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First, a few words about the text, after which I will introduce the Sinologist who undertook this monumental philological task, Manfred W. Frühauf.

English:

The Mu Tianzi Zhuan, or Records of [King] Mu, the Son of Heaven, is con­sider­ed to be the ear­liest and longest ex­tant trav­e­logue in Chinese literature. It describes the jour­neys of King Mu (r. 976-922 BC or 956-918 BC) of the Zhou Dynasty (c.1046-256 BC) to the farthest corners of his realm and beyond in the 10th century BC. Harnessing his famous eight noble steeds he visits dis­tant clans and nations such as the Quanrong, Chiwu, and Jusou, exchanging gifts with all of them; he scales the awe-inspiring Kunlun mountains and meets with legendary Xiwangmu ("Queen Mother of the West"); he watches exotic animals, and he orders his men to mine huge quantities of precious jade for transport back to his cap­i­tal. The travelogue ends with a de­tailed account of the mourning ceremonies during the burial of a favorite lady of the king.

Irrespective of the question of its literary specifics and merits, the Mu Tianzi Zhuan (MTZZ) may be regarded as a treas­ure house of primary source in­for­mation on Chinese Bronze Age di­plo­ma­cy, describing contacts with various clans, ethnic groups, and foreign peoples such as the Ximo, Yilü-Shi, Zhanhan-Shi, Gu­zhan-Shi, Chongyong-Shi etc., from a Zhou dynasty per­spective. Stored in a grave probably in the Warring States era (c.475-221 BC) , the Mu Tianzi Zhuan escaped the burn­ing of books by Qin Shi­ Huang ("First Emperor of the Qin [Dynasty]" [and hence of China]) in the year 213 BC, as it came back to daylight only around 280 AD. This is one of the reasons why this find was considered a great discovery at the beginning of the Jìn dynasty (226-420). All claims to the authenticity of the travelogue are weakened by the obvious dearth of archeological finds cor­rob­o­rating the far-flung travelogue. Edward L. Shaugh­nessy speaks of a gen­er­al retreat to the capital area in the after­math of the catastrophic failure of King Zhao’s (1027-957 BC) expedition to the South, which makes large scale expedi­tions of his son, King Mu, into the far West — as seem­ingly de­scribed in the Mu Tianzi Zhuan — rather unlikely. On the other hand, Shaughnessy has also shown that the names of several per­sons men­tioned in the trav­e­logue can also be found on excavated Western Zhou bronzes dated to the era of King Mu, persons whose names are not at­tested else­where in orthodox clas­sical Chinese literature.

German

Das Mu Tianzi Zhuan, übersetzbar als „Überlieferungen von [König] Mu, den Sohn des Him­mels“, gilt als äl­tester er­haltener Reisebericht in der chinesischen Literatur­ge­schich­te. Da­rin werden die Reisen be­schrie­ben, die Kö­nig Mu, fünfter Herrscher der dynastischen Zhou, im 10. Jahrhundert v. u. Z. zu den ent­fern­testen Orten sei­nes Rei­ches und darüber hin­aus un­ter­nom­men haben soll. Mit ei­nem Ge­spann aus den be­rühm­ten acht edlen Pfer­den be­sucht er weit entfernte Familienclans und Völ­kerschaften wie z. B. die Quan­rong, Chi­wu oder Jusou und tauscht mit ih­nen allen Ge­schen­ke aus. Er be­steigt das Ehr­furcht ge­bie­ten­de Kunlun-Ge­birge und trifft mit der le­gen­dären Xi­wangmu zu­sammen. Er be­obachtet exotische Tiere, und er befiehlt seinen Män­nern, große Men­gen wert­voller Ja­de zu bre­chen und in seine Haupt­stadt zu bringen. Fast sprich­wört­lich ge­wor­den ist die Feststellung im antiken Zuo­zhuan, wo­nach „einst Kö­nig Mu … eine Rei­se durch die gan­ze Welt (tianxia) un­ter­neh­men [woll­te], auf daß sich über­all sei­ne Wa­gen­spu­ren und die Hufab­drücke sei­ner Pfer­de fänden.“ Der Rei­se­be­richt endet mit einer de­taillierten Beschreibung der Trau­er­fei­er­lich­keiten wäh­rend der Be­stat­tung einer Fa­vo­ri­tin des Königs.

Unabhängig von der Frage nach seiner Genrezugehörigkeit und seinen literarischen Qualitä­ten kann man das Mu Tianz­i Zhuan als Schatzkammer voller Primärinformationen über diplo­ma­tische Ak­ti­vi­täten in der chi­nesischen Bron­ze­zeit ansehen, denn es berichtet ‒ aus der Perspektive des Zhou-Königs­hau­ses ‒ über Kontakte mit ver­schie­de­nen Fa­milienverbänden, ethnischen Grup­pen und frem­den Völ­kern wie z. B. den Ximo, Yi­lü-Shi, Zhan­han-Shi, Gu­zhan-Shi, Chong­yong-Shi u. a. Da das Mu Tianzi Zhuan ‒ vermut­lich in der Ära der Kämpfen­den Rei­che (Zhan­guo) ‒ in ein Grab eingelagert wur­de, ent­ging es der Bü­cher­ver­brennung 213 v. u. Z. durch Qin Shi Huang, denn der Text kam erst etwa um das Jahr 280 u. Z. wieder ans Tageslicht. Dies ist einer der Grün­de, wa­rum der Fund zu Beginn der Jìn-Dynastie gro­ße Auf­merksamkeit auf sich zog.

Allen Behauptungen über die Authentizität des Mu Tianzi Zhuan steht der offenkundige Mangel an ar­chäo­lo­gi­schen Fun­den ent­gegen, die diesen weit ge­spon­ne­nen Reisebericht unterstützen wür­den. Tatsächlich spricht E. L. Shaugh­nessy viel­mehr von einem generellen Rückzug in die Region der Hauptstadt in der Folge des in einer Ka­ta­strophe en­den­den Feld­zugs König Zhao’s in den Süden, was ambitionierte Ex­pe­di­tio­nen in den fernen We­sten ‒ wie an­schei­nend im Mu Tianzi Zhuan beschrie­ben ‒ unter seinem Sohn, König Mu, wenig wahr­schein­lich macht. An­dererseits konnte Shaugh­nes­sy nach­wei­sen, daß die Namen eini­ger Personen, die in dem Reisebericht auftreten, auch auf ausge­gra­be­nen Bron­ze­gefäßen aus der Westlichen Zhou-Zeit ‒ da­tiert auf die Ära König Mu’s ‒ belegt sind, ob­wohl sie in der or­thodoxen klas­sischen chinesischen Literatur feh­len.

This Ger­man translation is the first new rendering of MTZZ into a Western language after more than forty years, comple­mented by copious annotations discussing linguistic, paleographic, historical, social, technical and other questions.  It was published open access about a week ago by de Gruyter (2024) and appears under the title of Überlieferungen von Mu, dem Sohn des Himmels: Eine philologisch-historische Studie zum MU TIANZI ZHUAN 穆天子傳 as vol. 38 in the "Worlds of East Asia" series from the Swiss Asia Society.

The translator, annotator, and explicator of MTZZ into German is Manfred W. Frühauf, who was a brilliant teacher of Classical and Modern Chinese at the University of Frankfurt during the years 1983-5, when he worked on his outstanding dissertation on early forms of Chinese autobiography.

Before that, i.e., in the 70s and 80s, he spent a number of years in Taiwan and Japan, first as a student, then also as a language teacher, it seems. He also learned Turkish and, I believe, some other Central Asian Turkic languages along the way. With his near-native command of modern Mandarin, he moved on to become the director of the China Section at the Landesspracheninstitut (LSI) Nordhrein-Westfalen at Bochum around 1984/5, Germany's most important training center for Russian and Asian languages, which offers intensive courses for diplomats, business and media people, and so forth.

Accordingly, most of Frühauf's professional life after the Ph.D. was focused on TCFL. He thus has some related publications in German, e.g., on proverbs, and a very useful dictionary of measure word collocations. Later, the LSI became a self-governed entity within the University of Bochum, after which Frühauf published a book on Guo Moruo 郭沫若 and is currently investigating the early work by Hu Shih 胡適 from the period 1917‒1919. He retired from the LIS a decade or so ago, which gave him more time to work on his pre-modern projects again, hence, MTZZ. He has also found time to do interesting work on the "Gǔshī shíjiǔ shǒu 古詩十九首" ("Nineteen Old Poems"). And, during the course of preparation for his remarkable annotated and explicated translation of MTZZ, he carried out specialized research on such topics as the mythology and astronomy of that challenging text, for which see his chapter in the 65th birthday Festschrift for Heiner Roetz (Bochum Yearbook of East Asian Studies [BJOAF]) , 38 (2015), which is prefaced by the following English abstract:

Mu tianzi zhuan is China’s oldest travelogue, purportedly dating back to the 10th century B. C. There has long been a debate over its authenticity and date of origin. Its literary character or type is also a point of contention: is it a travelogue moulded into a certain literary form (irrespective of whether the events reported in it are authentic or fictional)? Was it written by an ancient court historiographer who intended it to serve as a historical source document? In the present article three examples from the travelogue are presented to demonstrate that the ancient text contains a number of elements with astronomical implications, which suggest that yet another perspective should be taken into consideration, namely the astral-mythological approach of von Dechend & de Santillana, to achieve a new and deeper interpretation of the text.

I am particularly intrigued that a Sinologist working on a 1st millennium BC Chinese text would know about the esoteric research in Hamlet's Mill and use it productively to interpret the astronomical and mythological phenomena in it.

When all is said and done, how does Frühauf's MTZZ translation stack up against previous renditions in Western languages? In a word, it is a philological triumph. The last complete translation of MTZZ was that into French by Rémi Mathieu, published in 1978. I was already quite impressed by that version, but it is more literary and cultural, whereas Frühauf's is more technical and linguistic. Prior to Mathieu was Cheng Te-k'un's in JNCBRAS, 64-65 (1933-34), which I read years before Mathieu's version appeared. Cheng's rendition was so disappointing that I could barely force myself through a few pages. E. J. Eitel's translation of 1888 in China Review was issued before Sinology had become a science and was rather sketchy.

Mathieu's translation, like many others he did, is very good, informed by the major commentaries and obviously eloquent enough to convince major French publishing houses to publish them, but they do not dig as deeply into the philology of difficult passages as Frühauf does. He is familiar with a wider range of the secondary literature, including Japanese, and passionately interested in the philological "ancillary sciences" like astronomy, archaeology, historical geography, etc., which are eminently important to understand a fragmentary text like MTZZ with its complicated transmission history, hapax characters, etc. He is also more familiar with the Central Asian connections which are so important for an understanding of the text.

That brings me to my final series of points. Namely,

1. we may view MTZZ as a hoary forerunner of the famous vernacular novel, Journey to the West, written around two millennia later and featuring the fictionalized medieval Buddhist pilgrim, Xuanzang (Tripitaka), and his three inimitable companions — Pigsy, Sandy, and Monkey (who has many similarities to Hanuman in the Indian epic Ramayana) — plus a White Dragon Horse.  Incidentally, a team of eight horses figure prominently in MTZZ.
2. the route described is like a precursor of the "Silk Road" before there was trade in silk, though there was plenty of jade (plus horses, furs, faience, glass, etc. coming in the opposite direction)
3. it was these aspects (1. and 2.) that drew Frühauf to Central Asia and attracted him to MTZZ
4. King Mu was traversing the same area as the Tocharians and the Yuezhi must have passed through around the same time (first millennium BC). If we read the narrative and descriptions of MTZZ attentively enough, we may gain valuable insights into who, after all, the Tocharians were, and who, after all, the Yuezhi were.
5. If we are truly open-minded and percipient enough, we may also obtain a better, clearer understanding of how IE words entered Sinitic already by the 1st millennium or even earlier, not that these words just somehow magically showed up of their own volition, but that they came through some sort of agency, undoubtedly human. What could be more human than language?
6. I applaud Frühauf for his awareness of these vital issues and, being the responsible scholar that he is, treating them seriously.

 

A few closing words

Manfred Frühauf's extraordinary German annotated translation of MTZZ is manifestly important for its linguistic virtuosity and philological precision, but is also significant for what it tells us about early travel to and trade with Central and Inner Asia (presumably all the way to the Pamir Mountains), the movement and migration of cultures and peoples, archeology before it arose as a modern discipline, the development of Chinese fiction (a historical romance; an epic manqué), and so many other fascinating subjects, including a unique brand of mythology that is quite different from that of the Shānhǎi jīng 山海經 (Classic of Mountains and Seas), a sort of mythic geography and bestiary, which also dealt with the same regions and dates to around the same time (see Nienhauser's perceptive remarks about the distinctions between the two works in item 1. of the bibliography below).

 

Brief bibliography

For those who wish to know more about the contents and composition of as well as the commentaries on MTZZ, together with its textual history, the following succinct treatments are available:

1. William H. Nienhauser, Jr., in WHN, et al., ed., The Indiana Companion to Tradtiional Chinese Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), pp. 632b-633b.
2. Rémi Mathieu, in Michael Loewe, ed., Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide (Berkeley: The Society for the Study of Early China and The Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1993), pp. 342-346. In it, Mathieu akes this astute observation:

Thanks to its theme of a journey to the west, the book reflects a Chinese attempt to take possession of the whole earth, and raises the question of the control that a sovereign and his court may exercise over all people under the skies.

3. Ulrich Theobald, online in ChinaKnowledge.de — An Encyclopaedia on Chinese History, Literature and Art here (except for its mention of 1. and 2. above, based entirely on premodern and modern Chinese sources).

 

Table of contents (abbreviated, to give an idea of the riches available in the volume)

Foreword

Characters, transcription, orthography

1 Introduction to Mu Tianzi Zhuan

 

2 Mu Tianzi Zhuan 穆天子傳 ‒ Translation and commentary in six hefty chapters taking up more than half the book.

3 Individual observations 

3.1 The Mu Tianzi Zhuan ‒ discovery and editing

3.2 Gaps in the Mu Tianzi Zhuan ‒ text fragments

3.3 On the biography of King Mu in the Western Zhou period

3.4 The book Liezi 列子 and Zhou King Mu

3.5 Liezi 列子 ‒ translation from Chapter III: Zhou Mu Wang pian 周穆王篇

3.6 Information in the Bamboo Annals 竹書紀年 Zhushu Jinian on the biography of the Zhou King Mu

3.7 Guo Pu 郭璞 (276‒324 AD) ‒ On his biography and his commentary

3.8 On the place names in the Mu Tianzi Zhuan

3.9 List of geographical names in the six chapters of the Mu Tianzi Zhuan

3.10 List of names of people, family associations and ethnic groups in the six chapters of the Mu Tianzi Zhuan

3.11 The name Ditai 帝臺、帝台

3.12 The Zhou kings Zhao and Mu ‒ on the 昭穆 Zhaomu question

3.13 The accusation of incest and other questions of legitimacy and morality

3.14 Calendar and event overview for the chapters I ‒ VI of the Mu Tianzi Zhuan

3.15 Observations from the translation work on the Mu Tianzi Zhuan as well as some remarks on the commentary literature

3.16 Some additional questions for the commentators as well as possible topics for further studies

3.17 Possibilities and limitations of a translation ‒ my translation of the Mu Tianzi Zhuan

 

4 Concluding remarks

 

5 Appendices 

5.1 Table of the ten ‘heavenly stems’ (Tian’gan 天干 ) and twelve ‘earthly branches’ (Dizhi 地支 )

5.2 The Chinese 60s cycle (Jiazi) formed from the combination of the 10 ‘heavenly stems’ (Tian’gan 天干 ) with the 12 ‘earthly branches’ (Dizhi 地支 )

5.3 List of selected special characters for the Mu Tianzi Zhuan

5.4 List of abbreviations for chapters I ‒ VI of the Mu Tianzi Zhuan (without book title and author name) 5.5 Bibliography of secondary literature in Western languages ​​for the study of the Mu Tianzi Zhuan presented here

5.6 Bibliography of non-Western languages

 

6 The text of the Mu Tianzi Zhuan in the Chinese original

6.1 穆天子傳卷一 Mu Tianzi Zhuan • Chapter I

6.2 穆天子傳卷二 Mu Tianzi Zhuan • Chapter II

6.3 穆天子傳卷三 Mu Tianzi Zhuan • Chapter III

6.4 The Book of the Three Kings Mu Tianzi Zhuan • Chapter IV

6.5 The Book of the Three Kings Mu Tianzi Zhuan • Chapter V

6.6 The Book of the Three Kings Mu Tianzi Zhuan • Chapter VI

 

Brief biography of the author

Index of selected names, titles and terms (11 double-columned pages)

 

Miscellanea

The silk road is mentioned on pp. XII, 385, 408, 547, 673; 1208, most prominently in the introdcution where Frühauf describes his own travels in Xinjiang in 1976 and 1980, when he first heard about the MTZZ.

Frühauf mentions the Tocharians several times, e.g., when discussing theethnonyms Yuezhi 月氏，Yuezhi 禺知, and Daxia 大夏 (Greco-Bactria) and the proposed linguistic identifications for them.

The volume was published open access about a week ago. Here it is (pdf) for your reading pleasure, all 1,214 pages of it

There are over a thousand footnotes in the main part of the book, plus hundreds more for the separate sections at the back of the book.

 

Selected readings

• "Yuezhi archeology without concern for Tocharian language" (8/4/24)
• "Rethinking the Yuezhi?" (8/5/24)
• "Kunlun: the origins and meanings of a mysterious place name" (2/24/21)
• "Yuezhi archeology without concern for Tocharian language" (8/4/24)
• "Persian peaches of immortality" (1/22/21)
• Porter, Deborah Lynn. From Deluge to Discourse: Myth, History, and the Generation of Chinese Fiction. Albany:  State University of New York, 1996.
• Knauer, Elfriede R. (2006). "The Queen Mother of the West: A Study of the Influence of Western Prototypes on the Iconography of the Taoist Deity". In Mair, Victor H. (ed.). Contact and Exchange in the Ancient World. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. pp. 62–115.

[Thanks to Wolfgang Behr]

August 6, 2024 @ 8:56 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Language and history, Language and literature, Language and travel, Translation

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