You certainly know what 《Lún Yǔ》(论语)is. That’s what you are here for. This course is intended to those who wish to know in great detail about this great work. So much the better if you have a fundamental grasp of the Chinese language. But, if you haven’t, it does not really matter. You would get a firm and basic understanding of the work. I wish now to seek out a few to tell us what they know about 《Lún Yǔ》.
…
There are at lease three versions of translation of the title: namely—Analects of Confucius, Discourses of Confucius and Sayings of Confucius. I personally think any one of them is good. But, what does the original mean?
Both Dong Zhongshu (董仲舒179-104BC, a thinker and statesman of Han who proposed to regard Confucianism as the only doctrine while discarding a hundred others) and Sima Qian (司马迁145-87BC,historian) quoted from 《Lún Yǔ》,yet they didn’t mention the title.
Based on the bamboo slips of the State of Chu, 《Lún Yǔ》might have been compiled by the disciples of Confucius or the students of these disciples in the middle period of the Warring States. “Lún” means discussion or exposition; “Yǔ” does not only mean a language, but rather a type of writing of the time onto the bamboo slips after being passed down verbally. We can now see the above translations of the title fail to convey what it means in the original. Yet, we could not find anything identical to it in English.
Description: