The Most Venerable Book (Shang Shu) Read online

  The Most Venerable Book

  Shang Shu

  also known as the

  Shu Jing

  The Classic of Chronicles

  Translated by MARTIN PALMER

  with JAY RAMSAY and VICTORIA FINLAY

  Contents

  Note on the Translation

  The Poet and the Text

  Introduction

  THE MOST VENERABLE BOOK

  The Book of Yu

  1 The Chronicle of Yao

  2 The Chronicle of Shun

  3 The Counsels of Yu the Great

  4 The Counsels of Gaoyao

  5 Yi and Qi

  The Book of Xia

  6 Yu’s Report to Heaven

  7 The Covenant at Gan

  8 Lament of the Five Sons

  9 The Punishment of Yin

  The Book of Shang

  10 The Covenant of Tang

  11 The Solemn Pledge of Zhonghui

  12 The Declaration of Tang

  13 The Teachings of Yi

  14 Instructions to King Tai Jia, Part I

  15 Instructions to King Tai Jia, Part II

  16 Instructions to King Tai Jia, Part III

  17 We are both Straightforward Virtuous Men

  18 King Pan Geng, Part I

  19 King Pan Geng, Part II

  20 King Pan Geng, Part III

  21 The Mandate of Yue, Part I

  22 The Mandate of Yue, Part II

  23 The Mandate of Yue, Part III

  24 King Gaozong’s Sacrifice Day

  25 The Lord of the West Conquers Li

  26 The Viscount of Wei

  The Book of Zhou

  27 The Great Vow, Part I

  28 The Great Vow, Part II

  29 The Great Vow, Part III

  30 The Vow at Mu

  31 The End of the War

  32 The Great Plan

  33 The Hound of Lü

  34 The Golden Chest

  35 The Great Announcement

  36 The Commission to the Viscount of Wei

  37 Announcement to Kang

  38 The Pronouncement on Drinking

  39 The Right Stuff

  40 The Pronouncement of Shao

  41 The Solemn Announcement about Luo

  42 The Many Officials

  43 Beware Idleness

  44 Prince Shi

  45 The Instruction to Zhong of Cai

  46 The Many Places

  47 The Foundations of Government

  48 The Officials of Zhou

  49 Prince Chen

  50 The Affectionate Command

  51 The Proclamation of King Kang

  52 The Command to Bi

  53 Lord Ya

  54 Command to Qiong

  55 The Penal Codes and the Prince of Lu

  56 The Command to Prince Wen

  57 The Oath at Bi

  58 The Oath at Qin

  Personalities of the Book

  Follow Penguin

  PENGUIN CLASSICS

  THE MOST VENERABLE BOOK

  Nothing at all is known about the authors and compilers of The Most Venerable Book (Shang Shu – also known as The Shu Jing: Classic of Chronicles). It is believed to have been edited by Confucius, but in fact the contents both predate and heavily postdate his life.

  MARTIN PALMER has translated a number of key Chinese texts, including The Book of Chuang Tzu (Penguin Classics). He is Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education and Culture (ICOREC) and Secretary General of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC). He has written and commentated extensively on Chinese religious traditions. His most recent book is Sacred Land.

  JAY RAMSAY has collaborated with Martin Palmer on a number of Chinese texts as a poet since 1991. Author of The White Poem, Alchemy, Kingdom of the Edge, Crucible of Love, The Poet in You, and Out of Time, he also works as a psychotherapist in private practice and runs poetry and personal development workshops worldwide. His latest collection is Monuments.

  VICTORIA FINLAY is the author of Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox and Buried Treasure: Travels Through the Jewel Box.

  This book is dedicated to Sally Miller, whose arrival

  in this world has brought joy to all her family but especially

  to her grandfather, Martin.

  Note on the Translation

  In undertaking any translation, the translator is as much an interpreter as a literal translator. In trying to make the images, myths, legends, proverbs and styles of a completely different culture accessible, you have to interpret as much as translate. In this translation I draw attention to this with the very first line of the first chapter, as I have mentioned above. The literal translation would be along the lines of ‘It is said that if we investigate back into antiquity’. I have chosen to interpret this as the beginning of a story about the ancient past and its heroes, so have used the phrase ‘Long, long ago’ as a way of opening a story about the distant past which will be familiar to Western readers. It is perhaps also worth pointing out that ancient Chinese is terse. The first line contains only four characters from which any translator – or indeed native speaker – has to construct meaning.

  I have also rearranged the order of paragraphs where the meaning becomes clearer by using a more traditional, Western way of constructing a paragraph. This has meant that at times I have moved a line or two from near the beginning of a paragraph or from the middle and put it towards the end as this enhanced the meaning of the paragraph.

  Occasionally, as I did in my translation of Chuang Tzu (Zhuang Zi), I have not translated every name if that name only appears once and has no particular relevance or role. This applies to some personal names as well as occasionally a place name.

  What became clear as we worked on the translation is that there are distinct sections where a rhythm is discernable which indicates either a poem per se or a text which through oral tradition has become rounded and balanced by poetic meter in order to aid memorizing. It is interesting to note that the pattern is typical of the Zhou Dynasty style of poetry. This uses the traditional four-word rhythm – a classic example of the imprint of the oral tradition, as this is easy to remember – but broken at the end or at some stage in the poem by the use of an irregular line. In many cases in the Shang Shu, this is in the form of a five-word rhythm.*

  Therefore I have reflected this in the translation and not treated every sentence as if it had no distinctive pattern, which is what other translations have tended to do. In discerning these patterns of poetry and prose, we have sought to bring to life texts which come from many different centuries, many different hands and which have very many different styles between them, from heroic saga to bureaucratic lists, via official documents of policy. I am grateful to Jay Ramsay’s poetic and prose reworking of some of the key sections, which inspired me to see similar patterns in other sections of the book.

  In so doing I hope we have been able to breathe life again into a text which through Confucian conformity and the pressures of rote learning had come to be seen as worthy but perhaps rather dull. It is not. It is as diverse and fascinating as any ancient collection of texts – be that the Bible, the Rig Vedas or the Babylonian texts. It is also still an invaluable guide to how to live a virtuous life and how to interpret our place within a moral cosmos. And perhaps it can once again play a role in restraining or removing bad rulers who offend against Heaven and do nothing to help the lives of ‘the ordinary people’.

  Martin Palmer

  Easter Sunday, 2014

  The Poet and the Text

  In a book of such antiquity, it is useful to reflect on how its contents would have been received as a living word, learned by heart, and also (a
s Martin Palmer has indicated) ritually performed on an anniversary basis. The equivalent in our own culture would certainly be closer to drama and liturgy than prose; for example, in the medieval Mystery Plays. For us working on this book, this spoke of poetry in an oral context; and also as a result of our previous work together on the Chinese Classics in the mid-1990s when we found such patterns in the Tao Te Ching (Dao De Jing), the I Ching (Yi Jing) and the 100 quatrains of Kuan Yin.

  Some of this text here is anyway overtly poetry (‘The Lament of the Five Sons’); some gaps of lost text may well have been filled with material from the contemporaneous Book of Songs, but also, as Martin noted on close inspection, the irregular beat of 4, 4, 4, 4, 5 infuses a whole series of wisdom sayings that are scattered like pearls through the narrative.

  And in an early chapter (two), as the Emperor speaks to Kui, we find explicitly this:

  Show them that poetry is the way

  to express their deepest feelings

  shared also through its singing

  where the notes can harmonize

  with the feelings evoked …

  So to bring this material alive as it deserves for a modern readership, both orally and on the page, we felt that poetry at points throughout the text was more than justified. It was required. I was working from Martin’s literal translation, finding rhythm in the lines as blank verse that could also be spoken aloud. Martin subsequently brought in his own poetic rendition, particularly in the long, explicitly Confucian sequence of chapters which form the bulk of the Book of Zhou and especially chapters thirty-five to fifty-eight as strategic relief in all the more lyrical moments he could find within its more prose-orientated essential statements of morality.

  There are two kinds of poetry in our translation here overall. The first is reflective, philosophical and metaphysical, concerning statements about the Dao (or Way), De (virtue), about Heaven as the first principle behind everything (and always above and beyond the ruler or emperor), the Five Elements and the other elemental building blocks of the Chinese universe. For example (in chapter sixteen), in wisdom that prefigures the Dao De Jing:

  Where virtue is, order is there too.

  Where virtue isn’t – chaos.

  Follow the design of order and all will go well.

  Ignore it and it will end in disaster.

  A wise ruler is constantly thoughtful in what he follows.

  The second involves speeches made by key characters, often in dialogue, sometimes as dramatic monologue. A striking example is from the Viscount of Wei in chapter twenty-six:

  Now disaster is poised to come down

  and I must acknowledge my part in this. When we fall,

  I will never serve as a minister again.

  So listen to me, my master.

  Leave, as fast as you can – escape.

  I did not serve you as well as I should have –

  but now, listen to me – and run!

  Otherwise we face complete annihilation.

  We each have to make our own decision,

  and we’ll each have to answer for this to our ancestors,

  but I have chosen to stay. My refuge is here.

  Here, we found ourselves thinking about Shakespeare in his military plays, where history is re-enacted in the present moment on the stage (Henry V before Agincourt again) in a way that is also timeless. And it is the timeless quality of this material that brings it beyond being just a record of long-forgotten events and into a symbolic realm of truth – as with the Yi Jing. These rulers and their supporting courtly cast of officials represent what can and needs to be if ruling a country is going to succeed ‘under Heaven’. We should also never forget what happens when that mandate is withdrawn and a kind of egotistical hell takes its place – as true for Zhou as it was 2,500 years later with the despotic and wife-executing Henry VIII. Sadly, or perhaps inevitably, this is as relevant today as it ever was, with the presence of self-elected dictators who are by definition incapable of recognizing anything beyond their own drive for power and who always (by definition) damage their own people. Their demise may be as inevitable as the Shang dynasty, but it is equally important to wonder where the spiritual world leaders of today are, and how can they come into being without a recognition of the Higher Self that Heaven symbolizes that is informing and guiding them?

  And of course we may think about what that means for all of us, and what it means to stay with Heaven in our own actions with all their consequences, on the eternal (and karmic) path of self-realization.

  Jay Ramsay

  Introduction

  In the year 213 BC the First Emperor of all China, the notorious Qin Shi Huang Di, whose vast tomb is still guarded by the famous Terracotta Army, issued a decree. He ordered that all books except those dealing with medicine, war, divination or agriculture should be seized. He especially wanted to destroy all evidence that there had ever been a world of ideas, beliefs, values, stories or history before he had seized power eight years previously. He believed that if no one could read about other ways of ruling an empire, then no one would ever challenge him or those who followed him.

  He was planning to destroy the books in order to create a dynasty that would last for a thousand years. And he very nearly succeeded. Not in creating the thousand-year dynasty – in fact it lasted just fifteen years, ending in 206 BC, three years after his own death. But he did nearly succeed in destroying all the books. This was a world before printing. All books were handwritten on slips of bamboo tied together, top and bottom, to form scrolls. The strips were hung vertically, which is why traditionally Chinese writing runs from the top to the bottom. Such books were very fragile and if the string broke or rotted there was no easy way of knowing which strip followed which. You needed to work it out from the text itself. Or hope that someone had memorized the text.

  At the top of the list for destruction was this book, the Shang Shu: a chronicle of great and terrible rulers in the ancient past, and the rise and fall of dynasties and emperors. It means ‘the most venerable book’; shang being the Chinese word for ‘revered’ or ‘most venerated’, and shu being Chinese for ‘a book’. Its other title is the Shu Jing, which is often translated as the Classic of History or perhaps more accurately as the Classic of Chronicles.

  The reason for the First Emperor’s particular hatred of this book becomes clear almost as soon as you start to read. Here, on page after page, you meet the heroes of ancient China. Benevolent rulers; sagacious ministers; extraordinary people heroically struggling against floods and against corruption. Here, also, we have those who lay down their lives to try to preserve order and decorum; those who take huge risks to try to reform wayward kings; others who lay out in great detail how a kingdom should be ruled and who remind the ruler that the purpose of kingship is to make the lives of the ordinary people better.

  And side by side we have some of the greatest anti-heroes of ancient Chinese history. In the figure of King Zhou, the last ruler of the Shang Dynasty (traditionally said to have died in 1122 BC) we have the epitome of the vicious despot.

  While there is considerable controversy about how accurate or authentic these accounts are, nevertheless they do refer to real rulers and events which mostly happened well over three thousand years ago. And thanks largely to this book they are remembered to this day. Figures whom you are about to meet, such as Yu and Yi, King Wen and perhaps particularly the Duke of Zhou, will crop up in everyday conversation in China. They are folk heroes in China; and their behaviour and morality continue to be relevant today.

  For China is the oldest continuous culture in the world. Egyptian records and Babylonian records might go back for four or five thousand years, but nobody today actually still venerates the ancient figures of Pharaonic Egypt or the gods of ancient Babylon. But in China, Shun and Yao – two of the Five August Rulers you will meet in this Book – are still revered and respected as founder figures of Chinese civilization.

  For Westerners, it is useful to recall that a
t the time of the overthrow of the Shang Dynasty by the Zhou some three thousand years ago (which is the greatest event in this book), Rome did not yet exist. Greece didn’t even have a written language. In Israel, King David was shortly to come to the throne and in Egypt the Twenty-first Dynasty was just commencing. In Britain, the era of stone circles was coming to an end, but of the tribes, their kings and their trials and tribulations we have now not the faintest idea. But China’s memory of the past is a continuous one and this is why the Shang Shu was – and increasingly today is – so important and why it was such an object of hatred for the First Emperor.

  It is worth recalling a more recent figure in Chinese history who also wanted to eradicate all memory and knowledge of the past – knowledge which might challenge his autocratic rule. Chairman Mao launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966 with the explicit aim of destroying all elements of China’s ‘feudal and imperial past’. In the chaos that was unleashed, any ancient texts, historic buildings, figures such as Confucius or beliefs such as Daoism or Buddhism were to be attacked and destroyed. And Mao explicitly modelled himself on the First Emperor, whom he saw as praiseworthy for his efforts to eradicate the past. Like the First Emperor, records of the past were a prime target for Mao and his followers, who from 1966 to 1976 sought to destroy the past – and they very nearly succeeded. It is from that holocaust of destruction – not just of historical materials but also of millions of people – that China has spent the last few decades recovering. Now there is a hunger for things that were so nearly destroyed and a sense of returning to the classics. And amongst the treasures being re-evaluated are books such as this one, the Shang Shu.

  The First Emperor ruled with a huge army to enforce his edicts. Between the years 213 and 209 BC, when the Emperor died, the edict banning the books was in full swing. Copies were snatched from scholars and libraries across the land and brought to the capital city. Tradition has it that all the books were burned and the scholars who refused to surrender their copies were buried alive – one lurid account mentions up to seven hundred of them at one time. What may have been more likely is that in a time of persecution the books were seized and collected, but they were actually destroyed when the Qin Dynasty fell in 206 BC. We do know that the Grand Library in the capital was torched by the rebels when they sacked the city. Whatever the truth, to all intents and purposes the Shang Shu, along with other key banned texts, seemed to have been wiped off the face of the earth.