and the (sage) king is also great.According to the Chinese text featured in Jonathan Star's book, the operative word for this line is wang. Wang can be defined as king, royalty or the highest aspect of man. Of the translations above, I think Derek Lin captures all three definitions in his word, sovereign.
~ James Legge translation, from The Sacred Books of the East, 1891 ~
The king is also great."
~ Gia-fu Feng and Jane English translation, published by Vintage Books, 1989 ~
The sovereign is also great
~ Derek Lin translation, from Tao Te Ching: Annotated & Explained, published by SkyLight Paths, 2006 ~
And someone who's in touch with Tao is great, too.
~ Ron Hogan rendition, from Beatrice.com, 2004 ~
While the sovereign certainly can allude to a political or religious leader, it can concurrently allude to each of us as well. In a manner of speaking, we each are the sovereign over our own hearts. Consequently, one could certainly view this line as saying that all of us are great and the reason we are great is because of our connection to Tao, heaven, earth and each other.
To view the Index page for this series to see what you may have missed or would like to read again, go here.
Well, only to the extent that "wang" follows or imitates earth, heaven and Tao. There's a kind of sequential thing here, but that comes in the next lines.
ReplyDeleteMay I take some credit for this observation? I'll have you speaking and thinking in Chinese soon!
Some credit? You deserve all of it!!
ReplyDeleteXie xie ni.
ReplyDelete