Translation of Mencius - Teng Wen Gongzhang Sentence (I)

Verse 1: When Teng Wengong was still the crown prince, he was going to the Chu Kingdom and visited Mencius when he passed through his home country. Mencius told him that kindness is the nature of man, and the topic was not far from Yao Shun.

　　The crown prince returned from the Chu kingdom and came to visit Mencius again. Mencius said: Does the prince not believe my words? The reasoning is the same. Cheng Fei said to Jing Gong: He is a man, I am also a man, why am I afraid of him? Yan Yuan said: What kind of person Shun is, what kind of person am I, and people who have done things will also be like him. Gong Mingyi said, 'King Wen is my teacher; will Zhou Gong deceive me?' At present, tengguo, if it cuts the length of the territory and makes up for the short, it is nearly fifty miles in circumference. It can also be governed as a good country. The Book of Shang says that if medicine does not make people dizzy, the disease will not be cured.

Verse 2: When Teng Dinggong died, the prince said to his teacher Ranyou: The last time I was in the Song Kingdom, Mencius and I talked a lot, and I remembered it in my heart for a long time. Unfortunately, my father died today, and I would like to ask you to consult Mencius first, and then do the funeral.

　　Ranyou then went to zou guo to ask Mencius for advice.

　　Mencius said: Very good! The funeral of a parent should have been dedicated. ZengZi said: When their parents are alive, they serve them according to etiquette; when their parents die, they are buried according to etiquette, and they are worshipped according to etiquette, which can be called filial piety. I have not specifically studied the etiquette of the princes, but I have heard of it. During the three-year mourning period, he wore filial piety clothes made of coarse cloth and drank thin porridge. From the Son of Heaven to the common people, Xia, Shang, and the Three Dynasties were like this.

　　Ran You returned to China to report to the prince, and the prince decided to carry out the funeral for three years. Teng Guo's father and old officials were unwilling. They said: The successive monarchs of our suzerainty of the Lu kingdom have not practiced this, nor have our own ancestors practiced this, and it is not right for your generation to change the practice of our ancestors. Moreover, it is said in the Zhi: 'Funeral and worship of ancestors are all in accordance with the rules of the ancestors.' He also said: The truth is that we have inheritance.

　　The prince said to Ranyou: I have not done any learning in the past, I only like to run horses and dance swords. Now my father and the old officials are dissatisfied with my three-year funeral, I am afraid that I will not be able to handle this important matter, please ask Mencius for me again!

　　Ran You went to Zou Guo again to consult Mencius. Mencius said: We must persist in doing this and cannot change it. Confucius said: When the king dies, the prince entrusts all government affairs to the family agent and drinks porridge every day. His face was dark, and he wept as soon as he was in the position of filial piety, and no official, big or small, dared not be sad, because the prince himself took the lead. If the person in the upper position has any preference, the person below will definitely like it more. The virtue of the leader is the wind, and the virtue of the common people is the grass. When the grass is blown by the wind, it is bound to fall with the wind. So, it's all up to the prince.

　　Ran You returned to China to report to the prince.

　　The prince said: Yes, this matter really depends on me.

　　So the prince lived in the funeral home for five months without issuing any orders or prohibitions. Officials and people of the same clan were very much in favor of it, believing that the prince knew the etiquette. On the day of the burial, people from all over the world came to watch, and the sadness of the prince's face and the mourning of the weeping made the people who came to mourn very satisfied.

Section 3: Teng Wengong asks questions about governing the country.

　　Mencius said: "The affairs of the people cannot be postponed, and the Book of Verses says: 'Hurry up and cut the thatch during the day, and rub the rope all night long.' Seize the time to fill the leaky house, and plant hundreds of grains at the beginning of the year. The principle of the people's life is that those who have fixed industries have the confidence to live a fixed life, and those who do not have a fixed industry do not have the confidence to live a fixed life. If you don't have the confidence to live a fixed life, you will be debauched and willful, do whatever you want, and do no evil. Waiting until they are caught in the net of sin and then punishing them is tantamount to setting up a trap to frame the people. Where is there a monarch who loves the people and is in power, but he does something to frame the people? Therefore, a wise monarch must be humble and frugal, a courtesy corporal, and a system for collecting taxes from the people. Yang Hu said: 'Those who can be rich are not benevolent, and those who can be benevolent will not be rich.' 'During the Xia Dynasty, each family granted fifty mu of land and implemented the tribute law, during the Shang Dynasty, each family granted seventy mu of land and implemented the auxiliary law, and during the Zhou Dynasty, each family granted 100 mu of land and implemented the thorough law, and in fact the taxes levied were all one out of ten. What is thoroughfa? Thoroughness is the meaning of extraction; help is the meaning of dependence. Ryuko said, "The tax system for managing land is best based on the law of assistance, and the law of tribute is the worst." The so-called tribute method is to take a fixed number based on the harvest in the past few years. Regardless of the year of good fortune or disaster, it is necessary to tax according to this determined amount of tax. Harvests are harvested every year, grain is everywhere, and it is not harsh to levy more, but it is not overcharged; in the year of disaster, the harvest of each family is not even enough to pay for the fertilizer field in the second year, but it must be levied at this rate. As the monarch of the people's parents, even if the people look at them angrily and work hard all year round, they are not enough to support their parents, but they still have to rely on loans to collect enough taxes, resulting in the old and weak and young dying in the ravine wilderness, where can they still be called the parents of the people? The system of inheriting Feng Lu in that generation had already been implemented by Teng Guo. The Book of Verses says, 'The rain waters our public fields, but at the same time it nourishes my private fields.' Only by practicing the auxiliary law can there be public land, and from this poem, the Zhou Dynasty also practiced the auxiliary law.

　　"In addition, it is necessary to open a school, a preface, a school, and a school to educate the people. The so-called "ku" means to cultivate; the so-called school means to teach; the so-called order means to state in an orderly manner. In the Xia Dynasty, it was called a school, the Yin Shang Dynasty was called a preamble, and the Zhou Dynasty was called a "study"; this 'learning' was common to three generations, all of which were to educate the people to understand the ethical relationship between people, the ethical relationship between people was understood by the upper levels, and the small people could be close to the lower levels. If a wise king arises, he will inevitably learn this law, for it is imitated by the king. The Book of Poetry says: 'Although the Zhou Kingdom is an old state, it has become a new state due to the trend of the times. This is a compliment to King Wen of Zhou. If you work hard to implement these things, you can also make your country a new one! ”

　　Teng Wengong sent Bi Zhan to ask questions about the Ida system.

　　Mencius said, "Your monarch will implement a policy of loving the people, and he has specially chosen you to come, and you must work hard!" The so-called policy of loving the people must start from the demarcation of the longitude and latitude of the field. If the boundary between longitude and latitude is not correct, Ida will not be even, and the tax collector will not be fair. Therefore, the tyrannical monarch and corrupt officials must not pay attention to the boundary between longitude and latitude of the land. Once the boundary between longitude and latitude of the field is correctly divided, how to divide the field soil and the land can be sat down and agreed.

　　"Teng Guo, on the other hand, although the land is small, must also have officials and peasants who cultivate the fields in the same way. Without officials, there is no way to manage the peasants, and without the peasants, there is no way to feed the gentlemen who are officials. I hope that you will implement the nine-point-one-one-point method in the fields, and the tax law of one-tenth in the capital city to let people pay by themselves. Officials below the secretary of state must have a field for sacrifice, which is fifty acres; the rest of the people must give twenty-five acres of land. Neither the burial nor the relocation leave the scope of the township, and the fields in the township must be the same well field system, and people accompany each other when they go in and out of labor, help each other when resisting thieves, and take care of each other when there is an illness accident, so that the people will love and harmonize. Within a mile's radius, there is one well field, one well field is nine hundred acres, one piece of land in the middle is public land, and each of the eight families takes one hundred acres as private land, but they must jointly take care of the public land; after the public land is done, they can only do private affairs; this is the way to distinguish between peasants. This is only a rough situation, and as for how to be more sound and perfect, it depends on the monarch and you. ”