 |
|
The Mother of Mencius
When Mencius was young, he came home from school one day and found his mother was weaving at the loom. She asked him, "Is school out already?"
He replied, "I left because I felt like it."
His mother took her knife and cut the finished cloth on her loom. Mencius was startled and asked why. She replied, "Your neglecting your studies is very much like my cutting the cloth. The superior person studies to establish a reputation and gain wide knowledge. He is calm and poised and tries to do no wrong. If you do not study now, you will surely end up as a menial servant and will never be free from troubles. It would be just like a woman who supports herself by weaving to give it up. How long could such a person depend on her husband and son to stave off hunger? If a woman neglects her work or a man gives up the cultivation of his character, they may end up as common thieves if not slaves!"
Shaken, from then on Mencius studied hard from morning to night. He studied the philosophy of the master and eventually became a famous Confucian scholar.
___________
This passage is an excerpt on the Mother of Mencius, translated by Nancy Gibbs, from the Biographies of Heroic Women, written by the Han dynasty scholar and bibliographer, Liu Xiang (79-8 B.C.), in:
Ebrey, Patricia Buckley (ed.). 1993. Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook. Second Edition. New York: The Free Press. Page 73.
The images of Meng Mu and Mencius are from Lienu Zhuan (Biographies of Heroic Women), part of the Chinese Text Initiative at University of Virginia. (Click here for the two pages containing the excerpt in the printed book .)
Back to Chinese 231 | Chinese 580 | MC's Home Page
Created: 10 February 2002 by Marjorie Chan. Updated: 29 April 2002.