Classical Usages
Kui frequently occurs in Chinese classic texts. Although some early texts are heterogeneous compositions of uncertain dates, the following discussion is presented in roughly chronological order.
Early authors agreed that the mountain dragon-demon Kui had yizu 一足 "one foot" but disagreed whether this also applied to Shun's music master Kui. Since the Chinese word zu 足 ambiguously means "foot; leg" or "enough; sufficient; fully; as much as", yizu can mean "one foot; one leg" or "one is enough". "The Confucianists," explains Eberhard (1968:58), "who personified K'ui and made him into a 'master of music', detested the idea that K'ui had only one leg and they discussed it 'away'" (e.g., Hanfeizi, Lüshi Chunqiu, and Xunzi below). Instead of straightforwardly reading Kui yi zu 夔一足 as "Kui one foot", Confucianist revisionism (Carr 1990:143) construes it as "Kui, one was enough." There is further uncertainty whether the mythical Kui was "one footed" or "one legged". Compare the English "one-footed" words uniped "a creature having only one foot (or leg)" and monopod "a creature having only one foot (or leg); a one-legged stand".
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Famous quotes containing the word classical:
“Several classical sayings that one likes to repeat had quite a different meaning from the ones later times attributed to them.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)