2. Confucius was the child of Shu-liang Heh's old age. The soldier had married in early life, but his wife brought him only
[Sidebar] From his birth to his first public employments. B.C. 551-531.
daughters,-- to the number of nine, and no son. By a concubine he had a son, named Mang-p'i, and also Po-ni [5], who proved a cripple, so that, when he was over seventy years, Heh sought a second wife in the Yen family [6], from which came subsequently Yen Hui, the favourite disciple of his son. There were three daughters in the family, the youngest being named Chang-tsai [7]. Their father said to them, 'Here is the commandant of Tsau. His father and grandfather were only scholars, but his ancestors before them were descendants of the sage sovereigns. He is a man ten feet high [8], and of extraordinary prowess, and I am very desirous of his alliance. Though he is old and austere, you need have no misgivings about him. Which of you three will be his wife? 'The two elder daughters were silent, but Chang-tsai said, 'Why do you ask us, father? It is for you to determine.' 'Very well,' said her father in reply, 'you will do.' Chang-tsai, accordingly, became Heh's wife, and in due time gave
1 防叔.
2 伯夏.
3 叔梁紇.
4 偪陽.
5 孟皮, 一字伯尼.
6 顏氏.
7 徵在.
8 其人, 身長十尺. See, on the length of the ancient foot, Ana. VIII. vi, but the point needs a more sifting investigation than it has yet received.
birth to Confucius, who received the name of Ch'iu, and was subsequently styled Chung-ni [1]. The event happened on the twenty-first day of the tenth month of the twenty-first year of the duke Hsiang, of Lu, being the twentieth year of the emperor Ling, B.C. 552 [2]. The birth-place was in the district of Tsau [3], of which Heh was the governor. It was somewhere within the limits of the present department of Yen-chau in Shan-tung, but the honour of being the exact spot is claimed for two places in two different districts of the department.
The notices which we have of Confucius's early years are very scanty. When he was in his third year his father died. It is related of him, that as a boy he used to play at the arrangement of
1 名邱, 字仲尼. The legends say that Chang-tsai fearing lest she should not have a son, in consequence of her husband's age, privately ascended the Ni-ch'iu hill to pray for the boon, and that when she had obtained it, she commemorated the fact in the names -- Ch'iu and Chung-ni. But the cripple, Mang-p'i, had previous been styled Po-ni. There was some reason, previous to Confucius's birth, for using the term ni in the family. As might be expected, the birth of the sage is surrounded with many prodigious occurrences. One account is, that the husband and wife prayed together for a son in a dell of mount Ni. As Chang-tsai went up the hill, the leaves of the trees and plants all erected themselves, and bent downwards on her return. That night she dreamt the black Ti appeared, and said to her, 'You shall have a son, a sage, and you must bring him forth in a hollow mulberry tree.' One day during her pregnancy, she fell into a dreamy state, and saw five old men in the hall, who called themselves the essences of the five planets, and led an animal which looked like a small cow with one horn, and was covered with scales like a dragon. This creature knelt before Chang-tsai, and cast forth from its mouth a slip of jade, on which was the inscription,-- 'The son of the essence of water shall succeed to the decaying Chau, and be a throneless king.' Chang-tsai tied a piece of embroidered ribbon about its horn, and the vision disappeared. When Heh was told of it, he said, 'The creature must be the Ch'i-lin.' As her time drew near, Chang-tsai asked her husband if there was any place in the neighborhood called 'the hollow mulberry tree.' He told her there was a dry cave in the south hill, which went by that name. Then she said, 'I will go and be confined there.' Her husband was surprised, but when made acquainted with her former dream, he made the necessary arrangements. On the night when the child was born, two dragons came and kept watch on the left and right of the hill, and two spirit-ladies appeared in the air, pouring out fragrant odors, as if to bathe Chang-tsai; and as soon as the birth took place, a spring of clear warm water bubbled up from the floor of the cave, which dried up again when the child had been washed in it. The child was of an extraordinary appearance; with a mouth like the sea, ox lips, a dragon's back, &c. &c. On the top of his head was a remarkable formation, in consequence of which he was named Ch'iu, &c. See the 列國志, Bk. lxxviii.--Sze-ma Ch'ien seems to make Confucius to have been illegitimate, saying that Heh and Miss Yen cohabited in the wilderness (野合 ). Chiang Yung says that the phrase has reference simply to the disparity of their ages.
2 Sze-ma Ch'ien says that Confucius was born in the twenty-second year of duke Hsiang, B.C. 550. He is followed by Chu Hsi in the short sketch of Confucius's life prefixed to the Lun Yu, and by 'The Annals of the Empire' (歷代統紀表), published with imperial sanction in the reign of Chia-ch'ing. (To this latter work I have generally referred for my dates.) The year assigned in the text above rests on the authority of Ku-liang and Kung- yang, the two commentators on the Ch'un-Ch'iu. With regard to the month, however, the tenth is that assigned by Ku-liang, while Kung-yang names the eleventh.
3 Tsau is written 郰, 鄹, 陬, and 鄒.
sacrificial vessels, and at postures of ceremony. Of his schooling we have no reliable account. There is a legend, indeed, that at seven he went to school to Yen P'ing-chung [1], but it must be rejected as P'ing-chung belonged to the State of Ch'i. He tells us himself that at fifteen he bent his mind to learning [2]; but the condition of the family was one of poverty. At a subsequent period, when people were astonished at the variety of his knowledge, he explained it by saying, 'When I was young, my condition was low, and therefore I acquired my ability in many things; but they were mean matters [3].'
When he was nineteen, he married a lady from the State of Sung, of the Chien-kwan family [4], and in the following year his son Li was born. On the occasion of this event, the duke Chao sent him a present of a couple of carp. It was to signify his sense of his prince's favour, that he called his son Li (The Carp), and afterwards gave him the designation of Po-yu [5] (Fish Primus). No mention is made of the birth of any other children, though we know, from Ana. V. i, that he had at least one daughter. We know also, from an inscription on her grave, that he had one other daughter, who died when she was quite young. The fact of the duke of Lu's sending him a gift on the occasion of Li's birth, shows that he was not unknown, but was already commanding public attention and the respect of the great.
It was about this time, probably in the year after his marriage, that Confucius took his first public employment, as keeper of the stores of grain [6], and in the following year he was put in charge of the public fields and lands [7]. Mencius adduces these employments in illustration of his doctrine that the superior man may at times take office on account of his poverty, but must confine himself in such a case to places of small emolument, and aim at nothing but the discharge of their humble duties. According to him. Confucius, as keeper of stores, said, 'My calculations must all be right:-- that is all I have to care about;' and when in charge of the public fields, he said, 'The oxen and sheep must be fat and strong and