The lexicology of ju 居
The king was sitting on his royal throne inside the palace opposite the entrance… (Esther 5:1)
Let’s begin here with a close reading of one particular Ode, from the airs of the State of Zheng. Although later Ritual School commentators criticised the Zheng airs as yin 淫 ‘excessive’ (Analects 15.11). These airs were, however, given a prominent place in the canon nevertheless. This tension invites us to examine the Ode on its own terms. It unfolds in three stanzas, scaling greater heights of admiration:
叔于田、巷無居人。
豈無居人、不如叔也、洵美且仁。
叔于狩、巷無飲酒。
豈無飲酒、不如叔也、洵美且好。叔適野、巷無服馬。
豈無服馬、不如叔也、洵美且武。Shu has gone hunting;
And in the streets there are no inhabitants.
Are there indeed no inhabitants?
[But] they are not like Shu,
Who is truly admirable and kind.
Shu has gone to the grand chase;
And in the streets there are none feasting.
Are there indeed none feasting?
[But] they are not like Shu,
Who is truly admirable and good.
Shu has gone into the country;
And in the streets there are none driving about.
Are there indeed none driving about?
[But] they are not like Shu,
Who is truly admirable and martial.(Book of Odes 《詩經》, Odes of Zheng 鄭風, ‘Shu Has Gone Hunting’ 叔于田 1-3)
Two interpretive cruxes require our attention. First, the shu 叔 in this poem is not a personal name, but instead a title, conferred on the younger son (usually the third) of a landed lord or ruler. Thus, the poem is dedicated to an anonymous beloved of the poet. The Western Han-era Mao Commentary on the Odes links this particular shu 叔 to one Gongshu Duan 公叔段, the rebellious younger brother of Duke Zhuang of Zheng 鄭莊公, though this interpretation casts a satirical tenor on the poem that is not immediately evident from the text itself. Treating the shu 叔 of this poem as a symbolic vessel places less forward intellectual baggage on the text.
Second, it is well to note the three sacred rituals over which this shu 叔 presides: the tian 田 or ritual hunt; the shou 狩 or ‘grand chase’, a term which is used elsewhere for royal inspections; and the shiye 适野 or journey into the wilds. The last of these carries a shamanic connotation, the entry into a liminal space where the human and the divine intersect, such as the spirit-passages of the contemporary Chuci 《楚辞》 attributed to the southern poet Qu Yuan 屈原.
This shu 叔 is therefore accorded a series of high privileges in the text, including two that are exclusive to the Son of Heaven. The privilege of yinjiu 饮酒 ‘feasting’, of course, is reserved for hosts and persons of high rank who are fit to offer sacrifices of wine to Heaven. Then there is the privilege of the fuma 服马, the two central leading horses on the Imperial chariot. (In antiquity, only the Son of Heaven was given the privilege of riding a chariot pulled by four, or later six, horses.) And then, of course, there is the privilege of ju 居—of ‘sitting on a throne’.
The syssemantograph ju 居 represents a person’s ‘body’ (shi 尸) reclining or sitting down on something ‘solid’ or ‘firm’ (gu 古, a function that was later transferred to a different gu 固). It thus bears a certain resemblance both in function and in semantic content to chu 处 ‘to dwell, dwelling-place’. In the Shuowen jiezi, Xu Shen defines ju 居 as synonymous with dun 蹲 ‘to crouch, to squat, to sit’. The Erya further links ju with zhai 宅 ‘to dwell, dwelling, tomb, homebody’. In modern Mandarin, ju 居 by itself or in the compound juzhu 居住 functions as a verb: ‘to reside’. Other common compounds with this character include juran 居然 ‘unexpectedly’; jumin 居民 ‘resident’; linju 邻居 ‘neighbour’; tongju 同居 ‘to live together’; fenju 分居 ‘to separate’; weiju 位居 ‘located at’; dingju 定居 ‘to take up residence’; jushi 居室 ‘room’ etc.
In the Classics, the primary function of ju 居 is ‘to sit’ or ‘to dwell’: 維鵲有巢、維鳩居之。 ‘The nest is the magpie’s; the dove dwells in it.’ (Odes, Odes of Shao and the South 召南, ‘Magpie’s Nest’ 鵲巢 1) The term is also nominal, ‘settlement, dwelling’: 豳居允荒 ‘The settlement at Bin flourished.’ (Odes, Decade of Sheng Min 生民之什, ‘Duke Liu’ 公劉 5) More abstractly, it can function, particularly in the Changes, as ‘to occupy’: 甘節之吉，居位中也。 ‘“The good fortune arising from the regulations enacted sweetly and acceptably” is due to (the line) occupying the place (of authority) and being in the centre.’ (Book of Changes 《易經》, Jie ䷻節 6) It can also refer to a ‘position’ or an ‘office’: 無已大康、職思其居。 ‘But let us not go to great excess; let us first think of our position.’ (Odes, Odes of Tang 唐風, ‘Cricket’ 蟋蟀 1) Also: 臣罔以寵利居成功。 ‘The minister does not, for favour and gain, continue in an office whose work is done.’ (Book of Documents 《尚書》, Book of Shang 商書, Taijia III 太甲下 8)
In Classical contexts it is also used in the idiomatic compound riji yuezhu 日居月諸, literally ‘the sun dwells [among] many moons’, semantically corresponding to the English phrase ‘time flies’: 日居月諸、照臨下土。乃如之人兮、逝不古處。 ‘O sun; O moon, which enlighten this lower earth! Here is the man, who treats me not according to the ancient rule.’ (Odes, Odes of Bei 邶風, ‘Sun and Moon’ 日月 1) And another sense in which this lexeme bears significant symbolic importance is the royal abode: the place where the king abides. 王在在鎬、有那其居。 ‘The king is here, here in Hao, dwelling in tranquillity.’ (Odes, Decade of Sang Hu 桑扈之什, ‘Fishes in Pondweed’ 魚藻 3) Another rarer function is as an adverb, ‘high-handedly, arrogantly’, which seems to derive from the sense of ‘as someone on a throne would do’: 羔裘豹袪、自我人居居。 ‘Lamb’s fur and leopard’s cuffs, you use us with unkindness.’ (Odes, Odes of Tang, ‘Lamb’s Fur’ 羔裘 1)
The relationship between ju 居 and chu 処, often used together in near-synonymous function—爰居爰處、爰喪其馬 ‘Here we stay, here we stop; here we lose our horses’ (Odes, Odes of Bei, ‘Drum Roll’ 擊鼓 3)—is parallel to the relationship between the Hebrew roots yāšab ישב ‘to sit’ and šākab שכב ‘to lie, to lie down’ and thus šākan שכן ‘to abide, to dwell, to repose’. אלהים מושׁיב יחידים בּיתה מוציא אסירים בּכּושׁרות אך סוררים שׁכנוּ צחיחה ‘God gives the desolate a home to dwell [literally ‘sit’: môšîb מושיב, from yāšab ישב] in; he leads out the prisoners to prosperity; but the rebellious dwell [‘lie, abide’: šāknû שכנו] in a parched land.’ (Psa 67:7) Or: אבחר דּרכּם ואשׁב ראשׁ ואשׁכּון כּמלך בּגּדוּד כּאשׁר אבלים ינחם ‘I chose their way, and sat as chief, and I dwelt like a king among his troops, like one who comforts mourners.’ (Job 29:25) The two lexemes are close enough in function here that we may think of them as near-synonyms.
But note how, similarly to ju 居, the root š-k-n ש־כ־ן has a political, kingly overtone: ‘I… sat as chief, and I dwelt like a king’! The basic idea behind this usage, understood by both the Sinitic Zhou and the Semitic West Asians is that: once I recline on this chair, no one can dislodge me from it—I am the authority when I sit down, my rulings from it are law, and no one is higher than me. This is a massively important didactic function in the West Asian Tanakh, which deals centrally with the problem of the throne, and who is allowed to abide (šākan שכן) on it! יהוה מי־יגוּר בּאהלך מי־ישׁכּן בּהר קדשׁך ‘O Lord, who shall sojourn in thy tent? Who shall dwell on thy holy hill?’ (Psa 14:1)
This Hebrew root’s other, more mundane function ‘to dwell’ is found throughout the Book of Genesis. The kingly prerogative to sit in judgement, as ruler, is rather first attested in the Book of Exodus: ויּשׁכּן כּבוד־יהוה על־הר סיני ויכסּהוּ הענן שׁשׁת ימים ויּקרא אל־משׁה בּיּום השּׁביעי מתּוך הענן ‘The glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days; and on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud.’ (Exo 24:16) The place, Mount Sinai, is significant, as is the context of the broader Exodus narrative. The glory of the Lord lights upon His throne… on the coastal edge of the empire of Egypt. The Lord is sitting in judgement: opposite Pharaoh.
The literary prosōpon of Pharaoh is, as Fr Marc Boulos points out in this week’s The Bible as Literature podcast, interchangeable with that of Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander the Great, and Caesar and Augustus and their descendants. The al-mala’ الملأ, the ‘fullness’ (to use the phrasing from the Qur’ān) of Pharaoh’s court, is arrayed against the prophets, against the people under them, and—ultimately—against God. This is because they seek to sit on the throne of God.
In the Pǝšiṭta Gospel of Mark, the root š-k-n is found in Chapter 4: ܘܡܳܐ ܕ݁ܶܐܙܕ݁ܰܪܥܰܬ݂ ܣܳܠܩܳܐ ܘܗܳܘܝܳܐ ܪܰܒ݁ܳܐ ܡܶܢ ܟ݁ܽܠܗܽܘܢ ܝܰܪܩܽܘܢܶܐ ܘܥܳܒ݂ܕ݁ܳܐ ܣܰܘܟ݁ܶܐ ܪܰܘܪܒ݂ܳܬ݂ܳܐ ܐܰܝܟ݂ ܕ݁ܬ݂ܶܫܟ݁ܰܚ ܕ݁ܰܒ݂ܛܶܠܳܠܳܗ ܦ݁ܳܪܰܚܬ݂ܳܐ ܬ݁ܶܫܟ݁ܰܢ ‘But when it is sown, it springs up and becomes greater than all the herbs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds can settle under their shadow.’ (Mark 4:32), and it is in a direct quote from the Book of Daniel (Dan 4:12), precisely where Daniel is interpreting a dream of Nebuchadnezzar, which frustrated and stymied all of his al-mala’! The tree, which represents Nebuchadnezzar, is hewn down, and its stump becomes a throne for the Most High God. The Pharaohs and Alexanders and Caesars—those who seek to sit on God’s throne—are ultimately made into His footstool.
Returning to the use of ju 居 in the Ode ‘Shu Has Gone Hunting’: it is one of the three exclusive royal prerogatives that attaches to the shu 叔 of the poem; ju 居 ‘enthronement’ is placed in parallel with yinjiu 饮酒 ‘feasting’ and fuma 服马 ‘driving (the royal chariot)’. These prerogatives are each respectively accorded to a ritual of shamanic significance: tian 田 ‘the hunt’; shou 狩 ‘the tour of inspection’; and shiye 适野 ‘the journey into the wild’. The shu 叔 is very much so not the Son of Heaven; otherwise he would be referred to as jun 君 or hou 后. Yet these royal attributes, ritual presidency and prerogatives are bestowed on him—suggesting that he may be more than mortal.
This shu 叔 clearly possesses some superior qualities, desirable in a prince or in a lover. He is mei 美 ‘beautiful’—an epithet that is repeated three times. He is also ren 仁 ‘kind, caring, empathetic’—a virtue of paramount significance in the Ritual School. He is hao 好 ‘good, wholesome, amiable’. And he is wu 武 ‘bold, courageous, forceful, just’, though there are also functions which link this lexeme to soldiery and also to inheritance. These qualities render him matchless: bu ru shu ye 不如叔也 ‘[there is] none like Shu’, is also repeated thrice. The hyperbolic exaltation of the shu, and negation of any other agent in his presence, suggests the entrance into a shamanic ecstasis.
Yet the absence of key shamanic elements of other contemporary Chinese songs such as those in the Chuci 《楚辞》 is noteworthy. There is no explicit spirit-possession or transformation of reality here. There is also no typical tragic denouement of bereavement and grief expressing the spiritual state of the shaman at the end of the séance. Thus, although the Ritual School’s moralistic interpretation of ‘Shu Has Gone Hunting’ may be misguided, it would be equally incorrect to interpret this Ode simply as a folkloric holdover from a pre-Ritual shamanic tradition. The ascription of divine attributes to the shu 叔 of this poem thus has a different didactic or political purpose.
If the shu 叔 is otherworldly (that is to say, not an earthly jun 君 or hou 后), but it the poem is otherwise lacking in ‘religious’ import, then the bu ru shu ye 不如叔也, along with the place of this Ode among the airs of Zheng, may hold the key. Zheng 鄭 (modern-day Zhengzhou 郑州) is the fief which is closest to the capital of Zhou which was always assigned to a royal kinsman, even during the Warring States. Thus, when Confucius criticises the ‘excesses’ of Zheng, one can take that as a coded criticism of the internecine struggles for political power and privilege between Zheng and Zhou, or else of the lavish deportment of the Zhou ruling family and ruling class as a whole. The royal praise lavished on a shu who may be otherworldly, thus serves the same function in its context, as the glorious ‘enthronement’ of the Yahweh on the peak of Mount Sinai!
And the inclusion of this poem in the Odes makes a different reading possible. It is, after all, wisdom literature. The authors of the Odes were not stupid: they would not knowingly lavish praise on worldly princes of Zheng whom their ultimate representative, Confucius, would then go on to criticise as ‘excessive’.
The bu ru shu ye不如叔也 can be taken as the equivalent of the West Asian la ilāh illa huwa لا اله الا هو ‘there is none but Him’.
