The Works of Confucius; Containing the Original Text, With a Translation. To Which is Prefixed a Dissertation on the Chinese Language and Character. [The Analects of Confucius].

MARSHMAN, Joshua [Confucius].

Item Number: 127538

Serampore: Printed at the Mission Press, 1809.

First English translation of the Analects of Confucius printed at Serampore, the first major center of English printing in Chinese. Quarto, two volumes bound into one in three quarter morocco over marbled boards with gilt titles and raised bands to the spine, illustrated with 2 folding charts on Chinese characters, 4 tables on 2 folding leaves, errata at rear. In very good condition. Exceptionally rare, particularly with Marshman’s separately printed dissertation present including the tables and charts.

The first English translation of the Analects (Lunyu) of Confucius, Baptist missionary Marshman's translation contains the first five of twenty books and was printed at Serampore, the first major center of English printing in Chinese. The first complete translation by James Legge was published decades later in 1861. A collection of sayings attributed to Confucius, the Analects were likely compiled posthumously by his followers. The Analects' reputation grew to surpass that of the Five Classics and became one of the texts underpinning the Confucian system which held sway over China for two millennia. Joshua Marshman, William Carey, and William Ward established a Baptist mission and press at Danish-controlled Serampore in 1800, beyond the control of the East India Company. The Company discouraged missionary activity and maintained a policy of press censorship within its territories. Marshman and his fellow missionaries had ambitious plans for proselytizing across Asia, and he had studied Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Syriac before he even reached India. In India, he first learned Bangali and Sanskrit. Next, he turned to Chinese, which he studied intensively under the guidance of Johannes Lassar, scion of a wealthy Armenian trading family in Macao, and assisted by several Chinese tutors. This book dates from the first phase of Chinese language printing in Serampore, with Chinese character printed using woodblock characters carved by Bengali textile workers, whose carved woodblocks were employed to print patterns onto calico. The second phase would only being in 1813 when moveable metal type replaced woodblocks, which enormously increased efficiently, as it permitted many more impressions. The Chinese publications for the Mission Press were principally evangelical; Lassar and Marshman translated large sections of the Old and New Testaments into Chinese, and saw Serampore as an ideal position from which to spread the Chinese gospel, free from imperial Chinese censorship. The East India Company too was increasingly interested in the study of Chinese for political reasons. Their Indian territories abutted the Chinese forts in Tibet, and the memory of Macartney's diplomatic failure in 1792 remained fresh. Another diplomatic mission would require translators, and the Company had no competent Chinese interpreters in India at the turn of the century. Marshman dedicated this work toe the Governor-General of Bengal, Lord Minto, who subsidized the cost of printing in Chinese at Serampore, despite his personal hostility to missionary activity with British India.