THREE Six Dynasties Reading of the Analects

子曰：「二三子以我為隱乎？吾無隱乎爾。 吾無行而不與二三子者，是丘也。」 The Master said, “Do you, my friends, think that I conceal anything from you? There is nothing that I conceal. There is no act of mine that I do not share with you, my friends: this is Qiu.”

The following anecdote, like many in the Shishuo xinyu, is structured like a joke, in that its claim on the audience’s interest, and on being handed down and retold, hinges on the revelation of something paradoxical or unexpected: 南郡龐士元聞司馬德操在潁川，故二千里候之。至，遇德操采桑，士 元從車中謂曰：「吾聞丈夫處世，當帶金佩紫，焉有屈洪流之量，而 執絲婦之事？」德操曰：「子且下車。子適知邪徑之速，不慮失道之 迷。昔伯成耦耕，不慕諸侯之榮，原憲桑樞，不易有官之宅。何有坐 則華屋，行則肥馬，侍女數十，然後為奇？此乃許、父所以慷慨， 夷、齊所以長歎。雖有竊秦之爵，千駟之富，不足貴也。」士元曰： 「僕生出邊垂，寡見大義，若不一叩洪鍾、伐雷鼓，則不識其音響 也。」 Pang Shiyuan [zi of Pang Tong 統 (177–214)] of Nan commandery heard that Sima Decao [zi of Sima Hui 徽 (d. 208)] was at Yingchuan; so he traveled two thousand li to pay a call on him. When he arrived, it happened that Decao was plucking mulberry leaves. Shiyuan, without descending from his carriage, ad- dressed him, saying, “I have heard that a real man in this world ought to wear the gold seal and purple ribbon at his waist—who has ever heard of demeaning one’s vast capacities to perform the tasks of a silkworm-tending farmwife?” De- cao said, “Step out of the carriage, sir. You know only the quickness of taking shortcuts and have not considered the error of losing one’s way. In the past Bo Cheng plowed in tandem with his wife, not aspiring to the honors of a feudal lord; Yuan Xian would not exchange his shack with its gate-pivot of mulberry 112 Six Dynasties Reading of the Analects wood for the mansion of an official. What makes you think that in order to be an outstanding talent one must have splendid halls for sitting in, fat horses for riding, and several dozen female attendants? This was why Xu You and Chao Fu were stirred to sadness, and why Bo Yi and Shu Qi emitted lingering sighs. Al- though one have rank such as that Lü Buwei finagled from the Qin or riches to command a thousand chariot teams, none of these is worthy of esteem.” Shi- yuan said, “Your servant was born and bred on the frontier, where we rarely glimpse the great significance. If I did not strike the resounding bell or beat the thundering drum, how could I have come to know their sound?”1 The key moment here is the revelation at the anecdote’s close that Pang Tong’s abrasive and scornful opening remark to Sima Hui was intended neither as an expression of contempt, nor as a statement of Pang Tong’s actual opinions, but as a provocation aimed at giving Pang Tong the chance to hear and savor the tone of this illustrious hermit-scholar’s response.2 Sima Hui’s response, with its antithetically balanced periods and its classical references, is eloquent in a rather formal (perhaps even bombastic) way. Thus there is a humorous reversal as we are forced to shift the way we hear it in light of Pang Tong’s revelation: rather than a lofty-minded elder berating a muddle-headed young man, what we have been hearing is the senior figure performing for the appreciation, and at the instigation, of the junior. This anecdote also reveals something of contemporary assumptions about the nature and dynamics of a culturally central type of conversa- tion: that between a figure of moral authority and his interlocutors. The model text for this mode of conversation was the Analects. The Shishuo xinyu itself, after all, is presented as a supplement to and continuation of the Analects: the rubrics for its first four categories of exemplary an- ecdotes, “virtuous conduct” (德行), “speech and conversation” ( 言語), “affairs of state” (政事), and “letters and scholarship” (文學), are lifted from Analects 11.3, where Confucius uses these categories to classify several of his disciples.3 Both the Analects and the Shishuo xinyu, more- over, are texts that reflect a pervasive effort to preserve the effect of real-time conversational exchange. In fact the staging of the above an- ecdote about Pang Tong and Sima Hui is loosely reminiscent of certain episodes in the Analects, particularly the encounters between Confucius and hermits. We might for example sense in the story’s opening a skewed or inverted echo of the scene at Analects 18.5 in which Confu- cius, riding in his carriage, encounters Jie Yu, the “Madman of Chu.”