From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
James Legge (; Chinese: 理雅各; 20 December ;– 29 November 1897) was a noted Scottish , a Scottish , representative of the
in Malacca and Hong Kong (), and first
(). In association with
he prepared the monumental
series, published in 50 volumes between 1879 and 1891.
James Legge was born at , , and educated at
and then . After studying at the , London, he went in 1839 as a
to China, but remained at Malacca three years, in charge of the
there. The College was subsequently moved to Hong Kong, where Legge lived for nearly thirty years. A Chinese Christian,
accompanied Legge when he moved in 1844. He returned home to Huntly, Aberdeenshire, in 1846–7, taking with him three Chinese students. Legge and the students were received by Queen Victoria before his return to Hong Kong.
Legge and his three Chinese students
Legge married twice, first to Mary Isabella Morison () and after she died to a widow, Hannah Mary Willetts (d 1881, née Johnstone).
Convinced of the need for missionaries to be able to comprehend the ideas and culture of the Chinese, he began in 1841 a translation in many volumes of the , a monumental task that he completed a few years before his death. During his residence in Hong Kong, he translated Chinese classic literature into English with the help of
and , among others. He was the headmaster at
in Hong Kong from 1839 to 1867, and pastor of the Union Church there from 1844 to 1867.
He was third and final editor of the , the first Chinese newspaper in Hong Kong. The paper closed in May 1856.
In 1867, Legge returned to
in Clackmannanshire, Scotland, where he invited Wang Tao to join him, and received his LLD from the
in 1870. While in Scotland, he also revisited his native burgh, Huntly, accompanied by Wang Tao. He then returned to Hong Kong as pastor at Union Church from 1870 to 1873. While in Hong Kong he published The She king () in 1871 which according to Peter France is the first substantial volume of Chinese poetry in English translation still in use. The work underwent a new edition in 1876 in verse.
He took a long trip to North China, beginning 2 April 1873 in Shanghai, arriving at Tianjin by boat, then travelling by mule cart and arriving in Peking on 16 April 1873, where he stayed at the
headquarters. He visited the ,
and the , where he felt compelled to take off his shoes with holy awe. He left Peking, accompanied by , and headed for Shandong by mule cart to visit , Taishan, where they ascended the sacred , carried by four men on chairs. Leaving Mount Tai on 15 May, they visited
at , where he climbed to the top of the Confucius' burial mound. Legge returned to Shanghai by way of the , and thence to England via Japan and the USA in 1873.
In 1875 he was named Fellow of
and in 1876 assumed the new
at , where he attracted few students to his lectures but worked hard for some 20 years in his study at 3 Keble Terrace, on his translations of the Chinese classics. According to an anonymous contemporary obituary in the , Legge was in his study every morning at three o'clock, winter and summer, having retired to bed at ten. When he got up in the morning the first thing he did was to make himself a cup of tea over a spirit-lamp. Then he worked away at his translations while all the household slept.
In his book The religions of China: Confucianism and T?oism described and compared with Christianity published in 1880, he wrote that he encountered a mosque in
which had a placard denouncing , saying Islam did not allow it since it constituted violating the creation of God.
Legge was an ardent opponent of Britain's , and was a founding member of the .
In addition to his other work Legge wrote The Life and Teaching of
(1867); The Life and Teaching of
(1875); The Religions of China (1880); and other books on Chinese literature and religion.
Legge was given an honorary MA, University of Oxford, and LLD, , 1884. Legge died at
in 1897 and is buried in . Many of his manuscripts and letters are archived at the .
Legge's most enduring work has been The Chinese Classics: with a Translation, Critical and Exegetical Notes, Prolegomena, and Copious Indexes, 5 vols., (Hong Kong: L London: Trubner, ):
: Confucian Analects, the Great Learning, and the Doctrine of the Mean (1861).
(1893), Oxford: Clarendon Press, reprinted by Cosimo in 2006 ().
: The works of Mencius (1861), Revised second edition (1895), Oxford: Clarendon Press, reprinted by Dover Books in 1990 ().
Volume 3: The Shoo King () (1865):
: Prolegomena (with ) and Chapters 1–36
: Chapters 37–58 and indexes
Volume 4: The She king () (1871)
: Prolegomena and first section
: Second, third and fourth sections
Volume 5: The Ch'un ts'ew (), with the Tso chue () (1872)
: Books 1–8
: Books 9–12
These contain parallel Chinese and English text, with detailed notes, introductions and indexes. Chinese names are transcribed in .
Legge originally planned his Chinese Classics as seven volumes, but his translations of the
(and several others) were instead included in the
series edited by
(Oxford: Clarendon Press):
: The Sh? king (). The religious portions of the Shih king (). The Hsi?o king (). (1879)
: The Y? king () (1882)
The L? K? () (1885), 2 vols.:
: Chapters 1–10
: Chapters 11–46
The Texts of Taoism: The T?o Teh King (); The Writings of Kwang-dze (), 2 vols.:
: Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tz? books 1–17.
: Chuang Tz? books 18–33 and shorter works: the Taishang Ganying Pian (Tractate of Actions and their Retributions), the
(Classic of Purity), the
(Classic of the Harmony of the Seen and Unseen), the Yushu Jing (Classic of the Pivot of Jade) and the Nei Riyong Jing (Classic of the Directory for the Day).
Other works:
, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1880.
, London: Trübner & co., 1888; repr New York: Paragon Book, 1966, . (Contains Chinese-English parallel.)
Peter France (2001). "East Asian Languages: Chinese Poetry". . Oxford University Press. p. 224.  .
(, pp. 83–97)
James Legge (1880). . LONDON: Hodder and Stoughton. p. 111 2010.(Original from Harvard University)
(, p. 196)
'James Legge – A short biography' in: Forbes, A Henley, David (2012). The Illustrated Tao Te Ching. Chiang Mai: Cognoscenti Books. ASIN: B008NNLKXC
 This article incorporates text from The religions of China: Confucianism and T?oism described and compared with Christianity, by James Legge, a publication from 1880 now in the
in the United States.
Forbes, A Henley, David (2012). The Illustrated Tao Te Ching (Jamese Legge translation). Chiang Mai: Cognoscenti Books. ASIN: B008NNLKXC
N. J. Girardot (2002). . University of California Press.  .
Lauren F. Pfister, Striving for 'The Whole Duty of Man': James Legge and the Scottish Protestant Encounter with China, 2 vols., published by The Scottish Studies Centre of the Johannes Gutenberg Universit?t Mainz in Germersheim, 2004.
Legge, Helen Edith (1905). , London: Religious Tract Society.
(2005) [1962]. A biographical sketch-book of early Hong Kong. .  .
Find more about
James Legge
at Wikipedia's
from Wikisource
from Commons
on Wikidata
(public domain audiobooks)
most of which were translated by Legge
Smith, Carl (1986), , Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch 26: 144–264.
, English translation by James Legge. Scalable text on white, grey or black background. Downloadable as a .txt file.
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When you’re dealing with a PC that is completely infected in viruses, sometimes the best thing to do is reboot into a rescue disk and run a full virus scan from there. Here’s how to use the Kaspersky Rescue Disk to clean an infected PC.
There’s lots of ways to clean an infected PC, like , but this is an extremely simple—and free—solution from a trusted anti-virus vendor.
Download and Burn the Image to a Disc
The first thing you’ll need to do is head over to the Kaspersky site and download the , and then use an application to burn that ISO image file to an optical disc—we prefer using , but there’s plenty of ways to burn an ISO to a disc.
Using the Kaspersky Rescue Disk to Clean an Infected PC
Once you’ve got the disc in hand, put it into the PC and reboot—you should see a new screen that says “Press any key to enter the menu”, at which point you should probably press any key. To enter the menu, of course. If you don’t, it’ll boot normally into Windows.
At this point you’ll be able to choose whether to use the Graphic or Text mode, and we’d recommend using the Graphic mode unless there’s some problem, which there really shouldn’t be.
You’ll be prompted to type the letter “a” to accept the agreement. What’s weird is that it didn’t work with a capital letter “A” for us, even though that’s what it shows in the screenshot.
Within a few short seconds you should see the full working environment, with the Kaspersky Rescue Disk screen front and center.
The first thing you want to do is switch tabs over to the My Update Center, and then click the Start update button to load the latest anti-virus definitions from their web site—this is a critical step!
Once done, switch back over to the Objects Scan tab, select the drives you want to scan, and then click the Start Objects Scan button.
The scan will run, and clean up any viruses that it finds. You’ll be prompted when you do encounter a virus, and you’ll have to choose whether to clean or quarantine the files—the typical anti-virus behavior.
If you need to do some more work or research on the PC, you can access some tools directly from the menu below, which has a fully working web browser, command line, and a file manager.
You’ll be able to access your Windows partition through the /discs/C: folder, and do any other maintenance work you need to do.
That’s pretty much all there is to it. Enjoy cleaning viruses.
Published 11/26/10
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