James Legge

James Legge

Missionary to China
Born (1815-12-20)20 December 1815
Huntly, Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Died 29 November 1897(1897-11-29) (aged 81)
Oxford, England
Alma mater King's College, Aberdeen
Religion Congregationalist
Chinese name
Chinese 理雅各

James Legge (/lɛɡ/; 20 December 1815 – 29 November 1897) was a Scottish sinologist, missionary, and scholar, best known as an early and prolific translator of Classical Chinese texts into English. Legge served as a representative of the London Missionary Society in Malacca and Hong Kong (1840–1873) and was the first Professor of Chinese at Oxford University (1876–1897). In association with Max Müller he prepared the monumental Sacred Books of the East series, published in 50 volumes between 1879 and 1891.

Life

James Legge was born at Huntly, Aberdeenshire. He enrolled in Aberdeen Grammar School at age 13[1] and then King's College, Aberdeen at age 15.[2] After studying at the Highbury Theological College, London, he went in 1839 as a missionary to China, but remained at Malacca three years, in charge of the Anglo-Chinese College there. The College was subsequently moved to Hong Kong, where Legge lived for nearly thirty years. A Chinese Christian, Wat Ngong, accompanied Legge when he moved in 1844. He returned home to Huntly, Aberdeenshire, in 1846–7, taking with him three Chinese students. Legge and the students were received by Queen Victoria before his return to Hong Kong.

Legge and his three Chinese assistants

Legge married twice, first to Mary Isabella Morison (1816–1852) and after she died to a widow, Hannah Mary Willetts (d 1881, née Johnstone).

Translating the classics

Convinced of the need for missionaries to be able to comprehend the ideas and culture of the Chinese, he began in 1841 a translation in many volumes of the Chinese classics, a monumental task that he completed a few years before his death. During his residence in Hong Kong, he translated Chinese classic literature into English with the help of Wang Tao and Hong Rengan, among others. He was appointed headmaster of Ying Wa College in Malacca in 1839 and continued in that position until 1867, the college having removed to Hong Kong in 1844. He was pastor of the Union Church in Hong Kong from 1844 to 1867.

He was third and final editor of the Chinese Serial, the first Chinese newspaper in Hong Kong. The paper closed in May 1856.

In 1867, Legge returned to Dollar in Clackmannanshire, Scotland, where he invited Wang Tao to join him, and received his LLD from the University of Aberdeen in 1870. While in Scotland, he also revisited his native burgh, Huntly, accompanied by Wang Tao. He then returned to Hong Kong as pastor at Union Church from 1870 to 1873. While in Hong Kong he published The She King (Classic of Poetry) in 1871 which according to Peter France is the first substantial volume of Chinese poetry in English translation still in use. The work underwent a new edition in 1876 in verse.[3]

He took a long trip to North China, beginning 2 April 1873 in Shanghai, arriving at Tianjin by boat, then travelling by mule cart and arriving in Peking on 16 April 1873, where he stayed at the London Missionary Society headquarters. He visited the Great Wall, Ming Tombs and the Temple of Heaven, where he felt compelled to take off his shoes with holy awe. He left Peking, accompanied by Joseph Edkins, and headed for Shandong by mule cart to visit Jinan, Taishan, where they ascended the sacred Mount Tai, carried by four men on chairs. Leaving Mount Tai on 15 May, they visited Confucius Temple and the Forest of Confucius at Qufu, where he climbed to the top of Confucius' burial mound. Legge returned to Shanghai by way of the Grand Canal, and thence to England via Japan and the USA in 1873.[4]

Oxford professor

In 1875 he was named Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford and in 1876 assumed the new Chair of Chinese Language and Literature at Oxford, where he attracted few students to his lectures but worked hard for some 20 years in his study at 3 Keble Terrace, on his translations of the Chinese classics. According to an anonymous contemporary obituary in the Pall Mall Gazette, Legge was in his study every morning at three o'clock, winter and summer, having retired to bed at ten. When he got up in the morning the first thing he did was to make himself a cup of tea over a spirit-lamp. Then he worked away at his translations while all the household slept.

Legge was an ardent opponent of Britain's opium policy, and was a founding member of the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade.[5]

In addition to his other work Legge wrote The Life and Teaching of Confucius (1867); The Life and Teaching of Mencius (1875); The Religions of China (1880); and other books on Chinese literature and religion.

Legge was given an honorary MA, University of Oxford, and LLD, University of Edinburgh, 1884. Legge died at Oxford in 1897 and is buried in Wolvercote Cemetery. Many of his manuscripts and letters are archived at the School of Oriental and African Studies.[6]

Selected works

Page 121 from first edition of James Legge's translation of Confucius Analects

Legge's most enduring work has been The Chinese Classics: with a Translation, Critical and Exegetical Notes, Prolegomena, and Copious Indexes, 5 vols., (Hong Kong: Legge; London: Trubner, 1861–1872):

These contain parallel Chinese and English text, with detailed notes, introductions and indexes. Chinese names are transcribed in Legge's own romanisation.

Legge originally planned his Chinese Classics as seven volumes, but his translations of the I Ching and Book of Rites (and several others) were instead included in the Sacred Books of the East series edited by Max Müller (Oxford: Clarendon Press):

Other works:

Notes

  1. ↑ Pfister (2004), p. 47
  2. ↑ Pfister (2004), p. 64
  3. ↑ Peter France (2001). "East Asian Languages: Chinese Poetry". The Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation. Oxford University Press. p. 224. ISBN 978-0-19-924784-4.
  4. ↑ (N. J. Girardot 2002, pp. 83–97)
  5. ↑ (N. J. Girardot 2002, p. 196)
  6. ↑ 'James Legge – A short biography' in: Forbes, Andrew; Henley, David (2012). The Illustrated Tao Te Ching. Chiang Mai: Cognoscenti Books. ASIN: B008NNLKXC

References

Further reading

External links

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