Fa Yang, a follower, was wondering about insect cognition.
Cochonfucius
asked him why. Respectfully, he said that it came from a treatise that was
transmitted within his family.
The First Cockchafer
(was it a cockchafer?)
1. Voracious cockchafers destroyed Mister Ma's crops.
2. He held no grudge against the cockchafers, as he had long been wishing
to travel westward, to the big city.
3. Crops being lost, that gave him a reason to do so, so that he would not
fall into poverty.
4. He left his native country, forsaking his land to cockchafers.
5. He left his native country, telling his three adult sons to meet him
there in the city, when seven years would have passed and gone.
6. He left his native country, telling his sons to take care of their old
mother.
7. He settled in the city and became a veterinarian, healing
Western animals.
8. He could heal Welsh chafers, he could heal garden chafers and even
cockchafers.
9. When seven years had passed and gone, he wrote to his first-born son,
telling him to come to the big city of the Westerners.
The first cockchafer flew north.
The second cockchafer
10. The three sons went west.
11. They went across a desert wild, where plenty of poor souls dwelt,
who had been
reincarnated in the shape of a grain of sand.
12. They went over mountains whose top was higher than the sky, but luckily
there are mountain passes.
13. They went along the Western River, and said among themselves:
"Whatever goes, flows away like this stream".
14. They came into the City.
15. They asked for their father, but the city was so huge, no one knew about
him.
16. They asked in ten thousand different places.
17. Nobody could tell them.
18. They settled in a house with a cherry tree garden, in remembrance of the
Old Country.
The second cockchafer flew with the vernal breeze.
The third Cockchafer
19. The first son's trade was to show
pictures.
20. Early in the morning, he opened his shop of delusion.
21. Idle people from all over the city came to him, to indulge in their vice.
22. The second son built
praying wheels.
23. Early in the morning, he visited monasteries to peddle his machines.
24. The idle monks were grateful that he spared them the burdens of their
trade.
25. The third son tilled the land like his father before him.
26. All day long he cared for the trees, asking the cockchafers to spare
them.
27. Western cockchafers are much less active than ours, so they had plenty
to eat from the garden, all three brothers and their mother with them.
The third cockchafer flew to a bunch of trees.
Fourth cockchafer
28. The three sons stayed in the city for seven long years.
29. They could not take a wife, since their father's consent was unavailable.
30. Indeed, their father was nowhere to be found.
31. Still they could not leave him without a posterity.
32. One spring evening, they went to the garden.
33. In great ceremony, they bowed to the five horizons of
Jinxing, Muxing, Shuixing, Huoxing and Tuxing.
34. They listened to inner voices.
35. They adopted nine Western cockchafers.
36. The cockchafers received no names, but honorific ranks, from "First" to
"Ninth" inclusively.
The fourth cockchafer ran away, for he was a cockroach.
The fifth cockchafer
37. The cockchafers came of age.
38. They took up honourable trades.
39. They respected the memory of their unknown grandfather.
40. They did not want to leave him without a posterity.
41. One spring evening, they went to the garden.
42. Shall we, they said, proceed to some more adoptions?
43. They said: shall we adopt twenty-seven brown chafers?
44. Shall the brown chafers later adopt eighty-one rose chafers?
45. And what next?
The fifth cockchafer flew into the mist.
The sixth cockchafer
46. The fourth cockchafer was actually a cockroach.
47. He told his brothers and cousins to use another method.
48. He said adoption would not yield an eternal memory.
49. He said a cockchafer could drop himself into black ink, and throw
himself onto a sheet of paper.
50. And if he skilfully does so, his trace is a written character.
51. He told them to each get a sheet.
52. He said "let us write this here story".
53. The cockchafers entered the white house.
54. They reappeared in the garden, each of them with a white sheet and a
bucket of black ink.
The sixth cockchafer flew to the star Gaoxing.
The seventh cockchafer
55.The cockchafers wrote about their crop-destroying cousins from a far
country.
56. They wrote about the old peasant, peacefully going west, and now a
drifter within the city's walls.
57. They told of desert, mountain and river.
58. They told of that huge maze of a city.
59. They drew its plan.
60. They drew each street and house, every branch on a tree.
61. Cockchafers are perfectionists.
62. Except the fourth, who is a cockroach.
63. But well, he thought about writing this book.
The seventh cockchafer flew away with a hell of a noise.
The eighth cockchafer
64. The cockchafers described the adoption rites.
65. They showed how their three fathers went to the garden.
66. They explained about their honorific ranks, from "First" to "Ninth"
inclusively.
67. They remarked that adoption yields no eternal memory.
68. They described how a cockchafer can write on a blank sheet.
69. And that, of course, it is more difficult for a cockroach.
70. They put the written sheets to dry in the garden.
71. At the four corners of each sheet, they put a large stone.
72. It was to keep the pages from flying away.
The eighth cockchafer flew on to new adventures.
The ninth cockchafer
73. A rooster crowed in the garden.
74. The cockchafers were standing on the wall.
75. Quickly, the rooster went near them.
76. All cockchafers flew away, except the fourth one, who was a cockroach
(I can't remember if I told you so).
77. The peasant's three sons came to the garden.
78. At the gate, a drifter begged for some bread.
79. "If you have animals to tend, I am a veterinarian from a far-away land".
80. "I care for rose chafers, and also for Welsh chafers, and even for
cockchafers".
81. The three guys could not believe it, that their children had flown away,
that their father was back, that it was all written in this book.
The ninth cockchafer flew skywards.
Cochonfucius remarked:
"Since this book has eighty-one chapters, it looks like the
Book of the Way and Its Power".