Chūnqiū zhàn shì shū 春秋占筮書
The Book of Spring-and-Autumn Divinations by 毛奇齡
About the work
A specialist treatise in three juàn by Máo Qílíng 毛奇齡 (1623–1716), gathering all the Yìjīng-divination episodes preserved in the Chūnqiū zuǒ zhuàn 春秋左傳 and Guóyǔ 國語 to reconstruct the actual divinatory practice of the pre-imperial period. Despite its title, the work is for the Yì (not for the Chūnqiū): it uses the Chūnqiū corpus as documentary evidence for the original Yì-method. As supplement to Máo’s Zhòngshì Yì (KR1a0126) and Tuī yì shǐ mò (KR1a0127), this work supplies the documentary-historical foundation for Máo’s reconstruction of the canonical Yì-divination.
The Sìkù editors’ notice contains a substantial methodological reflection on the relationship between the Yì’s history of xiàng (symbol), shù (number), and lǐ (principle) traditions, and praises Máo’s project as one that “explores the root and is sufficient to seal off the various houses’ mouths” (能探其本而足闗諸家之喙者) — high praise on a substantive methodological matter.
Tiyao
Sìkù tíyào (translated): Respectfully submitted: the Chūnqiū zhàn shì shū in three juàn was composed by Máo Qílíng of our [Qīng] dynasty. The “Chūnqiū” of its title refers to its taking up the divinations recorded in the Chūnqiū zhuàn in order to make clear the Yì-learning of the ancients — it is in fact composed for the Yì, not composed for the Chūnqiū.
From the Hàn down, those who have spoken of milfoil-divination are not one school. Yet in taking-symbol and savoring-divination, what survives in the world and can be verified, none is earlier than the Chūnqiū zhuàn. Qílíng, having brought out its meaning in his Zhòngshì Yì and Tuī yì shǐ mò, again raised every passage in the Chūnqiū internal-and-external chronicles that has any attainment in milfoil-divination, and gathered them into a record-book to make a volume — so that those who hereafter speak of divination may know the broad outlines of observation-and-savoring. The Hàn-and-Jìn-down divinations that fit with the ancient method are also in each case appended by category.
The Yì is fundamentally a divinatory book. The sage pushed-and-investigated the principles of the world and used number to set up symbol; later men pushed-and-investigated the symbols of the Zhōuyì and used number to make clear principle. The original import of [Fú] Xī, [King] Wén, [the Duke of] Zhōu, and [Master] Kǒng [Confucius] is just this. Subsequently, symbol, number, and principle diverged into three schools. Further, the Yì way is broad-and-great, with nothing not encompassed; and the events of the world also have nothing outside symbol, number, and principle. Hence the hundred houses’ techniques all extracted, drew, pushed, and elucidated from it, and all are sufficient to establish themselves as a doctrine.
Therefore among the studies of the Six Classics the Yì is most miscellaneous. The records in the Chūnqiū internal-and-external chronicles are not necessarily without forced attribution, but their divinatory method is in any case the bequeathed track of the ancients — comparable to what historical books record: rights-and-wrongs and praise-and-blame may not be entirely reliable, but as to the institutions of the age, they are without forgery. Qílíng’s basing himself on the Chūnqiū divinations to push back to the milfoil-divination method of the Three Dynasties may be called one who can explore the root and is sufficient to seal off the various houses’ mouths.
Respectfully collated, the ninth month of the forty-third year of Qiánlóng (1778). Editor-in-chief: Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. Chief proofreader: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
Composition is bracketed by the Zhòngshì Yì / Tuī yì shǐ mò (which it presupposes) and Máo’s death in 1716. The bracket here adopts the same range as the parent works.
The work is a substantive piece of pre-imperial divinatory-method philology. The Chūnqiū zuǒ zhuàn preserves about twenty Yì-divination episodes (and the Guóyǔ a smaller number), and Máo’s systematic gathering and analysis of these constitutes the principal early-Qīng documentary reconstruction of the actual divinatory method behind the canonical text.
The Sìkù editors’ methodological framing — that the historical record may be unreliable on rights-and-wrongs but reliable on institutional practice (compared by analogy to ordinary historical writing) — is a thoughtful critical position that grants Máo’s project methodological legitimacy without committing to all his specific reconstructions. The closing approving phrase (“explores the root and seals off the various houses’ mouths”) is unusually warm.
The work belongs methodologically to the same early-Qīng kǎozhèng-style recovery of pre-Hàn divinatory practice as Wáng Hóngzhuàn’s Zhōuyì shì shù (KR1a0125) and Huáng Zōngxī’s wài piān on the sān shì in the Yì xué xiàng shù lùn (KR1a0123). Together they constitute the early-Qīng documentary foundation for the recovery of pre-Sòng Yì-divinatory tradition.
Translations and research
No substantial monograph in Western languages located. For the Zuǒ zhuàn divination episodes more broadly see Edward L. Shaughnessy, Before Confucius: Studies in the Creation of the Chinese Classics (SUNY, 1997), and the more recent specialist literature on Western Zhōu divination practice.
Other points of interest
The work fills out the third member of Máo Qílíng’s pair-or-trio compositional habit: the Zhòngshì Yì presents the substantive wǔ yì doctrine; the Tuī yì shǐ mò provides the historical-philological evidence for guà biàn / yí yì; and the Chūnqiū zhàn shì shū provides the documentary evidence for the underlying divinatory method. Read together as a coherent program, they make Máo’s Yì-corpus the most ambitious early-Qīng integrated Yì-method recovery project.