James Legge and the Strange Saga of British Sinology and the Comparative Science of Religions in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

James Legge (1815–1897) is primarily remembered today as the heroic translator of the Chinese Classics (1861–1872, 1893–1895). Allowing for changes in stylistic taste, these massive translations are still considered the “standard” versions of works that “classically” and “scripturally” defined a so-called Confucian “great tradition” in China. Unfortunately a fixation on this singular scholarly accomplishment has tended to brand Legge as merely a great, though plodding, translator – someone primarily remarkable for his indefatigable habits of working. Certainly it was often felt that his contributions to the emergent Sinological Orientalism of the nineteenth century in no way matched the achievements of the great Parisian academicians (Abel Rémusat and Stanislas Julien); nor was he seen as a particularly significant figure in any other aspect of British tradition in the nineteenth century. Even worse, and seeming to make him a fit candidate for Lytton Strachey's debunking criticism of all insufferably righteous Victorian paragons of virtue, was that his identity as a sinologist and scholar was forever tainted by his original vocation as a Congregationalist missionary agent for the London Missionary Society.