Early French translations : de Harlez and Philastre

[blewbubbles]

A sudden reawakened interest in Legge’s "Yî King" has brought me in contact with the other translations coming out of China in the nineteenth century. Not surprisingly mostly out of missionary quarters. One of particular interest is Rev. Charles de Harlez translation of a Manchou version that came into his possession. I'm reading Birroco's comments on Harlez, where he says that Harlez published a version of the Yi in 1889, and a revised version in 1897. In my opinion, this revised version, is in fact an all-together different translation, namely this translation from the Manchou.

Le Yih King 1889

Le Yih-King. Texte primitif rétabli, traduit et commenté - Persée

(This article, published as in book form, is also available on archive.org)

Le Yi King 1897 (Manchou version)

Le Yi-king : traduit d'après les interprêtes chinois avec la version mandchoue / par C. de Harlez | Gallica

(This is probably the only "people's" translation fron the 19th century)


Another French translation contemporary with de Harlez, Legge and McClatchie, is Paul-Louis-Félix Philastre. This is perhaps the only translation that wasn't done by a missionary scholar, but by an administrator of Indochina affairs.

MDZ links
Le Yi King
Vol 1: https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/details/bsb11486997
Vol 2: https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/details/bsb11487012

Excuse the French. Mine is not so good, so I am reading with translation software. These are all links to free downloads.

 

[mszieba]

Thank you, bluebubbles, for reminding those eminent past scholars, for precise information and the links. Especially thank you for the link to the translation from Manchu, so far unknown to me.

Let me suuplement a bit:

I. One might also want to know that both works of de Harlez and Philastre are also available edited in other formats (doc, rtf, and pdf made from the doc, something like early e-books) at the website of "Les Classiques des sciences sociales", section: "La Chine ancienne" (http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/chine_ancienne/chine_index.html), begun in 1993 by
professeur associé Jean-Marie Tremblay (http://classiques.uqac.ca/inter/benevoles_equipe/liste_tremblay_jean_marie.html) of the Cégep de Chicoutimi and l’Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC), Québec, Canada.

By chronological order:
1) YI KING . Traduction de Paul-Louis-Félix PHILASTRE (1837-1902). Editions Zulma, 1966, 890 pages. Première édition, Ernest LEROUX, Paris, 1885 (http://classiques.uqac.ca/classique...niques_Grands_Kings/B_01_Yi_king/Yi_king.html)

2) Le YI KING. 1. Traduction de Charles de HARLEZ (1832-1899), extraite de Le Livre des mutations, éditions Denoël, Paris, 1959. — 2. Quatre articles de Ch. de HARLEZ sur le Yi-king parus au Journal Asiatique (1887-1891-1893-1896), Bibliothèque Gallica (http://classiques.uqac.ca/classique...ands_Kings/Yi_king_harlez/Yi_king_harlez.html)
You can easily see that this edition was augmented with part 2, containing 4 articles on Yijing by de Harlez, published in Journal Asiatique.

This webpage contains also a very nice quote on I Ching from de Harlez, which I shall translate into English in my next post. In the bottom of the page you will find a number of links to other websites related to Yi King (I Ching), some of which unfortunately dead by now.

The mentioned website of the Classics in Social Siences contains dozens of other works of and on Chinese culture, either by Chinese authors translated into French, or by Francophone researchers.

II. You may find a link to the first one above, by Philastre, at the website of Bibliothèque Chine ancienne, section Les King (= The Chings / Jings), https://www.chineancienne.fr/king/, at the bottom of the page (but stragely not to the second one, by de Harlez). This website contains also many other links to interesting French books in Chinese culture.

III. As mentioned by bluebubbles, the earlier translation of de Harlez:
Yih-king, by Harlez, Charles de, 1832-1899. ed, Publication date: 1889, Publisher: Bruxelles, F. Hayez
"Extrait du tome XLVII des Memoires de l'Academie royale des sciences, des lettres et des beaux-arts de Belgique. 1889." can be found at Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/yihking00harl. Yet it contains only part 1 of what

IV. At the website of Wengu - Classiques chinois (full name: 溫故知新 Wengu zhixin - Classiques chinois & traductions / Chinese Classics & Translations), in the section 易 經 Yi Jing – Yi King, le Livre des Mutations (http://wengu.tartarie.com/wg/wengu.php?l=Yijing&lang=fr) - one may find the French translation of the Richard Wilhelm's one by Etienne Perrot.

This site is very interesting because it gives not only the French and English translations (one may switch from French to English at the upper right) of the 10 Chinese Classics, but also their Chinese originals (which may be switched off, if they are a nuisance), and every Chinese character is linked to Zhendic, a Chinese (trad.)-Pinyin-English dictionary based on CEDICT (hélas, only in English, even if accessed from the French side).
This site formerly belonged to l’Association Française des Professeurs de Chinois (French Association of the Teachers of Chinese), and was linked as such by Jean-Marie Tremblay in the bottom of I.2), yet probably the AFPC cut the link to it in 2010 (the pages were moved to the present location on the 1st of July, 2010), and presently the AFPC has no link to it at their own website (https://www.afpc.asso.fr/).

V. If you look closer in the pages linked for in the MDZ (Münchener DigitalisierungsZentrum = Munich Digitization Center), you might also find that the link of the section:
Related objects:
> Digital representations of this work (6)
will lead you to the two volumes of the first European translation of Y-king into Latin by Fr Jean-Baptiste Régis SJ et. al.: Y-King: antiquissimus Sinarum liber, quem ex Latina interpretatione P. Regis aliorumque ex Soc. Iesu P. P. editit Julius Mohl, Stuttgartiae et Tubingae: Cotta, liber 1: 1834, XX + 475 S., liber 2: 1839, 588 S.

vol. 1: https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb10477760 (there is another copy of vol. 1, shorter by 2 unimportant pages, at: https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb11256293)
vol. 2: https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb10477761

[Do not be mislead, however, when you find there also a copy of a text in Chinese: Genben shuo yiqie youbu baiyi jiemo: juan di 6. (根本說一切有部百一羯磨 卷第六). This has nothing to do with the I Ching we are dealing with in here, this is a work by a Buddhist monk, commentator, translator and traveller, Yijing, 635-713, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yijing_(monk).]

 

[blewbubbles]

Thank you, bluebubbles, for reminding those eminent past scholars, for precise information and the links. Especially thank you for the link to the translation from Manchu, so far unknown to me.

Let me suuplement a bit:

I. One might also want to know that both works of de Harlez and Philastre are also available edited in other formats (doc, rtf, and pdf made from the doc, something like early e-books) at the website of "Les Classiques des sciences sociales", section: "La Chine ancienne" (http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/chine_ancienne/chine_index.html), begun in 1993 by
professeur associé Jean-Marie Tremblay (http://classiques.uqac.ca/inter/benevoles_equipe/liste_tremblay_jean_marie.html) of the Cégep de Chicoutimi and l’Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC), Québec, Canada.

By chronological order:
1) YI KING . Traduction de Paul-Louis-Félix PHILASTRE (1837-1902). Editions Zulma, 1966, 890 pages. Première édition, Ernest LEROUX, Paris, 1885 (http://classiques.uqac.ca/classique...niques_Grands_Kings/B_01_Yi_king/Yi_king.html)

2) Le YI KING. 1. Traduction de Charles de HARLEZ (1832-1899), extraite de Le Livre des mutations, éditions Denoël, Paris, 1959. — 2. Quatre articles de Ch. de HARLEZ sur le Yi-king parus au Journal Asiatique (1887-1891-1893-1896), Bibliothèque Gallica (http://classiques.uqac.ca/classique...ands_Kings/Yi_king_harlez/Yi_king_harlez.html)
You can easily see that this edition was augmented with part 2, containing 4 articles on Yijing by de Harlez, published in Journal Asiatique.

This webpage contains also a very nice quote on I Ching from de Harlez, which I shall translate into English in my next post. In the bottom of the page you will find a number of links to other websites related to Yi King (I Ching), some of which unfortunately dead by now.

The mentioned website of the Classics in Social Siences contains dozens of other works of and on Chinese culture, either by Chinese authors translated into French, or by Francophone researchers.

II. You may find a link to the first one above, by Philastre, at the website of Bibliothèque Chine ancienne, section Les King (= The Chings / Jings), https://www.chineancienne.fr/king/, at the bottom of the page (but stragely not to the second one, by de Harlez). This website contains also many other links to interesting French books in Chinese culture.

III. As mentioned by bluebubbles, the earlier translation of de Harlez:
Yih-king, by Harlez, Charles de, 1832-1899. ed, Publication date: 1889, Publisher: Bruxelles, F. Hayez
"Extrait du tome XLVII des Memoires de l'Academie royale des sciences, des lettres et des beaux-arts de Belgique. 1889." can be found at Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/yihking00harl. Yet it contains only part 1 of what

IV. At the website of Wengu - Classiques chinois (full name: 溫故知新 Wengu zhixin - Classiques chinois & traductions / Chinese Classics & Translations), in the section 易 經 Yi Jing – Yi King, le Livre des Mutations (http://wengu.tartarie.com/wg/wengu.php?l=Yijing&lang=fr) - one may find the French translation of the Richard Wilhelm's one by Etienne Perrot.

This site is very interesting because it gives not only the French and English translations (one may switch from French to English at the upper right) of the 10 Chinese Classics, but also their Chinese originals (which may be switched off, if they are a nuisance), and every Chinese character is linked to Zhendic, a Chinese (trad.)-Pinyin-English dictionary based on CEDICT (hélas, only in English, even if accessed from the French side).
This site formerly belonged to l’Association Française des Professeurs de Chinois (French Association of the Teachers of Chinese), and was linked as such by Jean-Marie Tremblay in the bottom of I.2), yet probably the AFPC cut the link to it in 2010 (the pages were moved to the present location on the 1st of July, 2010), and presently the AFPC has no link to it at their own website (https://www.afpc.asso.fr/).

V. If you look closer in the pages linked for in the MDZ (Münchener DigitalisierungsZentrum = Munich Digitization Center), you might also find that the link of the section:
Related objects:
> Digital representations of this work (6)
will lead you to the two volumes of the first European translation of Y-king into Latin by Fr Jean-Baptiste Régis SJ et. al.: Y-King: antiquissimus Sinarum liber, quem ex Latina interpretatione P. Regis aliorumque ex Soc. Iesu P. P. editit Julius Mohl, Stuttgartiae et Tubingae: Cotta, liber 1: 1834, XX + 475 S., liber 2: 1839, 588 S.

vol. 1: https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb10477760 (there is another copy of vol. 1, shorter by 2 unimportant pages, at: https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb11256293)
vol. 2: https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb10477761

[Do not be mislead, however, when you find there also a copy of a text in Chinese: Genben shuo yiqie youbu baiyi jiemo: juan di 6. (根本說一切有部百一羯磨 卷第六). This has nothing to do with the I Ching we are dealing with in here, this is a work by a Buddhist monk, commentator, translator and traveller, Yijing, 635-713, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yijing_(monk).]

Wow! Thank you very much mszieba, for all the additional resources. I'll be checking it out very soon. And bless you, that Manchu edition by de Harlez is a real gem.