The Works of Confucius; Containing the Original Text, With a Translation. To Which is Prefixed a Dissertation on the Chinese Language and Character. [The Analects of Confucius].

MARSHMAN, Joshua [Confucius].

$35,000.00

Item Number: 131224

Serampore: Printed at the Mission Press, 1809.

First English translation of the Analects of Confucius complete with the rare Dissertation on the Chinese Language and Character, here bound in a separate volume. Quarto, two volumes bound in three quarter morocco over marbled boards with gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, illustrated with 2 folding charts on Chinese characters, 4 further tables on 2 folding leaves, postscript at rear. In fine condition. Exceptionally rare, particularly with Marshman’s separately printed dissertation present including the tables and charts.

The first English translation of the Analects (Lunyu) of Confucius, Baptist missionary Joshua Marshman's translation contains the first five of a projected series of twenty books and was printed at Serampore, the first major center of English printing in Chinese. The first complete translation by James Legge was published decades later in 1861. A collection of sayings attributed to Confucius, the Analects was one of the primary texts underpinning the Confucian system which held sway over China for two millennia. Confucius believed that the welfare of a country depended on the moral cultivation of its people, beginning from the nation's leadership and taught that a ruler's sense of virtue was his primary prerequisite for leadership. His primary goal in educating his students was to produce ethically well-cultivated men who would carry themselves with gravity, speak correctly, and demonstrate consummate integrity in all things. Joshua Marshman, William Carey, and William Ward established a Baptist mission and press at Danish-controlled Serampore in 1800, beyond the control of the East India Company. The Company discouraged missionary activity and maintained a policy of press censorship within its territories. Marshman and his fellow missionaries had ambitious plans for proselytizing across Asia, and he had studied Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Syriac before he even reached India. In India, he first learned Bangali and Sanskrit. Next, he turned to Chinese, which he studied intensively under the guidance of Johannes Lassar, scion of a wealthy Armenian trading family in Macao, and assisted by several Chinese tutors. This book dates from the first phase of Chinese language printing in Serampore, with Chinese characters printed using woodblocks carved by Bengali textile workers employed to print patterns onto calico. The Chinese publications for the Mission Press were principally evangelical; Lassar and Marshman translated large sections of the Old and New Testaments into Chinese, and saw Serampore as an ideal position from which to spread the Chinese gospel, free from imperial Chinese censorship. The East India Company too was increasingly interested in the study of Chinese for political reasons. Their Indian territories abutted the Chinese forts in Tibet, and the memory of Macartney's diplomatic failure in 1792 remained fresh. Another diplomatic mission would require translators, and the Company had no competent Chinese interpreters in India at the turn of the century. Marshman dedicated this work to the Governor-General of Bengal, Lord Minto, who subsidized the cost of printing in Chinese at Serampore, despite his personal hostility to missionary activity with British India.