Three-Character Classic st.21-23, attrib. Wang Yinglin

[lnhammer]

21.
We speak of joy and anger,
We speak of sorrow and fear,
Of love and hate and desire:
Seven emotions we feel.

曰喜怒
曰哀惧
爱恶欲
七情具

22.
Pottery, gourds, and leather,
Wood and stone and metal,
Silken strings, bamboo:
From these, the eight timbres.

匏土革
木石金
与丝竹
乃八音

23.
Great-great- and great- and grandfather,
Then father, and then you,
Yourself and then your son,
Your son and then your grandson,
And through your son and grandson
To great- and then great-great-:
From these nine relations
Come men’s generations.

高曾祖
父而身
身而子
子而孙
自子孙
至玄曾
乃九族
人之伦

• 22: Why it’s important to teach littles the traditional materials for making musical instruments escapes me. But then, why so many contemporary books for urban littles revolve around farm animals also escapes me. • 23: Literally, great-great-grandfather is “high(er),” great-grandfather is “great-” (as in English, there’s a prefix for that), great-grandson is “deep(er),” and great-great-grandson is “great-” again.

---L.

Comments

[sartorias]

The numbers thing is so deeply imbedded. So much so that when Mao was destroying as much of old culture as he could, he used numbers. (The four olds, etc)

[lnhammer]

My uninformed theory, entirely unsupported by any evidence, is that all those canonical numbered sets is related to the importance of "rectification of names."