Yao and Shun

Summary

Yao 堯 and Shun 舜 are the two sage kings of early Chinese tradition, whom the Confucians make the model of just rule. Their story is one story: an old king looks for a successor outside his own house, finds him in a poor man of the common people, tests him and gives him the throne; and Shun, grown old, does the same, giving the throne to Yu rather than to his son.

The Book of Documents opens the "Canon of Yao" with his character: Yao, named Fangxun 放勛, was reverent, wise and modest, his light reached the four quarters, and he joined first his kin, then his people, then all the states. He ordered Xi and He to follow vast heaven with reverence, to observe the sun, moon and stars and to teach people their seasons, and he fixed the year at three hundred and sixty-six days, with an intercalary month to keep the seasons in place. Then he asked: who is fit for my work? They proposed his son Zhu; he said: deceitful and quarrelsome. They proposed Gonggong; he said: he speaks well, but when he acts he goes against it; he looks reverent, but he swells up to the sky. Then he said to the chiefs of the Four Peaks: the flood is spreading destruction, it embraces the mountains, rises over the hills and swells up to heaven, and the people lament; who can control it? They said: Gun. He said: he disobeys orders and ruins his kin. They said: try him. Gun worked nine years without success.

Then Yao said to the chiefs: I have reigned seventy years; will one of you take my place? They said: none of us is worthy of it. He said: raise up the worthy, even from among the lowly. They said: among the people is an unmarried man named Shun, the blind man's son; his father is stubborn, his mother deceitful, his brother Xiang arrogant, yet by his filial devotion he has kept them in harmony, so that they have not fallen into evil. Yao said: I will test him, and gave him his two daughters in marriage. He then tested him with the five rules, which he upheld; with the hundred offices, which he set in order; with receiving guests at the four gates, which he did well; and sent him into the great forest, where in storm, thunder and rain he did not lose his way. After three years Yao said: ascend the throne. Shun held back, saying others were more worthy, then took charge as Yao's regent. He banished Gonggong to the north, banished Huandou and the Sanmiao tribes, and put Gun to death on Feather Mountain, and the world was content. Yao died twenty-eight years later; the people mourned him as they mourn their parents, and for three years no music was played. Then Shun made Yu minister of works to level water and land, and set a man over each task: farming, teaching, justice, crafts.

The Shiji tells what Shun bore from his family. His blind father Gusou 瞽叟 wanted to kill him: he told him to plaster the roof of the granary and set fire to it from below, and Shun came down shielding himself with two bamboo hats like wings and escaped. Then he told him to dig a well; Shun dug a hidden side passage, and when he was down, his father and Xiang filled the well with earth, and Shun came out through the passage. The father and Xiang rejoiced, thinking him dead; Xiang said: it was my plan; I take his two wives and his lute, the parents take the cattle, sheep and granaries; and he sat in Shun's house playing his lute. Shun came in; Xiang, startled, said: I was thinking of you and grieving; and Shun said: so you should. Afterwards he served his father and treated his brother better than before. The book says Shun ploughed at Mount Li and the people there yielded their boundaries to one another; he fished at Lei Marsh and they yielded their places; he made pottery by the river and his pots had no flaws; where he lived became a village in a year, a town in two, a city in three. Yao knew that his son Danzhu was unworthy, and said: I will not in the end harm the whole world to benefit one man, and gave Shun the throne. When Yao died, Shun withdrew south of the southern river to leave the throne to Danzhu, but the lords, the litigants and the singers went to Shun and not to Danzhu, and Shun said: it is Heaven, and took the throne. Shun died on a tour in the south at Cangwu and was buried in the Jiuyi mountains; his son Shangjun was also unworthy, and he put Yu forward.

The idea the story turns on is that rule is given to the one fit for it, not to the one who inherits it. Yao rejects his son because he is quarrelsome and takes a man who owns nothing, because that man has kept peace in a house where someone wanted to kill him; a king who can manage such a house can manage the world. The test itself goes from inside to outside: the wives, then the rules, then the offices, then the guests, then the forest and the storm. Mencius gives the last word: Yao did not give the world to Shun, for a king has no power to give it; Heaven gave it, and Heaven does not speak but shows its will through deeds and events: Shun was set to preside over the sacrifices and the spirits accepted them, and set over the people's affairs and the people were content.

We read the names in the Arabic tongue like this, as readings proposed on the method. 堯 was *[ŋ]ˤew in Old Chinese, a back nasal and w, and in Chinese it means "high". Read the back nasal as j, and the name is jaww, which in Lane is "the air; what is between the heaven, or sky, and the earth". So Yao on this reading is "the sky", the high one near heaven, which is what Confucius says: "Great indeed was Yao as a ruler! Only Heaven is great, and only Yao modelled himself on it." 舜 was *[s.t]u[n]-s; the s. at the front is an uncertain pre-initial and the final -s the tone suffix, which leaves a t, u and n: dāna. In Lane dāna lahu is "he obeyed him"; dintuhu, "I served him, did service for him, ministered to him, and acted well to him"; dānahu, "he requited him for his deed"; and "I ruled, governed, or managed him". So Shun on this reading is "he who obeyed": he obeyed and served his father while his father was trying to kill him, then ruled the people and requited the guilty.

Linguistic Root

Baxter and Sagart give 堯 as *[ŋ]ˤew, "high", bracketing the initial because its identity is uncertain; the mark after it shows pharyngealization. The Shennong page reads the back nasal as j, and j and w are the letters of jaww; the w after the vowel answers the doubled w. They give 舜 as *[s.t]u[n]-s, "hibiscus", with the pre-initial s. bracketed, the n bracketed and the tone suffix after it. Take away the prefix and the suffix and t and n remain; t and d stand in one group of tongue-tip letters in the Juthoor laws, and the u between them answers the y of d-y-n in the verb form dāna.

In Lane under j-w: jaww, "the air; or what is between the heaven, or sky, and the earth", as in the Qur'anic "in the jaww of the sky", in the air between heaven and earth, or in the middle of the sky; jaww is also low ground and the wide part of a valley. Under d-y-n: dāna lahu, "he obeyed him"; dintuhu, "I served him, did service for him, ministered to him, and acted well to him"; dānahu, "he repaid, requited" him for his deed, whence the proverb "as thou requitest thou shalt be requited"; and dintuhu, "I ruled, governed, or managed him". All these senses are in Shun's story: he obeyed his father, served Yao for twenty-eight years, then ruled, then requited the four guilty men.

The weak points are that reading the back nasal as j has only one precedent, and that Baxter and Sagart bracket the initials of both names. If the s at the front of 舜 belongs to the root rather than being a prefix, the letters are s-d-n, the letters of sadana, which in Lane is to serve as minister or door-keeper of the House; that meets Shun's service to Yao and does not leave the sense of dāna. Neither of the project's Chinese essays names Yao or Shun, so the readings are proposed on the method.

Key Mythic Narratives

Those who denied the abdication

Not every early book accepted the story of the abdication. Xunzi says in "Correcting Errors": the common talk is that Yao and Shun abdicated; it is not so, for the Son of Heaven is too high to yield to anyone, and when a sage dies the one fit for the task takes it up. Han Feizi puts a harsher version in the mouths of treacherous ministers: Shun pressed Yao, Yu pressed Shun, Tang banished Jie and King Wu attacked Zhou; these four were subjects who killed their rulers, and the world praises them. So the story of the king who gives the throne to the worthiest remained a story argued for and against.

Shun, who did not tell his father

A disciple asks Mencius: the Odes say that a man who would marry must tell his parents; how could Shun marry without telling them? Mencius answers: had he told them they would not have let him marry, and the union of man and woman is the greatest of human bonds; had he told them he would have given up that bond and turned against his parents. The disciple asks: did Shun not know that Xiang meant to kill him? He knew, says Mencius, but Xiang came to him in the way of a loving brother, so he believed him and was glad.

Symbolic Reading

The Chinese essay rereading the myths reads the flood as a lesson in engineering: Gun blocks the water and fails, Yu guides it with channels and succeeds; and it makes the first emperors men of inventions. In the "Canon of Yao" men are chosen by that same measure: Gun is taken only on trial and removed when he fails, Yu is chosen because he is fit for the work, and Shun gives each task to the one who knows it, so that every office is a craft. The Amazigh essay rereading the myths reads the Amazigh king, the aguellid, as a king chosen by the council of the tribes and removed if he errs, not a king by divine right. That is close to what Mencius says: the king puts the man forward, and Heaven accepts him when the people are content with him.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

It is told of Numa, second king of Rome, that he was not of Romulus's house nor a Roman, but a Sabine known for justice and piety, chosen by the senate and the people when the throne stood empty. Numa then refused to reign until the gods were consulted: the augur sat watching the birds, and when the signs came he was proclaimed king. In both stories the king comes from outside the house because he is worthy, and heaven accepts him by a sign: birds among the Romans, and among Mencius's words the spirits who accept the offerings and the people who are content.

At Ugarit Yassib, the eldest son of Kirta, comes in to his sick father and says: you have not tried the case of the widow, you have not judged for the powerless, you do not feed the orphan; step down from your kingship, and I shall be king. Here the son claims the throne because the father has not been just; Yao keeps the throne from his son because the son is quarrelsome. In both stories it is justice that earns the throne.

In the Shahnameh Jamshid divides the people by their crafts and gives each work to its people, as Shun sets a man over each task: farming, teaching, justice, crafts. But at the end of his reign Jamshid says that everything came from him, and the glory leaves him; Shun holds back from the throne, saying others are more worthy.