Thursday 30 September 2021

Questions and Answers with Confucius 孔子問答

 In this post, I will post a bilingual edition of a curious Chinese text about Confucius. Entitled 孔子問答, - Questions and Answers with Confucius, also called 小兒論- Discussions with a child -- it shows how Confucius is is first matched, then flummoxed by a  boy called Xiang Tuo.項橐 It is reprinted yearly in Chinese almanacs.

His story was mentioned as early as in the Stratagems of the Warring states, https://jenniferdodgson.wixsite.com/warringstates/qinwang2 , but the actual interactions, we are told, was lost. The text translated here is probably an apocryphal text that fitted into this story. Xiang Tuo also has a baidu article (In Chinese  https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E9%A1%B9%E6%A9%90/3121539 )


One of the segments of the Stratagems In which Xiang Tuo (or, as he is called, Xiang Gao) is mentioned


Only one translation has been made of this text, which is found in Martin Palmer et, al's T'ung Shu (Vinpress, 1990),. However, this translation is also flawed-- and indeed, leaves out an entire segment of the text. The author thus reproduces Palmer's translation here, correcting it as necessary, and supplying the missing parts. 


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These images are the text as shown in the 廣經堂 Guang jing Tang Almanac for 2020. The actual text translated is in the bottom half of the page. The top half of every page except the first is occupied with a list of Confucius' disciples, and has nothing to do with the bottom "Q&A with Confucius" text, except, perhaps, in theme, 

The Thousand Character Classic numbered 千字文數字對照表

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