有獻不死之藥於荊王者

This following text is a short story from the book of 韓非子. Contrary to the previous stories, there is no moral message that would arise from the text. The storyline is quite simple, there’s not a lot of difficult vocabulary and a lot of it is being repeated throughout the text. Most of the grammar I have already covered in my previous posts, so I will probably skip a lot of things this time and make the analysis more straightforward. I still feel that one of the greatest things while reading these texts is the fact that I can directly read and understand something that’s been written such a long time ago, absorb the atmosphere and I hope that after being able to read them at natural speeds you will feel the same.

Text:

有獻不死之藥於荊王者

有獻不死之藥於荊王者。謁者操之以入。中射之士問曰。可食乎。曰。可。因奪而食之。王大怒。使人殺中射之士。中射之士使人說王曰。臣問謁者。曰。可食。臣故食之。是臣無罪而罪在謁者也。且客獻不死之藥。臣食之而王殺臣。是死藥也。是客欺王也。夫殺無罪之臣而明人之欺王也。不如釋臣。王乃不殺。

Seal Script:

有献不死之药于荆王者

有献不死之药於荆王者。谒者操之以入。中射之士问曰。可食乎。曰。可。因夺而食之。王大怒。使人杀中射之士。中射之士使人说王曰。臣问谒者。曰。可食。臣故食之。是臣无罪而罪在谒者也。且客献不死之药。臣食之而王杀臣。是死药也。是客欺王也。夫杀无罪之臣而明人之欺王也。不如释臣。王乃不杀。

  

Translation:

有獻不死之藥於荊王者                 

There was a man who wanted to give the pill of immortality to the King of Jing

1有獻不死之藥於荊王者。            

There was a man who wanted to give the pill of immortality to the King of Jing.

2謁者操之以入。                                        

The butler took the pill from him and entered the king’s room.

3中射之士問曰。可食乎.               

A guard asked him: “Can the pill be eaten?”

4曰。可。因奪而食之。                

The butler said: “Yes”. The guard took the pill and ate it.

5王大怒。使人殺中射之士。        

The king got very angry and sent someone to kill the guard.

6 中射之士使人說王曰。                

The guard sent the same man to the king, in order to persuade the king not to do so:

7臣問謁者。曰。可食。臣故食之。                

I asked the butler whether the pill can be eaten and he said yes, so I ate it.

8臣無罪而罪在謁者也。                

I am not guilty and the guilt lies on the butler.

9且客獻不死之藥。                                    

And.. the pill was given to us by a stranger.

10臣食之而王殺臣。是死藥也。  

If I eat the pill and You king will indeed succeed in killing me, it will be a pill of mortality that I ate.

11是客欺王也。                              

This will mean that a stranger has fooled You king.

12夫殺無罪之臣而明人之欺王也。

This way, you will kill an innocent servant and let the people know that You’ve been fooled.

13不如釋臣。                                  

By all means letting me go is what you should do.

14王乃不殺。                                  

And the king thus didn’t kill his servant.

Vocabulary:

獻 - xian4 - to give, to hand over (Modern Chinese – 貢獻 - contribute) 

藥 - yao4 - pill, medicine

荊 - Jing1 - The state of Jing

操 - cao1 - to hold sth. in your hands

奪 - duo2 - to snatch, to take

怒 - nu4 - anger

罪 - zui4 - crime, guilt

欺 - qi1 - to fool sbd.

釋 - shi4 - to let go, release.  (Modern Chinese - 解釋 – explain)

乃 - nai3 - thus

謁者 - ye4zhe3 - the butler*

中射之士 - zhong1she4zhi1shi4 - The guard. Literally – The supervisor of medium range archers.

臣 - chen2 - 1. 1^st person pronoun while talking to higher officials

                         2. governmental official

* 謁 - means to announce, so technically this word should be translated as the “Usher”. It was the person that used to announce visits to the king’s throne room.

Sentence structure analysis:

In the above translations I was trying to be as “poetic” as possible in order for the sentences to sound natural in English and I will try for the following explanations to be more literal.

1 有獻不死之藥於荊王者 

This is a 有.. 者 construction which I think I have mentioned in some of the previous posts. It is the equivalent of the English there is, French il y a, German es gibt, Spanish hay and so on. As mentioned before, all Classical Chinese sentences should be translated in past tense, therefore有.. 者 simply means There was a.., where the subject is put between有 and 者. We can thus isolate and analyze the following sentence:

-	獻	不死之藥	於	荊王
Subject	Predicate	direct object	preposition	Ind. Object
-	Give	Pill of immortality	To	King

The explanation of 不死之藥 is pretty straight forward, where之 acts as 的 in Modern Chinese.

2. 謁者操之以入

This sentence can be divided into two sections:

謁者	操	之
The butler	To take	It
Subject	Verb	Object

以	入
With it	To enter

The first part of the sentence is very straightforward and needs no further explanation, but in the second part we can see the particle 以, which often poses difficulties for students.

以is very disproportional, when it comes to the relation between its length (a simple short yi3) and its meaning. Even though, it has been pronounced differently back when it has been written (it must’ve been longer, possibly combining two words into one character), but while reading Classical Chinese texts today it takes some time to get used to the fact that the syllable is truly very short and the meaning is quite complex.

以 has a lot of different meanings, but in this particular case it literally means to “take the object that has been mentioned somewhere in the sentence before and carry out the action that is indicated by the verb immediately following 以”.

English translations of 以 are quite tricky, because they depend on the situation the sentence is describing. When I come across an 以 of this type, I usually replace it with “take it and..” in my mind, where “it” is the object mentioned previously. This is not a very professional translation so put into English, in this case we can translate 以 as “with it”.

3中射之士問曰。可食乎。

These two sentences are very straight forward and for those who’ve read my previous posts on Classical Chinese they should pose no problems. 乎 in this case is a final sentence exclamatory particle and could almost be replaced by a question mark.

4曰。可。因奪而食之。

           

因	-	奪	-	而	-	食	之
Then	He	To take	It	And	He	To eat	It
Adver. Conj.	Subject	predicate	Object	Conj.	subject	predicate	Object

These three sentences are again quite straight forward and I think that from now on it is ok not to analyze simple sentences into detail, since the reader should be quite good in doing so on his/her own. In these sentences, the only confusing part might be the fact that 2 subjects and one object were omitted and the fact that 因 usually means “reason” (as in the modern 原因) and in fewer instances “then, later” as it is the case in this last sentence.

5王大怒。使人殺中射之士。

            

王	大	怒
King	Extremely, very	To get angry
Subject	Adverb	Predicate

Here we can see a very typical feature of Classical Chinese, which is the ambiguity of its vocabulary. 大 can have a lot of meanings. It can mean “big”, “to be big” or “very” or maybe even “make something big” had there been a direct object present in the sentence. In this case it is an adverb meaning “very”.  怒 in this case acts as a predicate meaning “to be angry” and not as an adjective meaning “angry”.

As for the second sentence, there are 2 predicates 使 and 殺, which together form the construction “send to kill”.  人 means “someone” and not “person, people”.

6 中射之士使人說王曰。

This is again a simple sentence and needs no analysis. We can see the same 使人 + predicate construction as in the previous sentence. 說 does not mean “to say” but “to persuade”. 人 again means “someone” and not “person, people” but if you look at the order of events in the story, it seemed to me, that it would be better to translate it into English as “The guard sent the same man to the king in order to persuade him not to do so”.

7臣問謁者。曰。可食。臣故食之。

Here we have direct speech. The sentences are easy to analyze, but you have to pay attention to who is saying what. 曰 in this case belongs to the 謁者 – the butler.  You know this because there is no exclamatory interrogative particle after 可食, it is thus a declaration and not a questions and logically could not have been said by the servant. While talking to the king, the servant has used the self-derogatory 1st person pronoun 臣 – “I your servant”.

8臣無罪而罪在謁者也。

Again direct speech “I am not guilty and the guilt lies on the butler”. Here we see that “to be guilty” in Classical Chinese was expressed as “the guilt lies on someone - 罪在人”. 也 in this case is an exclamatory particle.

 9且客獻不死之藥。

We are still looking at direct speech here. Not much to analyze here either. 客 means “guest, stranger, foreigner” and 且 is the same as today’s而且 meaning “moreover, and..”

10臣食之而王殺臣。是死藥也。

The first sentence is a compound sentence, but still should be no problem to analyze, the full stop at the end is a bit confusing and it really should be a comma, because the sentence continues. “..and You king will succeed in killing me, that would mean that it is a pill of mortality (as opposed to the pill of immortality that the story is about).” 是 in this case means “that means that..”. My translation into English again is a bit different to suit the situation: “If I eat the pill and You king will indeed succeed in killing me, it will be a pill of mortality that I ate.”.  也 again is an exclamatory particle.

11是客欺王也。

是 again has the meaning of “that means, ..”. 欺 can be found in the modern 欺負 – “to bully someone, to mock someone, to make fun of someone”. 也 is an exclamatory particle.

12夫殺無罪之臣而明人之欺王也。

This is arguably the most difficult sentence in this text. 夫 has several meanings and it also means “therefore” assuming that the preceding sentence is true, which is this case in this situation. Now a complicated compound sentence with 3 predicates follows:

殺無罪之臣而明人之欺王也

It can be further divided into two sentences separated by the而 conjunction:

1st sentence:

-	殺	無罪之臣
-	To kill	Innocent servant
Subject	Predicate	Object

罪 means “guilt” or “guilty”, 無 is a negative aspect, and 之 has the same function as the 的 in modern Mandarin and together they mean “the servant with no guilt”.

2nd sentence:

-	明	人	之
-	To enlighten	People	That
Subject 1	Predicate 1	Object 1	Subordinate construction marker

-	欺	王	也
-	To fool	King	-
Subject 2	Predicate 2	Object 2	Exclamatory particle

In the first part of the second sentence, we see the predicate 明, which is usually an adjective which means “clear, bright”, but if a direct object is present, it can be used verbally as “to enlighten someone, to make it clear to him”.  人 in this case means “people” as opposed to the previously used “someone”. 之 has several very important meanings as mentioned in previous posts, but in this case it acts as a subordinate construction marker which means that it is used to combine two predicates and their relation is different than using a simple conjunction such as 而 – “and”. This explanation works in most cases, but sometimes you just have to use common sense to understand sentence relations. In the simplest form 之 can be translated as “that” as in “I know, that you..”.

The rest of the sentence can best be translated passively as “.., that the king has been fooled”. This is a very rugged translation and my attempt to put it into nice English looks like this: “This way, you will kill an innocent servant and let the people know that You’ve been fooled.”. 也 again is an exclamatory particle.

13不如釋臣。

This is a confusing sentence at first, because 不如 literally means ”is not equal to”. After a bit of thought you can come up with a more suitable English equivalent for the situation which is a simple “you should”, therefore 不如釋臣 – “you should let me go”. The whole sentence is then literally translated as “it (killing me and causing people to understand that you’ve been fooled) is not equal to letting me go”.

14王乃不殺。

This is a very simple sentence which needs no explanation with 乃 meaning “thus" and 殺 not having an object.