original Chinese characters and the corresponding English version, there is many an irreplaceable substantial critical note in every book, thus elevating his version to an academic level.

At the end of 1845, the Scottish missionary James Legge (1815-1897) went back to England from Hong Kong for illness and did not return until July 1848. On his way back to Hong Kong, Legge decided to translate Chinese classics with careful deliberation. He started with The Four Books, then The Five Classics, and then other classics in Taoism and Buddhism. In the eleven years between 1861 and 1872, Legge translated TheFour Books and The She King (Classic of Poetry), The Shoo King (Book of Historical Documents) and The Ch＇un Ts＇ew (Spring and Autumn Annals) in The Five Classics, which were published successively by the London Mission Society Press in Hong Kong entitled The Chinese Classics. In 1879, Legge finished translating The Yi King (I Ching) and The Li Ki (Book of Rites),which were included in The Sacred Books of the East published by the Clarendon Press in London, edited by Max Müller, an expert on Comparative Religion and Orientalism at Oxford University. Thus, Legge became the first westerner to translate all the books in The Four Books and The Five Classics on his own. More than thirty years later, the Clarendon Press had The Chinese Classics reprinted, but Legge only revised the first and second volumes. Besides The Four Books and The Five Classics, Legge also translated other Chinese classics such as The Hsiao King (Classic of Filial Piety), The Tao Teh King (Tao Te Ching), etc.

When Legge translated The Four Books and The FiveClassics, a Chinese named Wang Tao helped him a lot. Wang Tao (1828-1897) was born in Suzhou in the Daoguang period of the Qing Dynasty. He passed the imperial examination at the county level in 1845 and went to work at London Missionary Society Press in Shanghai in 1849 at the request of an English missionary Walter Henry Medhurst (1796-1857). There Wang Tao devoted thirteen years to the work of translating English books into Chinese, contributing a lot to the introduction of western learning into China. In 1862, for his support of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (1851-1864), Wang Tao was wanted by the Qing Dynasty and fled to Hong Kong, where he got help from Legge, the then dean of Ying Wa College in Hong Kong and, in turn, he assisted Legge in his work of translating Chinese classics, hence starting a much-told story in the cultural exchanges between the East and the West.

From 1868 to 1870, Wang Tao stayed in Scotland with Legge, during which they worked together and completed the translation of such classics as The SheKing (Classic of Poetry), The Yi King (I Ching) and The Li Ki (Book of Rites). In 1970, they returned to Hong Kong, Legge resuming his work at Ying Wa College.After work, they continued to translate and write. In 1873, Legge settled down back in England and Wang Tao bought the printing equipment of the college. Next year,Wang Tao started Tsun Wan Yat Po, the first successful Chinese newspaper invested by a Chinese in the world.Wang Tao was therefore regarded as "the first Chinese newspaperman". In 1879, Wang Tao was invited to conduct investigations in Japan for four months. In 1884,he returned to Shanghai after over twenty years and became dean of Polytechnic College till his death in May 1897. It happened that Legge passed away in England in December that same year. Some 150 years ago,the two thinkers from different countries and cultural backgrounds became intimate friends for love of cultural transmission, leaving a touching anecdote in the history of cultural exchanges between the East and the West.