Taiping Precepts and Odes
Texts printed by the Taiping in 1852 and 1853 and translated by the missionary W. H. Medhurst: the Ten Celestial Commands with comments and hymns, the Trimetrical Classic and two odes. They state the movement’s teaching in its own words.
Brine’s appendix is headed “Precepts and odes published by Hung-siu-tsuen in the second and third years of the Taeping rebellion (A.D. 1852–1853)” and says that the translation is Medhurst’s. The first piece gives ten commands, each with a remark and a hymn: to worship the great God, not to worship corrupt spirits, not to take God’s name in vain, to praise God on the seventh day, and so on. The Trimetrical Classic tells of God’s acts from the creation to the ascension of Jesus, then of China’s falling away from the worship of God, and then how God sent “his Son”, who was taken up into heaven in 1837; a note in Brine identifies this son as Hong Xiuquan. It ends with an exhortation addressed to “little children”.
These are the Taiping’s own publications from the first years of the movement. They do not show what was taught at Nanjing ten years later, for which the wiki cites the letter of Issachar Roberts in the Taeping Rebellion in China.
Cited in
- 1851 to 1864, firm date