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 | University of Aberdeen | ||||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||||
| Chinese | 理雅各 | ||||||||||
| |||||||||||
James Legge (/lɛɡ/; 20 December 1815 – 29 November 1897) was a Scottish linguist, missionary,sinologist, and translatorwho was best known as an early translator ofClassical Chinese texts into English. Legge served as a representative of theLondon Missionary Society inMalacca andHong Kong (1840–1873) and was the firstProfessor of Chinese atOxford University (1876–1897). In association withMax Müller he prepared the monumentalSacred Books of the East series, published in 50 volumes between 1879 and 1891.
James Legge was born atHuntly,Aberdeenshire.[1] He enrolled inAberdeen Grammar School at age 13[2] and thenKing's College, Aberdeen at age 15.[3] He then continued his studies atHighbury Theological College, London.
Legge went, in 1839, as amissionary to China, but first stayed at Malacca three years, in charge of theAnglo-Chinese College there.[1] The College was subsequently moved to Hong Kong, where Legge lived for nearly thirty years.[1] On 2 December 1843, Legge married Mary Isabella Morison (1816–1852), daughter of the Rev. John Morison, D.D. of Chelsea.[4] The next year, she gave birth in Hong Kong to a son who lived for only a few hours.[4] By her he also fathered SirThomas Morison Legge, the first Medical Inspector of Factories and Workshops in the UK.[5] 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.
After Isabella died, he married secondly a widow, Hannah Mary Willetts née Johnstone (d. 1881).
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 theChinese classics, a monumental task that he completed a few years before his death.[1] During his residence in Hong Kong, he translated Chinese classic literature into English with the help ofWang Tao andHong Rengan, among others. He was appointed headmaster ofYing 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 theUnion Church in Hong Kong from 1844 to 1867.
He was third and final editor of theChinese Serial, the first Chinese newspaper in Hong Kong. The paper closed in May 1856.
In 1867, Legge returned toDollar in Clackmannanshire, Scotland, where he invited Wang Tao to join him, and received his LLD from theUniversity 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 publishedThe 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.[6]
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 theLondon Missionary Society headquarters. He visited theGreat Wall,Ming Tombs and theTemple of Heaven, where he felt compelled to take off his shoes with holy awe. He left Peking, accompanied byJoseph Edkins, and headed for Shandong by mule cart to visitJinan, Taishan, where they ascended the sacredMount Tai, carried by four men on chairs. Leaving Mount Tai on 15 May, they visitedConfucius Temple and theForest of Confucius atQufu, where he climbed to the top of Confucius' burial mound. Legge returned to Shanghai by way of theGrand Canal, and thence to England via Japan and the USA in 1873.[7]
In addition to his other works Legge wroteThe Life and Teaching ofConfucius (1867);The Life and Teaching ofMencius (1875);The Religions of China (1880); and other books on Chinese literature and religion. His respect forConfucianism was controversial among his fellow missionaries.[8]
In 1875, he was named Fellow ofCorpus Christi College, Oxford and in 1876 assumed the newChair of Chinese Language and Literature atOxford. As a Scottishnonconformist in the deeply Anglican university and city of Oxford, Legge was often treated as an outsider until his death.[9]
At Oxford he attracted few students to his lectures but worked hard for some 20 years on his translations of the Chinese classics in his study at 3 Keble Terrace, later renumbered 3 Keble Road, which now has an Oxfordshire Blue Plaque in his memory.[10] According to an anonymous contemporary obituary in thePall 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.[11]
In 1879, Legge was a member of a committee formed to create a women's college at Oxford "in which no distinction will be made between students on the ground of their belonging to different religious denominations". This resulted in the founding of Somerville Hall, later renamedSomerville College, one of the first two Oxford colleges for women.
While at Oxford, Legge was an ardent opponent of Britain'sopium policy, and was a founding member of theSociety for the Suppression of the Opium Trade in 1874.[12]
Legge was given an honorary MA, University of Oxford, and LLD,University of Edinburgh, 1884. He was elected an International Member of theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1895.[13]
Legge died atOxford in 1897 and is buried inWolvercote Cemetery. The remains of his second wife Hannah, who died before him in 1881, were exhumed from Saint Sepulchre's cemetery and placed beside the body of her husband in Wolvercote.[14] Most of his most important manuscripts and letters are archived at theSchool of Oriental and African Studies and, secondly, in theBodleian Library.[15]
Sinologist Chad Hansen credited Legge as "the incomparable father of all sinologists."[16]
Initially, Legge followed the pattern set byRobert Morrison and preferred to translate theChristian God into Chinese using the word "Shen" (Chinese:神;pinyin:shén;lit. 'deity', 'spirit'). However, he was increasingly convinced by his Chinese collaboratorsHong Rengan and He Jinshan that "Shangdi" (Chinese:上帝;pinyin:Shàngdì;Wade–Giles:Shang Ti;lit. 'High Emperor') from theBook of Documents and theClassic of Poetry was a more appropriate term. He also drew from his education inScottish common sense realism various hermeneutical principles in translation.[17] Ultimately, by the 1850s, Legge concluded that the word "Shangdi" represented a monotheistic god, and argued it was the most appropriate term for translating words in reference to theChristian God into Chinese. He believed that using a term already deeply entrenched in Chinese culture could prevent Christianity from being seen as a completely foreign religion. His opponents argued that this would cause confusion due to the word's use inTaoism andChinese folk religion.[18]
Legge's most enduring work has beenThe 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 inLegge's own romanisation.
Legge originally planned hisChinese Classics as seven volumes, but his translations of theI Ching andBook of Rites (and several others) were instead included in theSacred Books of the East series edited byMax Müller (Oxford: Clarendon Press):
Other works:
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Legge, James".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 377.
This article incorporates text fromThe religions of China: Confucianism and Tâoism described and compared with Christianity, by James Legge, a publication from 1880, now in thepublic domain in the United States.
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