«ДОГОВІР ПРО КУПІВЛЮ РАБА» ВАН БАО. ПЕРЕКЛАД УКРАЇНСЬКОЮ МОВОЮ ТА АНАЛІЗ ПРОБЛЕМ ІНТЕРПРЕТАЦІЇ СТАРОДАВНЬОГО ТЕКСТУ

Abstract

“The Slave Contract” dated 59 BC. Disputes continue to this day in the Chinese scholarly community regarding the restoration of the authentic version of the text, its interpretation and translation into modern Chinese. Having, in general, no other written mentions of tea in that period, we have to take the work of art more seriously and consider it in some sense as a source of scientific data. In addition to the fact of the use of tea in the Western Han period, scholars are interested in the economic activities of the official’s estate mentioned in the text, as well as the listed regions of trade exchange, which are considered in the context of studying the everyday and economic life of the ancient territory of Sichuan. Thus, the literary work acquires significant importance in academe. Analysis of this data also has the opposite effect; upon close study, errors and inaccuracies of copyists of the text of subsequent eras are revealed, which helps eliminate inconsistencies in various manuscripts and choose the correct version of hieroglyphs that best correspond to the reality of that time, and therefore the author’s version. However, the existing uncertainty with the final version of this rather notable work of art of the Han era in Chinese affects further translations into foreign languages, creating even greater discrepancies in the translated versions. The article considers the problems of translation of the “The Slave Contract”, compares the text of different periods of its fixation in collections of Chinese literature, gives the opinions of various Chinese researchers, analyzes the interpretation of some words and phrases of the work in the context of Chinese tea culture, and also as the finalization of this work, a complete artistic translation of the “The Slave Contract” into Ukrainian is presented. The text of the work gives us the opportunity not only to note the fact of tea consumption, but also to draw some conclusions about the role of tea drinking in Sichuan during the Western Han era. These data complement the still unclear picture of the spread of tea drinking in China in the ancient period and the determination of its place in Chinese society.