A Refutation of the Matter of the Splitting Steamer in the Life of Du Mu (杜牧傳)杜牧傳甑裂事駮
牧傳。有牧之死。炊甑裂。牧曰不祥。予駮之曰。此拘忌小數淫巫瞽史之說耳。牧曰不祥。非醇儒所當言者。史臣宋公宜逸而猶書之。亦雜也。書曰。牝鷄之晨。惟家之索。夫牝固無司晨之任。牝而晨焉。家之怪。孰大於是。甚於國之雉雊鼎耳。鼠舞端門之妖。故聖人存而不删。若甑之裂者。或因火烈。或因水燥。而非必以怪。牧之死適會耳。不足以爲的驗。以予所試觀之。予家去歲秋九月。方爨甑剨而裂。予殊不以爲怪。又今歲二月。甑鳴如牛吼。俄而大裂如人劃破者。竈婦𢥠然失色。奔告於予。予笑自若。適有術人至曰。此不利主人。非痛祈解。恐不免。室人欲亟從其言。予止之曰。死生有命。苟有死期。怪特先兆耳。祈解何益。苟無焉。甑裂其如予何。果不死至于今。且杜牧以何無狀。遇甑一裂而死。予以何德。被甑再裂而能免耶。此不驗明準也。吾恐後人溺於其說。故書以曉之。
In the Life of Du Mu there are the words: 「When Du Mu (杜牧) was about to die, the steamer in which the rice was cooked split. Du Mu said that it was not auspicious.」 I refute this.
This is only the talk of lewd shamans and blind chroniclers bound fast to petty arts of divination. For Du Mu to say that it was not auspicious is not what a pure scholar ought to say. The historian Duke Song (宋公) wrote down what he ought rather to have left out, and this too is mixed and impure.
The Documents (書) say: 「When the hen crows at dawn, it is only the ruin of that house.」 Now the female has truly no charge of announcing the dawn, and when a creature is female and yet crows at dawn, what strangeness in a house could be greater than this? It is worse than those portents in the state — the pheasant that cried and perched on the ear of the caldron, and the rat that danced at the Duanmen gate (端門). Therefore the sage kept it and did not cut it away.
As for a steamer's splitting, it is sometimes because the fire is fierce and sometimes because the water has dried away; it is not of necessity a strange thing. Du Mu's death merely happened to fall together with it, and that is not enough to be taken for a sure proof.
Judging by what I have tried for myself: in my house, in the ninth month of last autumn, the fire had only just been lit when the steamer split with a crack. I did not think it in the least strange. Again, in the second month of this year, the steamer moaned like the bellowing of an ox, and presently it split wide open as though a man had scored and broken it. The woman of the kitchen was frightened, lost the color of her face, and came running to tell me. I laughed and was as I had been. A master of arts happened to come by and said: 「This is not to the advantage of the master of this house. Unless you pray bitterly and loose it, I fear you will not escape.」 The people of my house wished to follow his word at once, but I stopped them, saying: 「Dying and living have their appointed term. If there be a time for me to die, the strange thing is only the omen that goes before it, and what would praying and loosing add? And if there be none, what can a split steamer do to me?」 And in truth I did not die, but am here to this day.
Furthermore, what wrong had Du Mu, that at one splitting of a steamer he died; and what virtue have I, that though a steamer split twice I was able to escape? This is a clear standard of what is not borne out by proof. I feared that men after me would sink into that talk, and so I write to wake them.