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生死有命富貴在天 seishi mei ari, fūki ten ni ari Death and life have their determined appointments - Riches and honors depend upon heaven

生死有命富貴在天 (seishi mei ari, fūki ten ni ari) says that life and death are Heaven's decree, and wealth and rank rest with Heaven. In the Analects, Zixia quotes it as a saying he has heard, to comfort a man with no brothers. In Japan it became a reason not to fear death.

Japanese Scroll of Death and Life Have Their Determined Appointments; Riches and Honors Depend upon Heaven (seishi mei ari, fūki ten ni ari) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Death and life have their determined appointments - Riches and honors depend upon heaven生死有命富貴在天seishi mei ari, fūki ten ni ari

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

生死有命富貴在天, life and death are Heaven's decree; 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. The Analects writes 死生, death and life, and this text 生死, life and death; this study follows the two orders through the printings of the 文選, where Li Shan 李善's note on the line reads 死生 in a Chinese print of 1181 and 生死 in a Chinese print of 1549 and in two Japanese prints of 1607 and 1625, so that which order Li Shan wrote is not settled by the prints read; and it finds the transposed order already a common saying in China in a Daoist compendium compiled about 1030. In Japan the line became a proverb about facing death: a soldier's argument in the 太平記, a man in 雨月物語 (1776) who laughs off the plague, and Bashō 芭蕉 refusing medicine on his deathbed as a book printed in 1829 tells it. In English it was decreed from Morrison's dictionary of 1819, the oldest English read for this study, and two missionaries who met it in Japan wrote a God into the decree or asked for one.

Overview

The sense. Life and death are Heaven's decree and beyond human power. デジタル大辞泉, under the Japanese headword 死生命あり, gives 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 come by Heaven's decree, and human power can do nothing about them; 精選版日本国語大辞典 gives the same, of a person's life and death [1]. 故事成語を知る辞典 reads Zixia's line as a call to stop worrying over such things, そういうことで悩むのはやめよう、と呼びかけています, and notes that the proverb is often used with its pair, 富貴天にあり, wealth and rank rest with Heaven [1]. The Japanese witnesses read for this study say it in the face of death, as the reason not to fear it.

The words. Eight characters in two clauses of four. 死生 in the Analects, 生死 in this text, are the same two characters, death and life or life and death. 有命, have their 命: 命 is the decree of Heaven, the lot one is given, and by extension one's span of life. 富貴 is wealth and rank together. 在天, rest with Heaven. Read in Japanese, the Analects' order is 死生命あり、富貴天にあり, shisei mei ari, fūki ten ni ari, the headword of the dictionaries [1]; this text's order is read 生死命あり, seishi mei ari, for 生死, which the dictionaries head しょうじ, is also read せいし, life and death [2], and JMdict glosses it life and death; life or death [3]. Inouye's dictionary of 1909 sets 生死命あり under Seishi [4]. The 1650 print of the 太平記 glosses the canon order しせいめい beside the characters [5], and so does a print of 1656 [6].

The text in English. Decreed from the beginning: Morrison's Chinese dictionary of 1819, the oldest English read for this study, Collie's Four Books of 1828, Hepburn's Japanese dictionary of 1867, Batchelor in 1894 and Inouye in 1909; Legge's determined appointment of 1861 is the other line, and Scarborough copied it in 1875.

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?" [7] The line is a saying already when Zixia speaks it, 商聞之矣, I, Shang, have heard this, which is why 故事成語を知る辞典 calls it 子夏のことば and none of the dictionaries calls it Confucius's [1]. An undated Edo print of the Analects carries the whole passage in the canon order, writing 冨 for 富, with one variant in the last clause, 四海之内皆爲兄弟也 for the received 皆兄弟也 [8].

About 1030. The transposed order as a saying. The 雲笈七籤, a Daoist compendium compiled about 1030 [9], carries a treatise on the elixir, 〈還丹內象金鑰匙〉, whose own date is not established here, and its author complains of the people who will not try: 中智之人，心或進退，往往執言不回，多云「生死有命，富貴在天。」…斯言舉世鮮有不言者，遂便顒顒待死, people of middling wisdom waver, and often cling to a saying and will not turn from it; most of them say, "Life and death have their allotted span, wealth and rank rest with Heaven" … hardly anyone in the world does not say it, and so they sit and wait for death [10]. In this text the line is in the transposed order, 生死, as people say it rather than as the Analects writes it, and the treatise holds it against them.

1181 to 1625. The 文選, and Li Shan 李善's note. 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: 子夏曰死生有命冨貴在天, Zixia said: death and life have their allotted span, wealth and rank rest with Heaven, in the canon's order [11]. The Tang commentator Li Shan's note on that sentence cites the Analects for it, and the printings of the note differ. The oldest printing read, the 文選 printed by You Mao 尤袤 in 1181, has the note in the canon's order: 論語子夏曰商聞之死生有命冨貴在天 [11]. A Chinese printing of 1549, the 六家文選 cut by the Yuan 袁 family's 嘉趣堂, prints the main text 死生 and the note 善曰論語子夏曰商聞之生死有命富貴在天, Shan says: the Analects, Zixia said, I have heard it, life and death have their allotted span, wealth and rank rest with Heaven, on one opening [12]. The two Japanese printings of the six-commentator edition, 1607 and 1625, print the same: main text 死生, note 生死 [13][14]. The 四庫全書 texts of the commentary read 死生 in the note [15]. So the transposed order stands beside the canon's on one leaf in a Chinese print of 1549 and in the two Japanese prints that followed it; which order Li Shan himself wrote is not settled by the prints read here.

The fourteenth century. The 太平記, book 4. The line's Japanese life begins as a soldier's argument. 精選版日本国語大辞典 gives it as its first example, 只徒に伍子胥が死せん事を待たば、死生有ㇾ命又は老少前後す, if we merely wait idly for Wu Zixu to die — death and life have their allotted span, and old and young do not go in order [1]. The speaker is arguing for attacking now rather than waiting for an enemy to die of age, and the line is his reason. A printing of 1650 has the words 死生命あり又は老少前後す, with the reading しせいめい beside 死生命 [5].

1656. A print of 1656, the 女四書 of 辻原元甫, writes the Japanese form 死生命あり, with the reading しせい · めい beside the characters [6].

1776. 雨月物語, 「菊花の約」. Ueda Akinari 上田秋成's book of tales, printed in 1776 [16], has the line at a sickbed early in its second story. Samon 左門 means to look in on a traveler lying ill at a lodging, and the master of the lodging stops him, since plague, 瘟病, is said to harm those who come near it; 左門笑ていふ、死生命あり、何の病か人に傳ふべき、是らは愚俗のことばにて吾們はとらず, Samon laughed and said, "Life and death have their allotted span; what sickness can pass from one man to another? That is the talk of the ignorant, and men like us do not hold with it", and he goes in to nurse him, which is how the story begins [17]. The tale is read here in a typeset edition of 1893. The scene is Akinari's rendering of his Chinese source, the vernacular tale 范巨卿雞黍死生交 in the 古今小說, where the inn servant warns 瘟病過人, the plague passes to people, and the scholar 張劭 answers 死生有命，安有病能過人之理, life and death have their allotted span; how could a sickness pass from one man to another? [18] Marui Takafumi, reading the tale against that source in 2019, shows 死生有命 recurring in the Ming vernacular stories as a truth their heroes live by, and argues that Samon, who says it here, does not hold to it at the story's end [19].

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 [20]. 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 [21]. 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 medicine, in a book whose author is in doubt. Samon at the sickbed and Bashō at his own are one use: the line as the reason not to fear death, or not to fight it.

The dictionaries today. デジタル大辞泉 and 精選版日本国語大辞典 give the proverb under 死生命あり, the canon's order [1]. 故事成語を知る辞典 reads Zixia's line as consolation and gives a modern example from 谷譲次 in 1929, 死生命あり論ずるに足らず, life and death have their allotted span, and it is not worth arguing over [1]. In the National Diet Library's full text, every access tier, searched on 10 October 2026, 死生命あり is in 5,747 items and 生死命あり in 220, the oldest of them dated 1884; 死生有命富貴在天 is in 2,190 and 生死有命富貴在天 in 22, of which the only items dated before 1868 are the 1607 and 1625 文選 [22].

The line in English

1819. Robert Morrison, A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, Part II, volume 1, printed at Macao. Under 死: Sze săng yew ming 丨生有命 death and life are decreed [23]. It is the oldest English for the line read for this study.

1828. David Collie, The Chinese Classical Work commonly called the Four Books, printed at Malacca. Tsze Hea said, I have heard, that life and death are decreed and that riches and honor depend on heaven [24]. Collie's English puts life first, as this text does.

1861. James Legge, The Chinese Classics, volume 1, the Analects, as the Chinese Text Project prints it. Death and life have their determined appointment; riches and honors depend upon Heaven [7]. William Scarborough's A Collection of Chinese Proverbs (1875) prints Legge's sentence word for word, with the honours of Legge's own page, as proverb 2345, on a page headed Heaven or God [25].

1867. James Curtis Hepburn, A Japanese and English Dictionary, from the Japanese. Under MEI, 命: Shi sei mei ari, life and death are decreed (by God); under SEI, 生: Shi sei mei-ari, death and life are fixed by providence [26].

1894. John Batchelor, A Lecture on the Ainu, delivered in Japanese at the Sapporo Temperance Club on 10 May 1894 and printed in English in The Japan Weekly Mail of 7 July. Batchelor sets the line beside shikata ga nai as the fatalism he refuses: that ancient saying — Shi sei mei ari, fuki ten ni ari, "death and life are decreed, riches and honour rest with heaven." But do not for one moment imagine that I am a fatalist in that sense … grant me a living agent who "decrees death and life," and also grant me a power above the heavens who can and does "dispense riches and honour," why then, I will be a thorough-going fatalist! [27]

1909. Inouye's Japanese-English Dictionary. Under Seishi (生死): 生死命あり畏るに足らず, Life and death are decreed by Heaven; there is no need for fear [4].

A reading

The order this text writes is not the Analects', and it is not a modern slip either: it is the order in which Chinese people said the line by about 1030, when a Daoist writer complained that hardly anyone did not say it, and it stands in Li Shan's note in a Chinese print of 1549 and the two Japanese prints after it, while the oldest print read keeps the canon's. Whether Li Shan wrote it is open. What the Japanese witnesses read here show is one use of the line. The Daoist held it against people who sat and waited for death; the heroes of the Ming stories said it and walked toward the danger, and Samon, laughing it at the plague, speaks one of their lines in Japanese; Bashō, in the 1829 book, says it and puts away his medicine; and Inouye's dictionary in 1909 finishes it there is no need for fear. The missionaries who met it in Japan heard a decree and asked who decreed: Hepburn wrote (by God), and Batchelor said he would be a fatalist only if the decree had a living agent behind it. Zixia offered it to a man with no brothers as a reason to stop worrying and attend to his own conduct, and that is still the best reading of it.

References

  1. 「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
  2. 「生死」, デジタル大辞泉 · 精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/生死-79261
  3. 生死, JMdict, at jisho.org. https://jisho.org/word/生死
  4. Inouye Jūkichi, Inouye's Japanese-English Dictionary, Sanseidō, Tokyo, 1909, p. 1347, s.v. Seishi (生死). Internet Archive inouyesjapanesee00inou. https://archive.org/details/inouyesjapanesee00inou
  5. 『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
  6. 辻原元甫, 『女四書』, 明暦2 (1656). National Diet Library pid 2567161, scan 10. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2567161/1/10
  7. 『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
  8. 『論語』10卷, an undated Edo print. National Diet Library pid 2574963, scan 9. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2574963/1/9
  9. 「雲笈七籤」, 日本大百科全書 (ニッポニカ), at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/雲笈七籤-35632
  10. 『雲笈七籤』卷七十, 〈還丹內象金鑰匙〉, at Chinese Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/雲笈七籤/70
  11. 蕭統 撰, 李善 注, 『文選』, 尤袤 刻本, 淳熙8 (1181), National Central Library (Taipei) 13528, at Wikimedia Commons, PDF page 514. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:NCL-13528_2_文選.pdf&page=514
  12. 蕭統 撰, 李善 等注, 『六家文選』60卷, 袁氏嘉趣堂刊, 嘉靖28 (1549). National Diet Library pid 2545437, scan 17. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2545437/1/17
  13. 蕭統 撰, 李善 等注, 『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
  14. 蕭統 撰, 李善 等注, 『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
  15. 『文選注』卷五十三 and 『六臣註文選』卷五十三, 四庫全書本, at Chinese Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/文選注_(四庫全書本)/卷53 · https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/六臣註文選_(四庫全書本)/卷53
  16. 「雨月物語」, デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/雨月物語-34410
  17. 上田秋成, 『雨月物語』, 富士貸本出版部, 1893, 「菊花の約」, p. 17. National Diet Library pid 877813, scan 23. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/877813/1/23
  18. 『古今小說』 (『喻世明言』) 第十六卷, 「范巨卿雞黍死生交」, at Chinese Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/喻世明言/第16卷
  19. 丸井貴史, 「「死生有命」の和漢 ―「菊花の約」と白話小説―」, 『日本文学』 68巻6号, 日本文学協会, 2019, pp. 52–56. https://doi.org/10.20620/nihonbungaku.68.6_52
  20. 『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
  21. 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
  22. National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text search, every access tier, 死生命あり · 生死命あり · 死生有命富貴在天 · 生死有命富貴在天, oldest first, searched 10 October 2026. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=生死命あり&fulltext=true&sortKey=ISSUED_ASC
  23. Robert Morrison, A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, Part II, vol. 1, East India Company's Press, Macao, 1819, p. 793. Internet Archive p2dictionaryofch01morruoft. https://archive.org/details/p2dictionaryofch01morruoft/page/n812
  24. David Collie, The Chinese Classical Work commonly called the Four Books, Mission Press, Malacca, 1828, p. 53. Internet Archive chineseclassical00confrich. https://archive.org/details/chineseclassical00confrich/page/n120
  25. William Scarborough, A Collection of Chinese Proverbs, American Presbyterian Mission Press, Shanghai, 1875, p. 397, no. 2345. Internet Archive cu31924023892981. https://archive.org/details/cu31924023892981
  26. J. C. Hepburn, A Japanese and English Dictionary; with an English and Japanese Index, American Presbyterian Mission Press, Shanghai, 1867, p. 264, s.v. MEI, and p. 383, s.v. SEI. Internet Archive japaneseenglishd00hepb. https://archive.org/details/japaneseenglishd00hepb
  27. John Batchelor, "A Lecture on the Ainu", The Japan Weekly Mail, 7 July 1894, p. 21. Internet Archive jwm-bound-1894.7-12. https://archive.org/details/jwm-bound-1894.7-12/page/n28

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1, Takase Studios, LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Checked · grok-4.6 (xAI), 2026-09-06, citations (the s45 draft; the ten-s566 amendment is not covered)

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 生死有命富貴在天 (seishi mei ari, fūki ten ni ari)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/shisei-mei-ari-fuki-ten-ni-ari.