crossing the river

[ctoz]

Does anyone know when 'the river' was first called "yellow" ?
I've seen references to erosion; Confucius still calls it "the river", and that's fairly late...
Any references appreciated.

Cheers,
Chris

 

[hmesker]

In the Zuozhuan the Yellow river is simply called 'river'. But if you search www.ctext.org the first reference to Yellow River is in a text from the Eastern Han dynasty.

 

[ctoz]

Many thanks, Harmen.
I've searched in English; logically there could be texts untranslated which might predate those turned up by the English phrase search.... so how would we phrase it in traditional Chinese?
Cheers

 

[ctoz]

apologies, twas a stupid question. But I'm getting Gaozi 11, which if Wikipedia is correct, is around Mencius' time, well before Easter Han.

 

[ctoz]

I've searched both ways now

"黃河" and "yellow river"

and it appears that, up to the Eastern Han as referenced by Harmen, translators are inserting "yellow" where there's only "river" in the Chinese text.

I've now also found a tantalising reference I'd mentally flagged a while back, in Keightley's "Ancestral Landscape":

"...The situation had evidently deteriorated by Eastern Zhou and Han,
when the silt in the river was noted, and it received, for the first time,
the appellation of "Yellow". (106, n29)

The reference is given as Li Xingjian 1987: 70-74; from the bibliography, without the Chinese text:

"Ye shuo 'jiang' 'he'--cong 'jiang' 'he' hanmyi de bianhua kan ciyi de fazhan he ciyu de xunshi."
Yuyuanxue luncong 14: 70-85.

Tantalising, because it's beyond my competence to follow it up...

Cheers!

 

[hmesker]

The reference is given as Li Xingjian 1987: 70-74; from the bibliography, without the Chinese text:

"Ye shuo 'jiang' 'he'--cong 'jiang' 'he' hanmyi de bianhua kan ciyi de fazhan he ciyu de xunshi."
Yuyuanxue luncong 14: 70-85.Cheers!

As always Keightley gives the Chinese title & source so you can hunt down the original publication.

 

[ctoz]

Harmen, hi,

Maybe it's not apparent, but I do not read enough Chinese to translate the article, let alone access it...
and trying to extract the journal title via OCR of pdf of a png of the full reference was unsuccessful.

Maybe if you have a spare moment... ?

It's curiosity to a purpose, as it may contribute to one of the colour "glosses", in preparation.

Cheers!

 

[hmesker]

Harmen, hi,

Maybe it's not apparent, but I do not read enough Chinese to translate the article, let alone access it...
and trying to extract the journal title via OCR of pdf of a png of the full reference was unsuccessful.

Maybe if you have a spare moment... ?

It's curiosity to a purpose, as it may contribute to one of the colour "glosses", in preparation.

Cheers!

The title is 也說江”河′一從河′含義的變化看詞義的發展和詞語的訓釋 from the journal 語言學論叢 14, p. 70-85. I see that the University Library in Leiden has this journal. I'll be going there this week so if I can find the article I will copy (and OCR) it for you. I don't have the time to translate it for you.

 

[ctoz]

Thankyou, Harmen, that would be great.

My software will normally do OCR ok from a normal pdf, but it often fails if the pdf is from another image type.
I'm sure I can find a translator.

Thanks again.

CT

 

[hmesker]

You can download the file here https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mNSTP-OuHwiZPHAxGOUY9DR9KQhnaxmo

 

[ctoz]

Harmen, I'm very grateful. Thankyou.

 

[ctoz]

hmm...
I'll try locally, but if anyone online might be interested, it's 16 pages and 11000 characters
"Also said the river"

 

[hmesker]

The answer to your question is on p. 73 of the paper:

先秦以后才开始有“黄河”“长江”的名称。
Only after the Qin dynasty do the names Huang He (Yellow River) and Chang Jiang (Yangzi river) begin to appear.

 

[ctoz]

Thankyou Harmen, again.
This does not disagree with your first response.