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The last charge — after I am gone終制

Yanshi Jiaxun (The Family Instructions of Master Yan) 顏氏家訓 · Yan Zhitui · Late 6th century · 4 passages · 638 Chinese characters · reading time 2.6 min

Yanshi Jiaxun (The Family Instructions of Master Yan) Complete in one volume Twenty chapters of family instruction left to his descendants by Yan Zhitui, a scholar of the end of the Northern and Southern dynasties. He was born under Liang and survived as a wanderer through four states — Western Wei, Northern Qi, Northern Zhou and Sui — and he wrote, in his own words, "to set the household in order and to wake the sons and grandsons." It runs from teaching children, brothers, a second wife, the ordering of a house, bearing and speech, learning, writing, name and reality, and knowing when one has enough, on to the examination of characters and books, the sounds of speech, the many arts of calligraphy and painting and archery and divining and the zither and go, and at last to his last charge on how his own burial was to be conducted. The passage where he sees the sons of the noble houses of Liang, of whom the proverb ran, "If he can climb into a carriage without falling out, he can be a court compiler," left after the troubles to plough the fields and tend horses, and says that "a thousand myriad piled up in goods is not so good as a small skill about the person"; and the passage that "he who learns while young is like the light of the rising sun, and he who learns when old is like a man walking at night with a candle in his hand," both come from here. Every book of family instruction after it takes this one for its ancestor.

1Fifty is not dying young — the words I leave

死者，人之常分，不可免也。吾年十九，值梁家喪亂，其間與白刃爲伍者，亦常數輩；幸承餘福，得至於今。古人云：「五十不爲夭。」吾已六十餘，故心坦然，不以殘年爲念。先有風氣之疾，常疑奄然，聊書素懷，以爲汝誡。

Death is the lot set for every man, and there is no escaping it. In my nineteenth year I met the ruin and disorder of the house of Liang, and in that time I kept company with the naked blade more than once, yet by the blessing left to me I have come through to this day. The ancients said, "Fifty is not dying young." I am already past sixty, so my heart is at ease and I do not dwell on the years that are left. I have had for some time an illness of the wind and the vapors (風氣), and I have always thought I might be gone of a sudden, so I set down roughly what has long been in my mind, to serve as a warning to you.

2The regret of not bringing my father and mother to the old hills of Jianye

先君先夫人皆未還建鄴舊山，旅葬江陵東郭。承聖末，已啓求揚都，欲營遷厝。蒙詔賜銀百兩，已於揚州小郊北地燒磚，便值本朝淪没，流離如此，數十年間，絶於還望。今雖混一，家道罄窮，何由辦此奉營資費？且揚都污毀，無復孑遺，還被下濕，未爲得計。自咎自責，貫心刻髓。計吾兄弟，不當仕進；但以門衰，骨肉單弱，五服之內，傍無一人，播越他鄉，無復資蔭；使汝等沈淪廝役，以爲先世之恥；故靦冒人間，不敢墜失。兼以北方政教嚴切，全無隱退者故也。

My late father and my late mother were neither of them brought back to the old hills of Jianye, but were buried as travelers outside the eastern wall of Jiangling. At the end of the Chengsheng years I had already asked leave to go to Yangdu, meaning to move their graves. I was granted a hundred taels of silver by edict and had already begun firing bricks on ground north of Xiaojiao in Yangzhou, when the dynasty fell, and I was cast adrift as you see. In some tens of years since, all hope of going back has been cut off. Now, though the land is made one again, the house is spent to the bottom, and where should I find the means for such a service? Yangdu, besides, is fouled and broken and nothing at all is left of it, and the ground there is low and damp, so it would be no good plan. I blame myself and reproach myself, and it pierces my heart and is cut into my marrow. When I consider my brothers and myself, we ought not to have gone forward into office. It was only that the house had fallen and our own flesh and blood were few and weak, with not one man beside us within the five degrees of mourning, and being driven into another country we had no shade of a forebear left to rest under. Rather than sink you into mean service and make you a shame to those who went before, I braved men's faces and went out into the world and did not dare let it drop. And it was also because the rule and the teaching of the north are strict and pressing, and there is no one at all who withdraws from office.

3Let my funeral be like this

今年老疾侵，儻然奄忽，豈求備禮乎？一日放臂，沐浴而已，不勞復魄，殮以常衣。先夫人棄背之時，屬世荒饉，家塗空迫，兄弟幼弱，棺器率薄，藏內無磚。吾當松棺二寸，衣帽已外，一不得自隨，床上唯施七星板；至如蠟弩牙、玉豚、錫人之屬，並須停省，糧罌明器，故不得營，碑誌旒旐，彌在言外。載以鱉甲車，襯土而下，平地無墳；若懼拜掃不知兆域，當築一堵低牆於左右前後，隨爲私記耳。靈筵勿設枕几，朔望祥禫，唯下白粥清水幹棗，不得有酒肉餅果之祭。親友來餟酹者，一皆拒之。汝曹若違吾心，有加先妣，則陷父不孝，在汝安乎？其內典功德，隨力所至，勿刳竭生資，使凍餒也。四時祭祀，周、孔所教，欲人勿死其親，不忘孝道也。求諸內典，則無益焉。殺生爲之，翻增罪累。若報罔極之德，霜露之悲，有時齋供，及七月半盂蘭盆，望於汝也。

Now that age and sickness are upon me, if I should go of a sudden, how should I ask for full ceremony? On the day my arms are let down, wash the body and no more. Do not trouble to call the soul back. Shroud me in my everyday clothes. When my mother left us, the world was in famine and the way of the house was empty and hard pressed, and my brothers and I were young and weak, so the coffin was thin and there were no bricks in the chamber. For me a pine coffin two inches thick is right. Beyond clothes and cap let nothing at all go down with me, and on the board lay only the seven-star plank. As for the wax crossbow trigger, the jade pig, the tin figures and the like, all of them are to be left off. The grain jars and the spirit vessels are likewise not to be provided, and a stele, an inscription, a banner or a streamer are further still beyond speaking of. Carry me on a turtle-shell cart, let me down straight against the earth, and make no mound on the level ground. If you fear you will not know the place when you come to sweep the grave, then build one low wall at the left and the right, before and behind, and let it serve as a private mark, no more. Set no pillow or armrest at the spirit seat. At the new moon and the full moon, and at the xiang and the tan rites, set out only white gruel, clear water and dried jujubes. There must be no offering of wine or meat or cakes or fruit. When friends and kin come to pour out wine, turn them all away. If you go against my heart and do more for me than you did for your mother, you drag your father into unfilial conduct, and would your own hearts be easy in it? For the merit works of the inner canon, do what your strength reaches to, but do not scrape out the living's means and leave yourselves cold and hungry. The sacrifices of the four seasons were taught by the Duke of Zhou and by Confucius, so that men should not hold their parents to be dead and should not forget the way of filial duty. Seek them in the inner canon and there is no profit in them. To take life for them only adds to sin and burden. If you would repay a kindness without end, and pour out the sorrow of the frost and the dew, then keep a fast and make an offering from time to time, and hold the Yulanpen on the fifteenth day of the seventh month. That is what I hope from you.

4When the breath stops, bury me at once

孔子之葬親也，云：「古者，墓而不墳。丘東西南北之人也，不可以弗識也。」於是封之崇四尺。然則君子應世行道，亦有不守墳墓之時，況爲事際所逼也！吾今羈旅，身若浮云，竟未知何鄉是吾葬地；唯當氣絶便埋之耳。汝曹宜以傳業揚名爲務，不可顧戀朽壤，以取堙没也。

When Confucius buried his parent he said, "In old times they made a grave and raised no mound. I am a man who goes east and west and south and north, and I cannot leave it unmarked." So he raised the mound to four feet. If that is so, then a gentleman who answers the age and carries out the way will have times when he cannot keep the graves, and how much more one who is driven by the press of events! I am a wanderer now, and my body is like a floating cloud, and to the end I do not know what country is the ground I shall be buried in. Only, when the breath stops, bury me at once. You should make it your business to carry on the family calling and raise its name, and not look back and long after rotted earth until you are buried and lost in it.

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