Textual issues : Reinterpretation of Classic Anecdotes in the Huainanzi

Discussion -> Textual issues -> Reinterpretation of Classic Anecdotes in the Huainanzi

2009-05-11 22:48:29Reinterpretation of Classic Anecdotes in the Huainanzi
Posted by: moleitau (Arun)	Hello everybody, First of all, I would like to say that I am blown away by the thoroughness and helpfulness of this site. Not only is there an option to view this entire database in fanti/jianti, but the built-in dictionary I have only recently discovered is extremely useful. I have spent the past semester in a class on Early Daoist Syncretism (in translation), but have been trying to follow along, mostly successfully, in the original texts. For my final paper for the class, I am examining the disparities between certain anecdotes retold in the Huainanzi and their original narrative contexts. I thought this would be interesting based on the disparities in the story "Zixia goes to see Zengzi" (Appearing in both the HNZ and the Han Fei zi): 喻老: 子夏見曾子，曾子曰：「何肥也？」對曰：「戰勝故肥也。」曾子曰：「何謂也？」子夏曰：「吾入見先王之義則榮之，出見富貴之樂又榮之，兩者戰於胸中，未知勝負，故臞。今先王之義勝，故肥。」是以志之難也，不在勝人，在自勝也。故曰：「自勝之謂強。」 and here is the HNZ version: "故子夏見曾子，一臒一肥。曾子問其故，曰：「出見富貴之樂而欲之，入見先王之道又說之。兩者心戰，故臒；先王之道勝，故肥。」推其志，非能貪富貴之位，不便侈靡之樂，直宜迫性閉欲，以義自防也。雖情心鬱殪，形性屈竭，猶不得已自強也。故莫能終其天年。" As you can see, the HNZ is mocking the point made in the HFZ. This is exactly the kind of stuff I'm looking for, and this site has been extremely helpful so far...but that particular anecdote is one that I remembered in a textbook, so I got lucky in that sense. It is much more difficult to dig through all the anecdotes and attempt to find inconsistencies. My question is, is there some easy way to go about this search? So far, I have been searching for the key names of characters in HNZ anecdotes, and while some stories have come up, they are either in passing reference or practically the same text verbatim. If anybody has any suggestions, I would much appreciate it. Thanks -- this is a great site!

2009-05-11 22:48:29Reinterpretation of Classic Anecdotes in the Huainanzi

Posted by: moleitau (Arun)

Hello everybody,
First of all, I would like to say that I am blown away by the thoroughness and helpfulness of this site. Not only is there an option to view this entire database in fanti/jianti, but the built-in dictionary I have only recently discovered is extremely useful.
I have spent the past semester in a class on Early Daoist Syncretism (in translation), but have been trying to follow along, mostly successfully, in the original texts. For my final paper for the class, I am examining the disparities between certain anecdotes retold in the Huainanzi and their original narrative contexts. I thought this would be interesting based on the disparities in the story "Zixia goes to see Zengzi" (Appearing in both the HNZ and the Han Fei zi):

喻老: 子夏見曾子，曾子曰：「何肥也？」對曰：「戰勝故肥也。」曾子曰：「何謂也？」子夏曰：「吾入見先王之義則榮之，出見富貴之樂又榮之，兩者戰於胸中，未知勝負，故臞。今先王之義勝，故肥。」是以志之難也，不在勝人，在自勝也。故曰：「自勝之謂強。」

and here is the HNZ version:

"故子夏見曾子，一臒一肥。曾子問其故，曰：「出見富貴之樂而欲之，入見先王之道又說之。兩者心戰，故臒；先王之道勝，故肥。」推其志，非能貪富貴之位，不便侈靡之樂，直宜迫性閉欲，以義自防也。雖情心鬱殪，形性屈竭，猶不得已自強也。故莫能終其天年。"

As you can see, the HNZ is mocking the point made in the HFZ. This is exactly the kind of stuff I'm looking for, and this site has been extremely helpful so far...but that particular anecdote is one that I remembered in a textbook, so I got lucky in that sense. It is much more difficult to dig through all the anecdotes and attempt to find inconsistencies.

My question is, is there some easy way to go about this search? So far, I have been searching for the key names of characters in HNZ anecdotes, and while some stories have come up, they are either in passing reference or practically the same text verbatim. If anybody has any suggestions, I would much appreciate it.

Thanks -- this is a great site!

2009-05-12 07:19:42Reinterpretation of Classic Anecdotes in the Huainanzi
Posted by: dsturgeon (Donald Sturgeon)	Thanks for your comments - I'm glad you've found the site useful. I don't know of any resources that provide exactly what you're looking for, but your question is one that ideally a database system like this should be able to answer. This site does have a way of encoding parallel passages (the presence of which is shown by a little yellow icon beside the particular paragraph), but this is at the moment used to indicate passages which are substantially the same, rather than different tellings of the same anecdote. Support for searching this data will be added in the near future, and it would be possible to add support for encoding other relations between passages of text like that in your example. However, since such parallel passages cannot be reliably detected automatically by software, each one has to be added by hand and so the database of these parallels is by no means exhaustive. One thing which might be useful to you if you are looking for parallels to a particular text is the Raw parallel passage data - this is the raw output of a program which looks for identical strings of characters in different texts in the database. If you know what you're looking for, this data may sometimes be helpful - in the case of your example, if you look at the output for 喻老, it shows that the text "出見富貴之樂" is repeated in 淮南子·精神訓, which might be enough to suggest some parallel, though of course only by actually comparing the texts will it be clear what sort of parallel (if any) is implied by the shared string of characters.

2009-05-12 07:19:42Reinterpretation of Classic Anecdotes in the Huainanzi

Posted by: dsturgeon (Donald Sturgeon)

Thanks for your comments - I'm glad you've found the site useful. I don't know of any resources that provide exactly what you're looking for, but your question is one that ideally a database system like this should be able to answer.

This site does have a way of encoding parallel passages (the presence of which is shown by a little yellow icon beside the particular paragraph), but this is at the moment used to indicate passages which are substantially the same, rather than different tellings of the same anecdote. Support for searching this data will be added in the near future, and it would be possible to add support for encoding other relations between passages of text like that in your example. However, since such parallel passages cannot be reliably detected automatically by software, each one has to be added by hand and so the database of these parallels is by no means exhaustive.

One thing which might be useful to you if you are looking for parallels to a particular text is the Raw parallel passage data - this is the raw output of a program which looks for identical strings of characters in different texts in the database. If you know what you're looking for, this data may sometimes be helpful - in the case of your example, if you look at the output for 喻老, it shows that the text "出見富貴之樂" is repeated in 淮南子·精神訓, which might be enough to suggest some parallel, though of course only by actually comparing the texts will it be clear what sort of parallel (if any) is implied by the shared string of characters.

2009-06-27 15:31:59Reinterpretation of Classic Anecdotes in the Huainanzi
Posted by: bao_pu (Scott Barnwell)	Thanks for the link to "Raw parallel passage data." It's a promising feature that I hadn't noticed before.
Posted by: bao_pu (Scott Barnwell)

2009-07-31 03:13:53Reinterpretation of Classic Anecdotes in the Huainanzi
Posted by: chunzai (chunzai)	富貴之樂勝亦可榮
Posted by: chunzai (chunzai)

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