Parallelism

Here is an illustration of the "parallelism" used in classical Chinese writing. Classical has a mathematical feel, with the geometric relations between characters often describing spatial or temporal movements. In deciphering these word puzzles, the parallels offer hints on how to interpret characters that have a wide range of meanings.

For our example, Analects 1.13 features five sets of parallel elements: the four virtues (primary and secondary), two distance words (close and far), two negative outcomes (shame and disgrace), two verbs (lose and follow), and two nouns (relatives and ancestors).

The first two sentences contain orderly parallels. The passage clearly tells us that if we fail to practice the primary virtues but keep close to the approximate secondary ones, we can keep shame and disgrace far away. Thus, we have a first and secondary line of defense.

The final sentence is more challenging. The sentence begins with a causation character, 因, meaning "as a result," followed by two phrases. The first phrase is four characters long, with the verb 失, meaning "to lose," and the noun 親, meaning "relatives." The second phrase, only three characters long, contains the verb 宗, meaning "to follow," but no noun. It is necessary to interpret 宗 as a verb, since the phrase means "still able to (verb)." Interestingly, 宗 can also be interpreted as a noun, meaning "ancestors," which completes the puzzle perfectly. If we understand 宗 as a dual-functioning verb-noun, the English translation becomes nicely parallel: "not losing his relatives, still able to follow ancestors."

The final rendering then becomes…