The AGA website has a page of "Notable Quotes About Go":
https://www.usgo.org/notable-quotes-about-go

This one, said to be from Confucius, is near the beginning:I am not a scholar of the Chinese Classics. But this does not strike me as the sort of thing that Confucius would have said. I have tried looking through some antiquated translations of the Analects online, but cannot find anything resembling this quote. Does anyone know where in the Analects (or in one of his other works) it can be found?

Btw, according to the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive, this page, along with the Confucius quote, has been on the AGA site since at least July 2012. So one would suppose that it should be correct, if it has been publicly displayed all this time. But I still have some doubts.

_________________
And the go-fever which is more real than many doctors’ diseases, waked and raged...
- Rudyard Kipling, "The Light That Failed" (1891)

I'm pretty sure this exact quote is covered in some GoGoD article or book by Fairbairn because I've read about it and that can be the only source. If I remember correctly the article hints that the statement was in jest.
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Update: not exactly sure what I was remembering but this is discussed a few times in Gateway To All Marvels.

https://gobooks.com/books-by-author.html#john-fairbairn

If you don't feel like buying the book just know that Confucius allegedly mentioned Go but translations vary. Unless there were 2 different statements. Ancient Chinese is different from modern Chinese.

If it matters, I bought Gateway purely for the introduction on ancient Chinese. It's good. I read it and then went back to reading the intro to Stone Chamber.

The quotation is completely wrong and should not be on the AGA web site without a disclaimer.

Leave aside the question of whether Confucius ever said anything that's in in the Analects - the sayings were allegedly compiled by his students after his death. Refer to the works of the likes of van Nordern if you want a modern view of who said what.

Leave aside also the question as to whether go was even mentioned at all. We can reasonably assume a board game of skill existed in the time of Mencius (372~289 BC), a fourth-generation follower of Confucius, because he refers to a master player Qiu. There is also a pre-Confucian reference to a game of skill in the Zuo Zhuan. But whether this game was go as we know it, Jim. is still open to doubt.

The reference attributed to Confucius is to the phrase 博弈. We are fairly sure 博 (bo) is a game of chance, more commonly known as liubo. The nearest modern equivalent may be ludo or pachisi, although liubo was possibly more advanced: it was hugely popular and acquired quite an extensive technical vocabulary. It may, for example, have been a dice game of skill in the sense that backgammon is. The primitive character form of 弈 (hands putting something on a board?) indicates the meaning may simply have been 'board game', and there is also a view that 博弈 is a binome just to pluralise the phrase into 'board games' (or, in the dour mindset of the western missionaries who first translated the Chinese classics, 'gambling games'). Binomes are rare in ancient Chinese (though not unknown). On that basis, other western translators preferred something like 'liubo and chess'. Ancient Chinese seem mostly to take the coordinate interpretation, but that is not quite the same thing as assuming 弈 is go. That connection came much, much later, in the Han, when Yang Xiong said in his book on dialects, Fa Yan: "Weiqi is [also] called yi. Eastwards of the Hangu Pass, throughout Qi and Lu, everyone calls it yi." (And that eastern area was also where Confucius lived.) But even in much more modern times 弈 has been taken to mean board games in general, and has been used, for example, for Chinese chess.

Going back to the Analects, the quotation refers to Book 17 (the Yang Huo book), Section 22. Yang Huo was a political schemer who wanted to employ Confucius (because of his prestige), but Confucius evidently disapproved of him and avoided him. Yang used a trick. He sent a pig (i.e. food) to Confucius's house when he was not at home. Etiquette required going to the sender's house in such a case, to express thanks. Confucius used the same trick and went when Yang was not at home. But eventually, it seems, they did meet talk, and if the conversations do reflect reality, we can see that Confucius did indeed regard Yang and others like him with disapproval. On that basis, we can infer that the reference to playing board games (if true) is to be taken as contumely. Confucius begins by saying that man who stuffs himself full of food all day (a possible reference to Yang Huo and the pig?) finds it difficult to put his mind to good use. He then allegedly adds: "Are there not players of 博弈? [At least] doing that would seem more admirable."

The character for the word I render as admirable was 贤 (which has overtones of 'morally good'). Legge (one of those dour Scots missionaries) rendered it, however, as "better than being idle." Later writers who 'translated' Legge rather than the actual Chinese have twisted this into weird things like 'trivial games'.

The 'morally inferior' sense of the original is backed up by the Book of Mencius where Mencius lists Five Unfilial Things (Meng Zi, Li Lou, [=Book IV, Part B, Chapter 30]). The second is "not attending to the nourishment of one's parents through playing 博弈 [boyi], and being fond of wine."

The first, incidentally was "not attending to the nourishment of one's parents through the laziness of one's four limbs", so Legge's reference to indolence was not as inappropriate as may seem at first sight - and even less so when you consider the old Scottish view of laziness!

The association of playing go and having a "good time" in China rings true. The riotous go parties on the Yangzhou lake boats are a famous example, and gambling was always part of go. But even in more modern times it was not quite the same serious obsession that we associate with the Edo players in Japan, where valorous tales of expiring att he go board or risking exile to dispute a promotion are the sort of things even western players have been brought up on. Segoe Kensaku remarked almost with horror on the way games were conducted by Chinese professionals at the "court" of warlord Duan Qirui in the early 20th century. Bystanders freely gave advice, and arguments would erupt after games along the lines of "if I hadn't taken you advice I would have won."

This all sounds like the early days of British go, where a loss by 2 pints was esteemed higher than a victory by 2 points.

I think the statement is very suitable. Confucian-ideology hates chaos and any distraction from moralty, those board games have been all connected to betting which as as a zero sum game was considered as despicable.(traders are also considered terrible) So at that time those board game were a tool for immoral actions, but at some point that tool became different one, which also elevated the status of go or "other board games.

Thank you, John. Perhaps I should explain why I was skeptical that this was a genuine quote from Confucius. I read somewhere that his general view was that every action you take should (hopefully) benefit either your family or your country. If it does neither, then it is not a proper use of your time.

That is probably an extreme oversimplification of his teachings. But still, with such a strict and stern view of the world, it seemed unlikely that he would ever advise someone to spend time on a game, even the game of go.

_________________
And the go-fever which is more real than many doctors’ diseases, waked and raged...
- Rudyard Kipling, "The Light That Failed" (1891)

I'm not convinced Confucius was a stuffed shirt. He was a great lover of poetry, which in those days meant music as well. I can easily imagine him having a knees-up. He also practised his archery and chariot driving. He was not entirely a book-worm. What people nowadays think of as Confucianism was Neo-Confucianism, that is his teachings interpreted (with a hidden agenda) by Zhu Xi over a millennium after Confucius lived. Thereafter, almost every ancient Chinese go text refers to the debate on whether Confucius really disapproved of go. They almost all justify it by quoting Mencius, who said go was a "minor art." The go writers put the stress on "art" rather than "minor", of course, but, still, it's clear Mencius was not pooh-poohing the game of go.

Interpretations of Confucius are ongoing. Current premier Xi Jinping has written a book called "How to Read Confucius", and although he doesn't mention go, we know he approves of go. Indeed, recent Chinese leaders have fostered the view that go is still a "minor art", though perhaps more as a branch of diplomacy than as game.

I am a native speaker of (Canadian) English, but that is the first time I have read or heard this term. I had to look it up. It seems to be a Briticism, that has not yet crossed the Atlantic.

As for Confucius, I'll defer to your opinion. Perhaps he did tolerate the game, and even indulged in it himself from time to time. Though I would still be a little surprised if he strongly recommended it to his students.

_________________
And the go-fever which is more real than many doctors’ diseases, waked and raged...
- Rudyard Kipling, "The Light That Failed" (1891)

I don't actually have an opinion on what Confucius meant. I just wish to outline the possibilities, but the evidence is too scant to come to a conclusion. I think there's a rather good equivalent of such ambiguity in more modern times.

Marie-Antionette is commonly (but almost certainly wrongly) assumed to have said, "let them eat cake" ("qu'ils mangent de la brioche") in response to peasants complaining about a shortage of bread. Assuming somebody, apart from the "reporter" Rousseau, actually did say this, was that person being aristocratically sniffy about whining peasants, or was (s)he being magnanimous and recommending that fellow toffs should share their butter-filled brioches with their hungry serfs?

Sorry to come back to this topic again, but I am still unclear about the provenance of the AGA quote at the start of this thread.

Project Gutenberg has a copy of the Confucian Analects, translated by James Legge (perhaps with the help of Wang Tao and Hong Rengan, according to Wikipedia):
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4094/4094-h/4094-h.htm

The relevant quote (as John Fairbairn said earlier) seems to be from Book XVII, Chapter XXII:(Presumably(?), "chess" is a mistranslation of "yi".)

I am wondering what relation, if any, there is between this quote and the AGA quote above.

1) Are the two quotes actually translations of this same passage in the Analects? If so, which one is more accurate? (Or are they both inaccurate?) And if this is the case, are there any ideas on why the two translations are so very different?

2) If the AGA quote is from somewhere else in Confucius' works, what is this source?

3) Is it possible the AGA quote is simply made up, with no historical documentation?

(It feels rather rude to ask if 3) is a possibility, but it must be asked.)

Thanks for any help. I know that it was discussed earlier, but I am still uncertain.

_________________
And the go-fever which is more real than many doctors’ diseases, waked and raged...
- Rudyard Kipling, "The Light That Failed" (1891)

Aren't the answers already in this post? At least as best as L19 can muster given it's sole scholar.

But I did a quick Google search and came up with the following information. The AGA quote is from either an old American Go Foundation VP or a NY Go club organizer and it appeared around 2004. Surely the source is the same and the AGA quote is different because it's "better." Not a better translation (read posts above) but better for purposes of Go promotion, which answers your other question.

And even if the quote is made up, it's no more made up than any other quote in The Analects.

The quote is "made up" or however you wish to put it. That list of quotes by AGA is good for some laughs and some of the quotes could be legit, which is unusual when it is almost customary to make up and misrepresent quotes by famous people, but then I can't be bothered to check if the more plausible quotes were copied unchanged.

The Analects are a terse collection of dialogs that contain many quips like: clever talk and pretentious manner are seldom compatible with humanity. You will be amazed that every translator will render every such quip in a different and unique way: someone who is eloquent and maintains a contrived smile is seldom considered to be a really good person; fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue; and so on and on.

Finding every such translation to see if you can make a whole paragraph of them is fun if idle undertaking.

It's not made up, in the sense that no-one at the AGA sat down and invented it. At least I can recall the quotation, or something similar, from elsewhere. However, the AGA clearly did not check the historical documentation, nor did they for any of the other quotations. Obvious errors there include mixing up Pinyin and Wade-Giles in the same quotation, or citing a Japanese senryu (Just one game...) as a Chinese proverb (the Japanese is "Tatta hitoban to uchihajimeta was sakujitsu nari" as "any fule kno").

The problem is this. Ancient Chinese classics attract a certain type of writer who loves the mysticism, the longevity, the exoticism of it all, but can't be bothered to learn Ancient Chinese. No problem. Just "translate" (i.e. rewrite) the words of a scholar like Legge. Then that writer gets copied but has to be rewritten for copyright reasons. Very quickly you end up with a real case of Chinese Whispers.

We see this not just in the Analects, but in the Yi Jing and the Daode Jing. You can usually tell what you are dealing with from the fact that the supposed translator uses Wade-Giles, presumably to avoid charges of copyright infringement and thus has to use very old translations. If you see I Ching or anything with Tao in the title, run away if you want authenticity.

This problem is especially bad in the case of the Yi Jing, no doubt because of the still-breathing fad here for hippiedom and fortune telling. But that's an interesting case because Confucius himself can be accused of doing something similar. He didn't translate the even more ancient Chinese directly, but rather more subtly gave new meanings to the originals words (just as western go players give new meanings to fuseki, joseki, sabaki, yose, etc). Ironically, though, his intention was to turn the original fortune-telling almanac into a repository of wisdom (to be found by guided self analysis rather than his words). The modern airport-trash lifestyle writers then turned his words back into fortune-telling almanacs. Who'd want to be an ancient Chinese philosopher ?

I suspect many people are tired of this, so I will not write much. For myself, after reading and rereading the responses (which I appreciate), my reluctant conclusion is that the AGA quote cannot be relied on for historical accuracy.

Of course, in some ways, it does not really matter whether Confucius endorsed go, or thought it was a waste of time, or was actually talking about some other activity unrelated to go, or even that he never said anything about it at all, and the quote was added later by his followers. The game is strong enough to stand on its own, without his support.

Still, I am enough of a dinosaur that I would like to see a national organization, such as the AGA, do its part to keep the historical record straight. Even if that sometimes means having to acknowledge, that we just do not know. Straying from that path will do no one any good, in the long run.

Again, thank you all. And so it seems we must heed those wise words of Abraham Lincoln: "Be careful of what you read on the internet."

_________________
And the go-fever which is more real than many doctors’ diseases, waked and raged...
- Rudyard Kipling, "The Light That Failed" (1891)