Marriage Proposal

SimL · Post by **SimL** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 8:22 am

duaaagiii wrote:Actually, I think I got it wrong; it should be 雙抬 instead of 平抬, because those lines are raised by two full spaces. It is symbolic of looking up to the recipient.

Hi duaaagiii,

When looking up 雙抬 in the dictionary, I noticed that 抬 also has a traditional form 擡. If one is writing primarily in traditional characters, is 抬 or 擡 the better one to use in this context?

Thanks,
Sim.

duaaagiii · Post by **duaaagiii** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 3:34 pm

擡 is the historically correct character, but 抬 has replaced this as the standard character in both in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

SimL · Post by **SimL** » Fri Sep 21, 2007 10:02 am

ok, thanks!

Sim.

SimL · Post by **SimL** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 10:16 am

Hi duaaagiii,

I've studied the entire translation in great detail ever since you provided it. As you know, I try to get from the literal meaning of the individual characters to the idiomatic translation, and this has worked practically everywhere. However, there are still 2 points where I would like to ask you for a bit more help.

11. 器宇宏深

You render "器宇" as "bearing". The literal meaning of the 2 characters is "utensils" and "eaves". Should I interpret this as a metaphor: "utensils + eaves" => "one's household" => "how one's household looks to the rest of the world" => "how oneself looks to the rest of the world" => "one's bearing"?

25-27. [統祈] 尊慈佇賜 [鑒念]

You render this as " your mother to grant [her approval]"

I'm not sure how the "佇" fits in. My dictionary gives the meaning of this as "to stand for a long while". The mdbg online dictionary gives this as "wait / look towards / turn one's back on". Does the "佇" belong with the preceding character or the one following? The normal cadence would imply the latter. Should I take the middle meaning of the mdbg list, and interpret this as " your mother to look towards granting [her approval]"?

Thanks,
Sim.

Mark Yong · Post by **Mark Yong** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 11:14 am

SimL wrote:

25-27. [統祈] 尊慈佇賜 [鑒念]

You render this as " your mother to grant [her approval]"

I'm not sure how the "佇" fits in.

Hi, Sim,

In a previous reply, I think duaaagiii corrected the character 佇 to read 俯. 俯 has the literal meaning of " looking downwards at something from above"; its antonym as 仰. Perhaps that then makes sense.

duaaagiii wrote:
26. 尊慈俯賜 tsun1-tsu5 hu2-su3
your mother to grant

SimL · Post by **SimL** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 12:15 pm

Mark Yong wrote:... I think duaaagiii corrected the character 佇 to read 俯. 俯 has the literal meaning of " looking downwards at something from above"; its antonym as 仰. Perhaps that then makes sense.

duaaagiii wrote:
26. 尊慈俯賜 tsun1-tsu5 hu2-su3
your mother to grant

Indeed. How embarassing that I missed this. Sorry! I picked up the correction for the non-existent character 亻 + 宇 being corrected to 伏 on line 24, but not the correction of 佇 to 俯.

With the correction, it translates literally to:

" your mother to condescend to grant [her approval]"

which makes perfect sense.

My apologies to duaaagiii! I honestly have pored over the translation with a fine toothed comb, but still missed this.

Thanks Mark!

SimL · Post by **SimL** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 3:27 pm

Well, after months of work, and even more months of waiting, my analysis of the marriage scroll is now available on the internet:

pdf file:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~detlev/sim/scroll ... scroll.pdf

Microsoft Word file:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~detlev/sim/scroll ... scroll.doc

I apologise for the poor quality of the photographs. When I took them, I had no idea that they would be useful for and end up in such a document. Despite the poor quality, I think they do give a good impression of what the scroll looks like.

Please don't be intimidated by the fact that the document is 40-odd pages long. The important information is within the first 18 pages, the rest is just supporting information and appendices. The large physical size is also only because of the inclusion of the photographs, not because there is that much textual content.

casey · Post by **casey** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 11:42 am

Congratulations for the great work. Sim! Well done!

SimL · Post by **SimL** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 12:50 pm

Hi Casey,

Thank you for your kind words

. It's great to see that you're following the Forum, and thank you very much for taking the trouble to have a look at the analysis document.

I did indeed put a tremendous amount of work into producing it - it took HOURS to do just one of the "drawings" (in MS PowerPoint)! Nevertheless, a lot of credit for the end result goes to duaaagiii and Mark Yong here on the Forum. I doubt if I would ever have dared to put the document on the web without so many of the basic mysteries of the scroll already having been solved by them.

Sadly, I haven't had any other feedback on it yet. However, I've now made contact with a university-based academic who has promised to take a look at it.

As I say in the "outstanding questions" part of the analysis, the thing which excites me most (and which prompted me to put the analysis on the web) is that a Penang historian said that he'd never seen anything like it before. This itself would not be so significant, because (conceivably) the elders of the couple being married might have commissioned a "one-off" work. But, the fact that the scroll has the phase "二姓合婚" PRE-PRINTED - and there are pre-printed columns for the text to be hand-written in - means that these *MUST* in some way have been "standard" things in their day, commissioned by (a certain class of) people. By putting it on the web, I hope to be able to find out more about the background to this sort of scroll.

Best regards,
Sim.