Should “The Book of Changes” be studied “apart from the “Spirits”? Towards the necessity of new interpretations of the Lun Yu

Abstract

In the article, the author justifies the necessity to work out the principles of the approach, which would underline the principles of the commented translation of the Lun Yu (The Analects) from Chinese into Russian. The prospective authors of this translations must take into consideration both the existent translations as well as the existing comments This approach would enable to select the relevant parts from the Lun Yu, which are difficult for understanding due to The Analects which are difficult to understand due to the use of polysemantic expressions and vocabulary. The article comprises a brief textual review of the earlier versions of Lun Yu and offers a new commented translation of the two well-known fragments of the text. They are fragment 6.22 (on self-sufficiency, guided by a sense of duty) and fragment 7.17 (“on adding years”). The author suggests a new understanding of the well-known expressions, such as yan zhi 遠之 (6.22) as “Keeping distance [from ghosts and spirits]”, and xue yi 學易 (7.17) as “Study the [book of] Changes”. Likely, in the first case, it suggests “not to depend depending on the ghosts and spirits because everyone should rely primarily on himself. In the second case, it implies the act of teaching as such. The author’s results are based upon the commentaries, viz. Lun yu ji jie yi shu and Lun yu ji zhu. The yan zhi 遠之 was interpreted as “do not disturb”. And the second one is based on the found in 1973 the earliest known commentary for Lun Yu, where “Changes” yi 易 is only a homophonic auxiliary expression with the attached word yi 亦. These examples show that even the well-known and thoroughly researched text can receive new interpretation by putting it into a new boarder textual context