Classical Chinese Texts
Mvng Kv

, ,

Name. The personal name Kv means "chariot." There is some doubt as to the corresponding formal name. By predominant pattern, it should be Dz- plus some synonym of "chariot." There are two attested versions of this formal name: (1) Dz-jyw "chariot," with (2) phonetic variant Dz-jyw "abide," and (3) Dz-yw "carriage." Of these three, the form most easily seen as the antecedent of the others is jyw "chariot." which leads to jyw "abide" by phonetic variant, and to yw "carriage" by semantic variant.

This conclusion can be tested. We would expect that the personal name of Mencius might be pronounced by himself, but would be avoided by his direct disciples; that is, jyw "chariot" might occur in the genuine interviews of MC 1, but not in the interpolated ones, and not in the earliest independent writings of the successor schools (MC 2, MC 4-5), though it might crop up in the second-generation successor writings. This is exactly the distribution of jyw "chariot" in the Mencius text.

It is the semantic variant yw which is more likely to have arisen as a taboo substitution, and we suggest that an equivalent of the taboo usage (we might call it a respect usage) among the early Mencian school has become established in general usage as the preferred form of Mencius's name.

,

Dates. It is not known where the received dates for Mencius come from. As they stand (see Chyen Mu Study #63), they are manifestly corrupt. Omitting the month and day data, they give Jou Ding-wang 37 as the birth year, and Jou Nan-wang 26 as the death year; they also specify an age of 84 years at death.

Death Year. There was no 37th year of Jou Ding-Wang, so emendation of the birth year is unavoidable. There was a 26th year of Nan-wang, and it corresponds to 0289. One possible emendation is to calculate upward 84 years from that death date. If we accept the received tradition, which tells us that birth occurred in the 4th month and death only in the 1st month, we reach a birth year of 0373, corresponding to the 3rd year of Jou Lye-wang. But that birth year cannot be derived from the received one by any imaginable series of scribal errors. We must then suspect the death year as well.

There are other reasons for doing so. We suggest that the death date of Mencius has been brought down artificially to reduce the anachronism of his seeming mention (in MC 3B5) of the impending conquest of Sung, but in a way which allows the real death date to be construed as a scribal error for the constructed one. Since Mencius was in Chi at the time Chi considered annexing Yen (0314), and since Nan-wang 1st year is 0314, and since Mencius's career went on beyond Chi for several years, his death must have occurred sometime during Nan-wang's reign. Further, the most probable error is one in which at least some of the digits in the original also appear in the erroneous form. The earliest option that meets this criterion is the 12th year (not the 26th year) of Nan-wang, corresponding to 0303. Jou Gwang-ye also reaches this conclusion, which involves one metathesis and one omission of numerals.

(1) <

Birth Year. We here consider two theories and conclude by choosing the second. (1) If 303 is the correct death year, then 84 years previously should yield a year to which the received birth year can also be related on the basis of plausible scribal error. Adding 84 as before, we reach An-wang 15th year (0387). An and Ding are quite plausible as confusion of script, and the 15th year is conceivable, though not ideal, as an error for the 37th year. Jou Gwang-ye amends instead to the much more scribally plausible 17th year (0385), positing only the omission of a numeral "3," and for this the graphic similarity between "wang" and "san" provides a sort of basis. This however gives an age of 82 years at death, and in previous years we preferred to think that Mencius's age at death was conserved in the revised dates. On that assumption, Mencius's span was 0387-0303, and he would then have been 67 or 68 years old at the time of his first interview with the King of Lyang, who addresses him as sou "old man." This is culturally reasonable.

(2) <

(2) On further consideration, however, we are currently inclined to sacrifice the figure "84" and accept Jou Gwang-ye's argument, by which Mencius would instead have been 65 or 66 in 0320, which is also possible; the span reached by Jou Gwang-ye, and here adopted, is 0385-0303, with an age of 82 years at death (going on 83). We add that the received dating, with Mencius 84 years old in at the beginning of 0289, would make him only 43 years old at the time of his interview with the King of Lyang in 0320, and would completely fail to justify the King's respectful address sou "old man."

Birth. All traditions agree on Dzou, somewhat to the south of Lu.

Early Years. No anecdotes purporting to come from this period are other than emblematic, and what they emblematize appears to have no likely connection with the historical Mencius.

Association with the Lu School. Sywndz 6 disparagingly brackets Dz-sz and Mencius as the source of all error. This early comment presumably means that Mencius was associated with the school tradition of Dz-sz, which means the Analects school after c0400. External probability is that Mencius could have begun as a student at the school no earlier than c0365, by which time Dz-sz was definitely dead. This would have been in the days when LY 11 with its revisionist pantheon was written. Mencius himself thought well of Dzvngdz, whom LY 11 ridicules, and this among other details suggests a certain tension between Mencius and the Analects leadership. What is definite is that Mencius left the Analects school in 0320 to try his fortunes as an advisor to the King of Lyang.

Career. The activities of Mencius implied by the MC 1 interviews and referable to known "external" dates establish a terminus a quo for the earliest material. Lau (Appendix 1, following Kanaya, who in turn relies on Ito Jinsai and Tswei Shu) has noted that the MC 1 interviews are apparently chronologically ordered, and that if one replaces the Shr Ji dates of the relevant rulers with the correct (Bamboo Annals) ones, Mencius's career began not earlier than 0320, and followed a single-line downward trajectory. That career comprises (1) 0320, the last year of Hwei-wang of Ngwei (1A1, 1A3:1-3, 1A5:1-3), (2) 0319, the accession of Ngwei Syang-wang, after one interview with whom (1A6) Mencius left Ngwei, (3) 0318, an early contact in Chi (1B1), (4) 0317, Mencius's visit from Chi to Lu on the occasion of his mother's funeral, and also the first year of Lu Ping-gung, whom (after some skirmishing among subordinates on both sides) he did not get to meet (1B16), (5) c0315, a further interview with the Chi ruler (1B9) after Mencius's return from Lu, and (6) 0314, the Bamboo Annals date for the Yen incident, a disaster for Chi which brought about Mencius's departure from Chi (1B10). Subsequent and less directly datable stages are: (7) c0312, a talk with the ruler of Dzou (1B12), and (8) c0310-c0305, talks with the ruler of Tvng, where Mencius apparently had a regular position (1B13-15).

The seeming reference in 3B5 to the impending conquest of Sung by Chi (which occurred in 0286) is suspect. It can be shown that much of MC 3 is late, and it appears (see under Dates, above) that the received dates of Mencius were later distorted, within the school, to reduce the tension between the known dates of Mencius and this anachronistic remark, by making it plausible that Mencius lived late enough to have at least anticipated the event.

Classical Chinese Texts is Copyright © 1993- by E Bruce and A Taeko Brooks

 Comments to The Project / Exit to CCT Index Page