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blewbubbles
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Here is another antiquated errata, which is of little interest today, but perhaps at the time of publication may have caused an amount of discontent.
Looking carefully at James Legge's original publication of the Yî King, diligently prepared and printed by the Claredon Press in 1882, I noticed that a tiny error crept in which couldn't have gone unnoticed by Max Müller, who had overseen the vast project of the publication of "The Sacred Books of the East". The mistake is in the chapter heading of hexagram 38, where the name is mispronounced in the "missionary alphabet" system of transcription that was used. Over here K'uei (Wade-Giles), or kuí (pinyin), is written Khwei. The italic KH, in the adopted system transliteration in the series, is pronounced Ch(h) as in the Devanagari छ, which puts the wrong pitch on Khwei, and pronounces it as Ch'wei. This mistake was (thankfully) not repeated anywhere else in the text, including the body text of the judgement on the same page. The appendixes all have it spelt as Khwei, without the italic kh, which follows the standard pronunciation as we know it today. I think this may have been a little bit upsetting to both Legge and Müller, since they have taken such care to present these works in a clear and correct manner.
In response to this tiny mistake, I think perhaps Dr Legge would've been able to sustain the blow, following the advice given in the image text of hexagram 38, as translated by himself :
"The superior man, in accordance with this, where there is a general agreement, yet admits diversity."
The diversity, or rather adversity, being, italics where standard letters were meant to be used. On Müller's part, it would've been a tiny loss to the missionary alphabet, even though it was soon to disappear into oblivion, and replaced by the Wade-Giles system.
Looking carefully at James Legge's original publication of the Yî King, diligently prepared and printed by the Claredon Press in 1882, I noticed that a tiny error crept in which couldn't have gone unnoticed by Max Müller, who had overseen the vast project of the publication of "The Sacred Books of the East". The mistake is in the chapter heading of hexagram 38, where the name is mispronounced in the "missionary alphabet" system of transcription that was used. Over here K'uei (Wade-Giles), or kuí (pinyin), is written Khwei. The italic KH, in the adopted system transliteration in the series, is pronounced Ch(h) as in the Devanagari छ, which puts the wrong pitch on Khwei, and pronounces it as Ch'wei. This mistake was (thankfully) not repeated anywhere else in the text, including the body text of the judgement on the same page. The appendixes all have it spelt as Khwei, without the italic kh, which follows the standard pronunciation as we know it today. I think this may have been a little bit upsetting to both Legge and Müller, since they have taken such care to present these works in a clear and correct manner.
In response to this tiny mistake, I think perhaps Dr Legge would've been able to sustain the blow, following the advice given in the image text of hexagram 38, as translated by himself :
"The superior man, in accordance with this, where there is a general agreement, yet admits diversity."
The diversity, or rather adversity, being, italics where standard letters were meant to be used. On Müller's part, it would've been a tiny loss to the missionary alphabet, even though it was soon to disappear into oblivion, and replaced by the Wade-Giles system.
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