Проблемы китайского и общего языкознания. К 90-летию С. Е. Яхонтова

 590  David Sehnal   that Confucius was a Confucian not more that Jesus was Christian; the same applies to the Book of Laozi and the later taoists.) The verse in Laozi resembles a proverb of its time and it is plausible to think that Zengzi could have used it only elliptically and it was immediately understood. Our new reading of this passage from Lunyu moreover does not involve any commentary, while the intellectual parameters of its interpretation are not inferior to the traditional reading. Of course, it shifts the Confucius’ pupil Zengzi from the position of an orthodox ritualist more into the position of a political thinker. e) One’s own critical judgement. To the correct meaning we are often lead by the logic of the passage and the context. Except for specific cases when the author deliberately uses word-play, we must every time take into account only a single meaning which exactly fits into all considered circumstances. It it is enforced by the logic or context, we can generate this meaning by ourselves according to the common rules from meanings which are already recorded but which do not fit exactly into the given context. The most im- portant principle is that Classical Chinese, despite of its stylistic laconicism, was not “vague” in that sense that one single word could have meant several things at the same time , even with its all possible connotations. Of course, we can think of several equally plausible readings of a passage, but finally we have to decide in favour of only one of them. It is necessary to develop a sense for filtering off the wrong hypotheses and to learn, as Harbsmeier says, “listen to the music of the text”. I will present another example: In Chapter XXXIV there is such verse: 大道氾兮，其可左右。 Practically all translators interpret the given verse in the following sense: “When the Great Dao prevails like a flood, alas, it can [flow] to the left and [also] to the right.” Let us give a brief thought to this seemingly unproblem- atic interpretation: If Dao refers to the general natural law, then this natural law is omnipres- ent and this sentence does not make a good sense at all (in Chinese we would put it as 廢話 ). It is also hard to explain the presence of the modal 可 k ě whose subject is the natural law which would be prone to choose from some alternatives. If Dao refers to the proper way of government, we also do not know what to imagine under this sentence. The left and right side in Old China had ritual meaning, they had no relationship to the government. Of course, one can say that it is Laozi’s poetic image, a personification of the natural law etc. and to sweep the thing under the carpet. But even if it were a poetic image, we