Three Character Classic

Last updated
ᠮᠠᠨᠵᡠᠨᡳᡴᠠᠨᡥᡝᡵᡤᡝᠨᡳᡴᠠᠮᠴᡳᠮᡝᠰᡠᡥᡝᠰᠠᠨᡯᡤᡳᠩᠪᡳᡨᡥᡝ (Wylie: Manchu nikan ghergen i kamtsime sughe San tsz' ging pitghe; Möllendorff: Manju nikan hergen-i kamcime suhe San ze ging ni bithe).

The most well-known English translation of the text was completed by Herbert Giles in 1900 and revised in 1910. [7] The translation was based on the original Song dynasty version.[ citation needed ] Giles had completed an earlier translation in the late 19th century but he rejected that and other early translations as inaccurate. Earlier translations into English include those by Robert Morrison, 1812; Solomon Caesar Malan and Hung Hsiu-chʻüan, 1856, and Stanislas Julien, 1864.

A Christian Three Character Classic (Chinese: 新增三字經; Pinyin: Xīnzēng Sānzì Jīng) by Walter Henry Medhurst was first published in 1823 as an aid to missionary education. The three-character rhyming format was retained but the content was completely different. [8]

Vietnam

The first and second page of Tam tu kinh thich nghia San Zi Jing Shi Yi . It shows the original text of the Three Character Classic San Zi Jing annotated with the Vietnamese translation. Tam tu kinh thich nghia San Zi Jing Shi Yi .png
The first and second page of Tam tự kinh thích nghiã 三字經釋義. It shows the original text of the Three Character Classic 三字經 annotated with the Vietnamese translation.
In the book, Tam tu kinh giai am dien ca, shows the original text of San Zi Jing alongside the Vietnamese translation. Tam tu kinh giai am dien ca.jpg
In the book, Tam tự kinh giải âm diễn ca, shows the original text of 三字經 alongside the Vietnamese translation.

The Three Character Classic was also translated into Vietnamese, with the book Tam tự kinh thích nghiã 三字經釋義 having chữ Nôm characters annotating the original text. [9]

Three Character Classic
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese 三字經
Simplified Chinese 三字经
Hanyu Pinyin Sānzì Jīng
First two lines of Tam tự kinh thích nghiã 三字經釋義
Original textVietnamese transliterationVietnamese translationVietnamese alphabet
三字經Tam tự kinh𠀧𡨸經Ba chữ kinh
人之初性本善Nhân chi sơ tính bản thiện𠊛蒸易性本𫅜Người chưng dịch tính vốn lành
性相近習相遠Tính tương cận tập tương viễn性拱𧵆習拱賒Tính cũng gần tập cũng xa

There are other books such as Tam tự kinh giải âm diễn ca 三字經解音演歌 that has the original text of the Three Character Classic alongside the Vietnamese translation. [10]

First two lines of Tam tự kinh giải âm diễn ca 三字經解音演歌
Original textVietnamese transliterationVietnamese translationVietnamese alphabet
三字經Tam tự kinh經𠀧𡨸Kinh Ba chữ
人之初性本善Nhân chi sơ tính bản thiện𠊛蒸𱢎生𠚢性𡗶賦本僐Người chưng xưa sinh ra tính trời phú vốn thiện
性相近習相遠Tính tương cận tập tương viễn性共𧵆習共賒Tính cũng gần tập cũng xa

Differences in texts

The following stanzas do not appear in the Giles translation and originally appeared in Simplified Chinese. They list the dynasties that followed the Song dynasty up to and including the founding of Republican China. These stanzas were probably added cumulatively sometime between late 13th century and after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

Simplified Chinese Traditional Chinese Pinyin Translation
辽与金　皆称帝遼與金　皆稱帝liáoyǔjīn jiēchēngdìThe Liao and Jin (dynasties),
both claimed to be emperors.
太祖兴　国大明　号洪武　都金陵太祖興　國大明　號洪武　都金陵tàizǔxīng guódàmíng hàohóngwǔ dūjīnlíng Taizu rises,
his country is the Great Ming.
His regnal name is Hongwu,
his capital at Jinling.
迨成祖　迁燕京　十六世　至崇祯迨成祖　遷燕京　十六世　至崇禎dàichéngzǔ qiānyànjīng shíliùshì zhìchóngzhēnBy the time Chengzu started ruling,
he moved (his capital) to Yanjing.
(His dynasty) lasted for sixteen successions,
until the Chongzhen Emperor.
阉乱後　寇内讧　闯逆变　神器终閹亂後　寇內訌　闖逆變　神器終yānluànhòu kòunèihòng chuǎngnìbiàn shénqìzhōng Eunuchs stir up trouble in the palace,
rebels cause internal conflict.
The Dashing King starts a rebellion,
the Divine Utensil comes to an end.
清顺治　据神京　至十传　宣统逊清順治　據神京　至十傳　宣統遜qīngshùnzhì jùshénjīng zhìshíchuán xuāntǒngxùnThe Shunzhi Emperor of Qing,
seized the Imperial Capital.
After ten generations,
the Xuantong Emperor abdicated.
举总统　共和成　复汉土　民国兴舉總統　共和成　復漢土　民國興jǔzǒngtǒng gònghéchéng fùhàntǔ mínguóxìngA President is elected,
the Republic is formed.
Chinese soil was recovered,
the Republic of China flourishes.
廿二史　全在兹　载治乱　知兴衰¹廿二史　全在茲　載治亂　知興衰¹niànèrshǐ quánzàizī zàizhìluàn zhīxīngshuāiThe Twenty-two Dynastic Histories,
are all embraced in the above.
They contain examples of good and bad government,
whence may be learnt the principles of prosperity and decay.

¹ this line replaces the original one in the Song version where it says "The Seventeen Dynastic Histories... 十七史...".

Reception

The first two lines were recited at the Academy Awards 2021 by Chloé Zhao, the award winner for best director. [11] [12]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ "San Zi Jing". Library of Congress . Retrieved 2010-08-15.
  2. ↑ Minjie Chen (22 January 2016). The Sino-Japanese War and Youth Literature: Friends and Foes on the Battlefield. Routledge. pp. 15–. ISBN   978-1-317-50881-6.
  3. 1 2 Scollon, Ron; Suzanne Wong Scollon; Rodney H. Jones (3 January 2012). Intercultural Communication: A Discourse Approach. Vol. 35. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 166–167. ISBN   9780470656402.
  4. ↑ Kutcher, Norman (2006). Mourning in Late Imperial China: Filial Piety and the State . Cambridge University Press. pp.  27. ISBN   9780521030182.
  5. ↑ Johnson, David; Andrew James Nathan (1987). Popular Culture in Late Imperial China. University of California Press. p. 29. ISBN   9780520061729.
  6. ↑ Rawski (1979), pp. 46–48.
  7. ↑ "Elementary Chinese ... San tzu ching". Shanghai, Kelly & Walsh. 1900.
  8. ↑ Guo, Hong (2022-11-15), "From Children's Instructional Textbook to Missionary Tool: the Publication History of the Christian Three-Character Classic from 1823 to 1880", Beyond Indigenization: Christianity and Chinese History in a Global Context, BRILL, pp. 202–224, ISBN   978-90-04-53212-0 , retrieved 2023-04-23
  9. ↑ "Tam-tự- kinh thích-nghĩa. 三字經釋義". Bibliothèque nationale de France. 1873.
  10. ↑ "三字經解音演歌 | Tam tự kinh giải âm diễn ca". Nom Foundation. 1888.
  11. ↑ "Chloé Zhao accepts Best Director Academy Award for 'Nomadland'". GMA . April 26, 2021. Archived from the original on 2021-12-12. Retrieved April 27, 2021. It's called the Three Character Classics. And the first phrase goes: 人之初, 性本善 - - People at birth are inherently good
  12. ↑ "This year's Oscars could have been a moment of pride for China. Then politics got in the way". cnn.com. April 26, 2021. Retrieved April 27, 2021. Zhao said she used to recite classic Chinese poems and texts with her father, and one particular line from the Three Character Classic -- "People at birth are inherently good" -- had helped her keep going when things got hard.

Related Research Articles

Chinese classic texts or canonical texts or simply dianji (典籍) refers to the Chinese texts which originated before the imperial unification by the Qin dynasty in 221 BC, particularly the "Four Books and Five Classics" of the Neo-Confucian tradition, themselves a customary abridgment of the "Thirteen Classics". All of these pre-Qin texts were written in classical Chinese. All three canons are collectively known as the classics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heart Sutra</span> Popular sutra in Mahāyāna Buddhism

The Heart Sūtra is a popular sutra in Mahāyāna Buddhism. In Sanskrit, the title Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya translates as "The Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom".

<i>Thousand Character Classic</i> Chinese educational poem that uses exactly 1,000 characters, each appearing once

The Thousand Character Classic, also known as the Thousand Character Text, is a Chinese poem that has been used as a primer for teaching Chinese characters to children from the sixth century onward. It contains exactly one thousand characters, each used only once, arranged into 250 lines of four characters apiece and grouped into four line rhyming stanzas to make it easy to memorize. It is sung, much as children learning the Latin alphabet sing an "alphabet song." Along with the Three Character Classic and the Hundred Family Surnames, it has formed the basis of literacy training in traditional China.

The Three Treasures or Three Jewels are theoretical cornerstones in traditional Chinese medicine and practices such as neidan, qigong, and tai chi. They are also known as jing, qi, and shen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Śūraṅgama Sūtra</span> Sutra in Mahāyāna Buddhism

The Śūraṅgama Sūtra is a Mahayana Buddhist sutra that has been especially influential on Korean Buddhism and Chinese Buddhism. It was particularly important for Zen/Chan Buddhism. The doctrinal outlook of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra is that of Buddha-nature, Yogacara thought, and esoteric Buddhism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jingjiao Documents</span> 7th and 8th century Chinese Christian documents

The Jingjiao Documents are a collection of Chinese language texts connected with the 7th-century mission of Alopen, a Church of the East bishop from Sassanian Mesopotamia, and the 8th-century monk Adam. The manuscripts date from between 635, the year of Alopen's arrival in China, and around 1000, when the cave at Mogao near Dunhuang in which the documents were discovered was sealed.

The Three Hundred Tang Poems is an anthology of poems from the Chinese Tang dynasty (618–907). It was first compiled around 1763 by Sun Zhu (1722–1778), who was a Qing Dynasty scholar and was also known as Hengtang Tuishi. Various later editions also exist. All editions contain slightly more than 300 total poems. The number 300 was a classic number for a poetry collection due to the influence of the Classic of Poetry, which was generally known as The Three Hundred Poems.

<i>Jingdian Shiwen</i>

Jingdian Shiwen, often abbreviated as Shiwen in Chinese philological literature, was a c. 583 exegetical dictionary or glossary, edited by the Tang dynasty classical scholar Lu Deming. Based on the works of 230 scholars during the Han, Wei, and Six Dynasties periods, this Chinese dictionary analyzes the pronunciations and meanings of terms in the Confucian Thirteen Classics and the Daoist Daodejing and Zhuang Zi. It also cites some ancient books that are no longer extant, and are only known through Jingdian Shiwen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Huangfu Mi</span> Chinese scholar and physician (215–282)

Huangfu Mi (215–282), courtesy name Shi'an, was a Chinese physician, essayist, historian, poet, and writer who lived through the late Eastern Han dynasty, Three Kingdoms period and early Western Jin dynasty. He was born in a poor farming family in present-day Sanli village, Chaona, Pingliang, despite being a great-grandson of the famous general Huangfu Song, via Song's son Huangfu Shuxian.

The Huangdi Yinfujing, or Yinfujing, is a circa 8th century CE Daoist scripture associated with Chinese astrology and Neidan-style Internal alchemy. In addition, Huangdi Yinfujing is also the name of a Chinese Fengshui text on military strategy.

The Wenzi is a Daoist classic allegedly written by a disciple of Laozi. The text was widely read and highly revered in the centuries following its creation, and even canonized as Tongxuan zhenjing in the year 742 CE. However, soon afterwards scholars started questioning its authenticity and dismissing it as a forgery that was created between the Han dynasty and the Tang dynasty. The text's fate changed in 1973, when archeologists excavated a 55 BCE tomb and discovered remnants of a Wenzi copied on bamboo strips, which offer us a glimpse of what the text looked like prior to its drastic revision into the current text.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neijing Tu</span> Diagram in Daoism

The Neijing Tu is a Daoist "inner landscape" diagram of the human body illustrating Neidan'internal alchemy', Wu Xing, Yin and Yang, and Chinese mythology.

The Qingjing Jing is an anonymous Tang Dynasty Taoist classic that combines philosophical themes from the Tao Te Ching with the logical presentation of Buddhist texts and a literary form reminiscent of the Heart Sutra. It instructs students of the Tao to practice the elimination of desire in order to cultivate spiritual purity and stillness.

<i>Dunhuang Go Manual</i> Earliest surviving manual on Go

The Dunhuang Go Manual or Dunhuang Go Classic or simply the Classic of Go is the earliest surviving manual on the strategic board game of Go. Dating from the 6th century and written in Chinese, it exists as a single manuscript that was discovered in the 'Library Cave' of the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, China by Aurel Stein in 1907, and which is now in the collection of the British Library in London, England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chữ Nôm</span> Writing system for the Vietnamese language using Chinese characters

Chữ Nôm is a logographic writing system formerly used to write the Vietnamese language. It uses Chinese characters to represent Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary and some native Vietnamese words, with other words represented by new characters created using a variety of methods, including phono-semantic compounds. This composite script was therefore highly complex, and was accessible only to the small proportion of the Vietnamese population who had mastered written Chinese.

Manchu became a literary language after the creation of the Manchu script in 1599. Romance of the Three Kingdoms was translated by Dahai. Dahai translated Wanbao quanshu 萬寶全書.

The Shenglei 聲類, compiled by the Cao Wei dynasty lexicographer Li Deng 李登, was the first Chinese rime dictionary. Earlier dictionaries were organized either by semantic fields or by character radicals. The last copies of the Shenglei were lost around the 13th century, and it is known only from earlier descriptions and quotations, which say it was in 10 volumes and contained 11,520 Chinese character entries, categorized by linguistic tone in terms of the wǔshēng 五聲 "Five Tones " from Chinese musicology and wǔxíng 五行 "Five Phases/Elements" theory.

<i>Zitong</i> (dictionary) Chinese dictionary of orthography

The (1254) Zitong 字通 or Mastery of Characters is a Chinese dictionary of orthography that was compiled by the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279) scholar Li Congzhou 李從周. It discussed logographic differences among Chinese characters written in the ancient Qin dynasty seal script, standard Han dynasty clerical script, and contemporary Song regular script.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chữ Hán</span> Chinese characters used in the Vietnamese traditional writing system

Chữ Hán, chữ Nho or Hán tự, are the Vietnamese terms for Chinese characters, used to write Literary Chinese and Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary in Vietnamese language, was officially used in Vietnam after the Red River Delta region was incorporated into the Han dynasty and continued to be used until the early 20th century where usage of Literary Chinese was abolished alongside the Confucian court examinations.

<i>Tam thiên tự</i> Vietnamese book depicting about 3000 Chinese characters glossed with chữ Nôm

Tam thiên tự is a Vietnamese text that was used in the past to teach young children Chinese characters and chữ Nôm. It was written around the 19th century. The original title of the text was originally Tự học toản yếu The book was believed to be complied by Ngô Thì Nhậm ; courtesy name, Hy Doãn.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.