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(NPPLC) Chapter #31 李寄


somethingfunny

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This thread is for the discussion of chapter thirty-one in A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese by Paul Rouzer.

 

I've stolen the text from here and although the punctuation looks a little different, it was the first one I found in traditional characters.

 

東越閩中,有庸嶺,高數十裏,其西北隙中,有大蛇,長七八丈大十余圍,土俗常懼。東治都尉及屬城長吏,多有死者。祭以牛羊,故不得福,或與人夢,或下谕巫祝,欲得啖童女年十二三者。都尉令長並共患之,然氣厲不息,共請求人家生婢子,兼有罪家女養之,至八月朝,祭送蛇穴口,蛇出吞齧之。累年如此,已用九女。爾時預複募索,未得其女。將樂縣李誕家有六女。無男,其小女名寄,應募欲行。父母不聽。寄曰:“父母無相,惟生六女,無有一男。雖有如無。女無缇萦濟父母之功,既不能供養,徒費衣食,生無所益,不如早死;賣寄之身,可得少錢,以供父母,豈不善耶!”父母慈憐,終不聽去。寄自潛行,不可禁止。寄乃告請好劍及咋蛇犬,至八月朝,便詣廟中坐,懷劍,將犬,先將數石米餈,用蜜麨灌之,以置穴口,蛇便出。頭大如囷,目如二尺鏡,聞瓷香氣,先啖食之。寄便放犬,犬就齧咋,寄從後研得數創,瘡痛急,蛇因踴出,至庭而死。寄入視穴,得其九女髑髅,悉舉出,咤言曰:“汝曹怯弱,爲蛇所食,甚可哀愍。”于是寄女緩步而歸。越王聞之,聘寄女爲後,指其父爲將樂令,母及姊皆有賞賜。自是東治無複妖邪之物。其歌謠至今存焉。

 

I was hoping to have a little break but if I'm going to get Rouzer fully put to bed before the end of the year I might have to come back to this sooner rather than later.  There should be a few days for anyone to make some first comments, or even provide your own translation if you're interested.

 

Happy reading.

 

Edit:  Ah c**p, I got the chapter number wrong in the topic title, can a moderator change it 31 please?  Thanks!

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OK,

 

This story is pretty badass, a little bit dark and fairly straightforward.  It also comes in quite a nice rhythm and its written in nice little punchy phrases.  I'm going to stick to not providing a full translation but instead just go straight into things that can be discussed.  As this is a fairly simple story, theres not much apart from grammar that has me confused, but I'll still provide a little comment at the end.

 

  1. 大十余圍  I feel Rouzer is a little misleading here as in his definitions he indicates the meaning of 围 here to be 'handspan', which gives the sense that this phrase means 'its bigness was more than 10 handspans', which I guess is OK if I can interpret 大 as having some kind of reference to the snakes girth, which is what I'm assuming we're talking about here.
  2. In the first part of the story, the snake - either through dreams or talking to shamans - lets the people know of its fondness for eating 12/13 year old-girls which bothers the authorities, at which point a poisonous gas comes out and kills them all!  What??  I understand each individual part, but not how they link together in terms of physical space and over time.  The bit I refer to is:  尉令長並共患之,然氣厲不息
  3. 共請求人家生婢子  Rouzer has this down as "maidservants born into people's families" but I don't see how he gets there.
  4. 父母慈憐,終不聽去  What's this 去 doing here?

 

That's pretty much it in terms of big problems, I once again got clarification from a modern mandarin translation here, although unlike previous lessons, I was pretty clear on what had happened before consulting that.

 

I have to say, I'm not sure whether I should be impressed by Ji's actions, or shocked at the ineptitude of the officials.  If all it took to kill the snake was a little girl with a sword and a dog, why couldn't any of them do it?  Not even getting into the idea of a girl killing an 80 foot long evil snake.

 

For me, the real take away message from this lesson was here:  父母無相,惟生六女,無有一男。雖有如無。女無缇萦濟父母之功,既不能供養,徒費衣食,生無所益,不如早死.  Who the f**k is this girl?  Was she just thinking out loud here or was she actually saying it to her parents?  I mean... 雖有如無.  For me this hands down beats the Mencius' mother three-paths bad sexism.  

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