RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299
183

scholar, Zhu Xi (TM※

The correct interpretation of The Great Learning had become very controversial, partly because Zhu Xi and other Song dynasty scholars had freely reorganized the original text, and partly because there had grown up more and more disagreement surrounding Zhu Xi's interpretation of it. Legge was aware of these issues, having relied on later Ming and Qing dynasty criticism of Zhu Xi in his translation. Legge's practice, in both editions of his translation of The Great Learning, was to present the orthodox interpretation following Zhu Xi, but to reflect criticisms of it in some of his translation and in many of his commentarial notes." Kühnert assumed that the Zhu Xi interpretation was always correct.

Two years later, however, Arthur von Rosthorn wrote a concise critique of Kühnert's work, pointing out both its errors in translation and highlighting the more well-informed renderings which Legge had given the text.20

Another battle over Legge's Taoist translations prompted claims that he had not investigated original sources. Countering this Taoist "Leggism", Ted Kingsmill supported the renderings and interpretations of Herbert Giles, who himself made strong accusations against Legge. Most of Kingsmill's attacks were blatant misrepresentations; Giles' position was more well informed, but was based on sceptical premises Legge regarded as fallacious.21 Had the master translator unintentionally mutilated his Taoist texts?

During this century a number of less doctrinaire criticisms have been made, drawing attention to places where Legge made errors in translation, although the number of errors detected is surprisingly small.22

IV. Distortions aimed at Discrediting Confucius

Less than one year after Legge's death, in 1898, a Pastor P Kranz began a series of articles entitled "Some of Professor J. Legge's Criticisms on Confucianism." The persistent claim was that Legge had expressed major reservations regarding Confucius and Confucianism, and that these reservations were well justified. Kranz skewed Legge's intentions by adding emphasis to Legge's statements
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299
211

11

Critical positions in this debate are found in the following articles: Herbet A. Giles, **The Remains of Lao-tzu**, China Review 14 (1885-1886), pp. 231-281, with replies to Legge in China Review, 16 (1887-1888). pp. 238-241 and 17 (1888-1889), pp. 299-300; T. W. Kingsmill in articles in ibid., 17 (1889-1890), pp. 305-310 and 23 (1898-99), pp. 265-270. Legge's own work and response appears in ibid., 16 (1888-1889), pp. 195-214, and "The Tao Teh King", The British Quarterly Review (July 1883), pp. 41-59.

12

Recent editions of The Four Books in the Chinese Classics include critical notes of translation errors by Arthur Waley. (Originally from "Notes on Mencius", first published in Asia Major ns 1:1 (1949), pp. 99-108.) A Taiwanese scholar has also published some helpful corrections of translation errors in Legge's Analects, but has many times included as errors the same kind of criticisms which Kühnert had made: preferring Zhu Xi's renderings to Legge's, even when Legge's disagreements with Zhu Xi were justified. See Yen Chen-ying, (MHkk) Li Ya-ko shih Ying-shih Lun-yu chin yen-chiuZU (A Study of the English Translation of the [Analects] by James Legge) (Taipei: Commercial Press, 1971). A more recent study of Zhu Xi's interpretation of The Great Learning includes some criticism of Legge's position, cf. Daniel K. Gardner, Chu Hsi and the Ta-hsüeh: Neo-Confucian Reflection on the Confucian Canon (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1986), esp. p. 107.

27

Kranz, Pastor P, ed, "Some of Professor J. Legge's Criticisms on Confucianism", The Chinese Recorder 29 (June 1898), pp. 273-282; (July 1898), pp. 341-343; (August 1898), pp. 380-388; (September 1898), pp. 440-445.

24

Cf "Professor J. Legge's Change of Views concerning Confucius". The Chinese Recorder 35:2 (February 1904), pp. 93 ff. “Some New Dimensions in the Study of the Works of James Legge (1815-1897): Part II', Sino-Western Cultural Relations Journal XIII (1991), pp. 33-46.

25

Helen Legge, James Legge: Missionary and Scholar (London: Religious Tract Society. 1905).

34

Soothill, W. E. The Three Religions of China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923). Lindsay Ride tells how a group of sinologists, meeting in Oxford at the Orientalist Congress of 1928, visited the gravesite of the Legge family, leaving a wreath with a card proclaiming: "To the immortal genius of the great master, James Legge, from the sinologists assembled at the 17th Congress of Orientalists at Oxford, August 31st, 1928"*. Ride provides no source for this information.

17

Ride, op. cit., p.10.

28

Cf. The Famine in China (no publisher's details, 1878). Oxford University Gazette 1876-77, pp. 309, 368; 1879-80, p. 421. The Religions of China: Confucianism and Taoism described and compared with Christianity (Spring Lecture of the Presbyterian Church of England for 1880, delivered in the College, Guilford Street, London) (London: Hodder and Stoughton 1880); Christianity and Confucianism compared in their teaching on the Whole Duty of Man (London: Religious Tract Society, 1883); also Christianity in China: A Rendering of the Nestorian Tablet at Si-An-Fu to Commemorate Christianity (London: Trübner and Co. 1888).

ZV

Stein's study appears as an introduction to the re-publication of a translation of The Four Books by David Collie. William Bysshe Stein, ed., David Collie, trans. The Chinese Classical Work Commonly Called The Four Books (Gainesville, Florida: 1970, reprint Malacca 1828), Introduction. I have chosen Stein's comments as an example because it is relevant to the understanding of Legge's efforts. Collie began teaching at the Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca in 1824, produced a translation of most of The Four Books, and died four years later while in Malacca. Although Legge never met Collie, he did discover his work and studied it carefully during his first years in Malacca and Hong
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