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Abstract

Abstract

Interpreting is considered no more than a technical necessity in modern times. Yet millennia ago, China-bound relay interpreting, , could symbolize auspiciousness, often foreshadowed via anomalies in plants or astrology. Its subtle ideological associations can be inferred by analyzing related tokens of usage. Drawing on texts and treatises circulated and written before seventh-century China, this article reports, from a close analysis of four texts, a rhetorical pattern on the formulaic references to . Interestingly, these texts all depict “diplomatic visits to China through ” as an event validating an auspicious sign in nature spotted earlier. My analysis suggests that the documentation of bears more of a figuratively auspicious, rather than a sheer mediating, connotation. The elevation of a relay interpreting act to a cultural icon or ideological dimension is ubiquitous in the Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE) writings, which served to leverage the state-sanctioned Confucian and divination overtones to reinforce the emperor’s mandate. This article aims at examining the epistemology and ideology of classical references to and identifying a rhetorical pattern denoting the conceptual link between and auspiciousness in the broader Confucian framework.

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2024-02-12
2024-10-12
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