生死有命富貴在天 shisei mei ari, fūki ten ni ari Death and life have their determined appointments - Riches and honors depend upon heaven
This is a philological study of 生死有命富貴在天 (shisei mei ari, fūki ten ni ari), a saying Zixia quotes to console a grieving disciple in the Analects. It traces the line's two word orders — the canon's 死生 and the transposed 生死 a Tang commentator used when quoting it — through two Edo printings of the 文選 and a Japanese proverb tradition running from a fourteenth-century soldier's argument to Bashō 芭蕉's deathbed as a book printed in 1829 tells it, and sets out Legge's 1861 English.
Abstract
生死有命富貴在天, life and death have their allotted span; wealth and rank rest with Heaven, is a saying Zixia 子夏 quotes in the Analects to console a disciple who grieves that he alone has no brothers, offering it as something he has heard rather than his own words. This study follows the line's two Chinese word orders — the canon's 死生 and a Tang commentator's transposed 生死 — through two Edo printings of the 文選, and its Japanese life as a proverb about facing death, from a fourteenth-century soldier's argument to Bashō 芭蕉's deathbed as a book printed in 1829 tells it, to Legge's 1861 English. It finds that the transposed order is not a modern error: a Tang commentator wrote the line that way when quoting it, more than a thousand years before any modern attestation.
Overview
The sense. One sense, two uses. The sense is Zixia's: the length of a life and the height of a career are allotted, not earned, so a man should attend to what is his, reverence and courtesy, and let the rest go. The Chinese essay uses it to argue that fate, not merit, makes careers; the Japanese chronicle uses it to argue for acting now, since no one knows who dies first; a book printed in 1829 has Bashō use it to refuse to beg for his life. In Japan it became a proverb about facing death.
The words. Eight characters in two clauses of four. 死生 in the canon, 生死 in the transposed order, are the same two characters, death and life or life and death; the canon's order is the older Chinese one and the transposed order is the compound Japanese and modern Chinese prefer. 有命, have their 命: 命 is the decree of Heaven, the lot one is given, and by extension one's span of life, which is why the Japanese reading says 命あり, have their allotted span, and why Legge, with a Calvinist ear, wrote determined appointment. 富貴 is wealth and rank together, the two things a man of the classical age wanted and could not command. 在天, rest with Heaven. The Japanese proverb form reads the line in kundoku: 死生命あり、富貴天にあり.
The text in English. Legge is the first witness.
The historical record
The Analects, book 12, 顔淵, the passage on brothers. The disciple Sima Niu 司馬牛 grieves that everyone else has brothers and he alone has none, and Zixia answers with something he has heard and then with his own consolation: 司馬牛憂曰：「人皆有兄弟，我獨亡。」子夏曰：「商聞之矣：死生有命，富貴在天。君子敬而無失，與人恭而有禮。四海之內，皆兄弟也。君子何患乎無兄弟也？」, Sima Niu said in his grief, "Other men all have brothers; I alone have none." Zixia said, "I have heard it said: death and life have their allotted span, wealth and rank rest with Heaven. If the gentleman is reverent and makes no slip, and is courteous and observes the rites with others, then all within the four seas are his brothers. What has the gentleman to fear from having no brothers?" [1] The line is a proverb already when Zixia says it, 商聞之矣, I, Shang, have heard this, which is why the Japanese dictionaries call it 子夏のことば and none calls it Confucius's. An Edo print of the Analects carries the whole passage in the canon order with one variant in the last clause, 四海之内皆爲兄弟也 for the received 皆兄弟也 [2].
1607 to 1625. The 文選, with Li Shan 李善's Tang commentary. 李康's essay 運命論, On Fate, in book 53 of the 文選, the anthology of Xiao Tong 蕭統 of the Liang, quotes the line in its argument that the times, not merit, decide who rises: 子夏曰死生有命富貴在天, Zixia said: death and life have their allotted span, wealth and rank rest with Heaven, in the canon's order [3]. The Tang commentator Li Shan's note on that sentence, printed in small double columns beneath it, cites the Analects, and cites it in the transposed order: 善曰論語子夏曰商聞之生死有命冨貴在天, Shan says: the Analects, Zixia said, I have heard it, life and death have their allotted span, wealth and rank rest with Heaven [4]. Both Japanese printings of the six-commentator edition, 1607 and 1625, print the main text with 死生 and the note with 生死, glyph by glyph on a crop. So this order is not a modern slip: a Tang commentator wrote the line that way when quoting it, and every reader of the 文選 in Japan since the early Edo period has seen both orders on one leaf. Whether Chinese printings of Li Shan's note read the same is outside this record; the claim is for the text as Japan received it.
The fourteenth century. The 太平記, book 4, read in a printing of 1650. The line's Japanese life begins as a soldier's argument. 精選版日本国語大辞典 cites it as the first Japanese use, and the 1650 print of the chronicle has the speech: 只いたつらにごししよが死せん事を待ば死生命あり又は老少前後すごししよと我といつれをかさきとしる, if I merely wait idly for Wu Zixu to die: death and life have their allotted span, and old and young do not die in order; who knows whether Wu Zixu or I will go first? [5] The speaker is arguing for attacking now rather than waiting for an enemy to die of age, and the line is his reason. Here the kundoku form 死生命あり is already the Japanese way to say it.
1829. 『俳諧正語抄』, a haikai treatise printed under the name of Rōka 浪化 (1672–1703), at Bashō's deathbed. The book tells the last illness at Naniwa and puts the line in Bashō's mouth: 翁難波津の旅泊に病の急迫なれは門人の誰彼馳集りて良医を求んとまち〱なる時翁枕を挙て曰死生命あり冨貴天にあり人力の及ふ所にあらすされと妻子眷屬のある身は残ての後悔を防んとほいなく命を乞求るもあらん我はしからす浮雲流水の孤客何の為に命を貪んや, when the Master's illness grew grave at his lodging on the road at Naniwa, and the disciples who had hurried to him were of many minds about finding a good doctor, the Master lifted his head from the pillow and said: life and death have their allotted span, wealth and rank rest with Heaven, and human power does not reach them; a man with wife, children and kin might, against his will, beg for his life to spare those he leaves behind from regret; not I: a lone traveler of drifting cloud and flowing water, why should I covet life? He ends 今日より薬を捨て臨終を守るへし, from today I put away medicine and keep watch over my end [6]. The book was printed a hundred and twenty-six years after Rōka's death, from a manuscript said to have been kept at the house of Zushi Rogan 図司呂丸 at Haguro, and Shida Gishū 志田義秀 in 1934 calls it 僞書であらう, probably a forgery [7]. So the 1829 witness is the full pair in Japanese, in the canon's 死生 order, given to a dying poet as his reason for refusing to beg for his life, in a book whose author is in doubt.
The dictionaries today. デジタル大辞泉, under the Japanese headword 死生命あり: 生死は天命によるもので、人の力ではどうすることもできない, life and death are Heaven's decree and beyond human power [8]. 故事成語を知る辞典 reads the passage as consolation, そういうことで悩むのはやめよう、と呼びかけています, it is telling you to stop worrying over such things, and notes that the pair 富貴天にあり is often used with it [8]. The canon order 死生有命富貴在天 is in some 250 digitized Japanese books to 1946; the transposed order 生死有命富貴在天 in four; the Japanese form 死生命あり富貴天にあり in sixty.
What is not a source. A well-known modern tattoo carries the transposed order with 由 for the seventh character where the canon and the 文選 print have 在: a famous modern attestation of the phrase, not a witness to its history, and it makes an error the two Edo printings above do not. Wiktionary's listing of 生死有命 as an alternative form is a modern crowd entry and adds nothing to the two prints.
The line in English
1861. James Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 1, the Analects, as the Chinese Text Project prints it. Death and life have their determined appointment; riches and honors depend upon Heaven. Legge's determined appointment for 命 is the Calvinist word for a Confucian idea [1].
Today. The stored title, Death and Life Have Their Determined Appointments; Riches and Honors Depend upon Heaven, is Legge's line. A rendering must keep both clauses as a pair, must keep 命 as an allotment rather than a plan, and must not call the line Confucius's.
A reading
This text's order is not a modern slip: a Tang commentator quoted the line that way, and two Edo printings of the 文選 place his 生死 six columns from the essay's own 死生 on one leaf. The canon's order is still the received one, and the counts bear that out. The line is not Confucius's but a proverb his disciple quotes to console a man with no brothers, and in Japan it became a way of facing death, from a fourteenth-century soldier to Bashō's deathbed in a book of 1829.
References
- 『論語』顔淵第十二, at the Chinese Text Project, with James Legge's translation of 1861. https://ctext.org/analects/yan-yuan
- 『論語』, an undated Edo print. National Diet Library pid 2574963, scan 9. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2574963/1/9
- 蕭統 撰, 李善 注, 『文選』60卷, 慶長12 (1607) printing. National Diet Library pid 2543799, scan 19. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2543799/1/19
- 蕭統 撰, 李善 注, 『文選』60卷, 寛永2 (1625) printing. National Diet Library pid 2544044, scan 18. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2544044/1/18
- 『太平記』40巻, 慶安3 (1650) printing, book 4. National Diet Library pid 2570072, scan 27. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2570072/1/27
- 『俳諧正語抄』, 文政12 (1829), printed as 浪化's, 泉響園琴而 校. National Diet Library pid 2540297, scans 29–30. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2540297/1/30
- 志田義秀, 「浪化」 附說, in 藤村作 編『日本文学大辞典』, 新潮社, 1934. National Diet Library pid 1235690, scan 1285. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1235690/1/1285
- 「死生命あり」, デジタル大辞泉 · 精選版日本国語大辞典 · 故事成語を知る辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/死生命あり-519827