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春秋左傳(正文)

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Text ID
KR1e0001
Date
-722–-300
Dynasty
周

Chūnqiū Zuǒzhuàn 春秋左傳

The Spring and Autumn Annals with the Zuǒ Tradition (canonical text)

(canonical text — no single author)

About the work

The Chūnqiū Zuǒzhuàn 春秋左傳, the parent text of the entire KR1e Chūnqiū sub-corpus, comprises two interwoven works: the Chūnqiū 春秋 (“Spring and Autumn Annals”), the laconic court annals of the state of Lǔ 魯 covering the 242 years from 722 to 481 BCE, and the much longer Zuǒzhuàn 左傳 (“Tradition of Zuǒ”), a richly narrative commentary that supplements the bare entries with speeches, anecdotes, prophecies, and political analysis. The Kanripo recension carried under this id is the bare canonical text without commentary, prepared on the Sìbù bèiyào / Shísān jīng zhùshū base and circulated as the TLS digital text (Kanripo BASEEDITION tls). The conventional source is the Ruǎn Yuán 阮元 1815 Shísān jīng zhùshū 十三經注疏 reprint of the Sòng-printed exemplar; this Kanripo base derives ultimately from the same line via Jiāngxī Nánchāngfǔ 江西南昌府 1816 reprint of the Sòng Chūnqiū Zuǒzhuàn zhùshū 春秋左傳注疏.

Abstract

The Chūnqiū itself is one of the Wǔ jīng 五經 (Five Classics). Tradition, beginning with Mèngzǐ 孟子 (3B.9), holds that Confucius (Kǒngzǐ 孔子, 551–479 BCE) edited the chronicle of his native Lǔ to convey “lofty principles in subtle words” (wēi yán dà yì 微言大義), and most readers down to the twentieth century read the text under that hermeneutical assumption. The Chūnqiū is c. 17,000 graphs in 242 dated entries and is mostly limited to ducal accessions, marriages, deaths, sacrifices, treaties, and natural omens; the longest entry runs 47 graphs, the shortest a single character. Modern scholarship (Kennedy 1942, Van Auken 2008/2016) has cast doubt on whether the formal regularities can in fact bear “praise and blame” (bāobiǎn 褒貶) interpretation, and tends to view the text as a ritual / scribal record only secondarily turned into a hermeneutical object.

The Zuǒzhuàn is far longer (c. 196,000 graphs, the largest of the Thirteen Classics) and carries the Chūnqiū dates plus extensive narrative material. The Hàn shū yìwén zhì 漢書·藝文志 ascribes it to Zuǒ Qiūmíng 左丘明 (or Zuǒqiū Míng), a “blind scribe” of Lǔ said to have been a contemporary of Confucius. Modern scholarship (Karlgren, Pines, Schaberg, Li, Durrant et al.) places its composition by several hands in the 4th century BCE, possibly drawing on an earlier independent history of Jìn 晉 or of Qí 齊. The text begins, like the Chūnqiū, in 722 BCE (Yǐn 隱 1) but extends past the canonical end-point of 481 BCE, with a final dated year of 468 BCE (Aī 哀 27) and a brief postface to 463 (or 453, the date is corrupt).

The classical edition that fused the Chūnqiū into the body of the Zuǒzhuàn — the jīng 經 entries placed before the corresponding zhuàn 傳 narrative, year by year — was Dù Yù’s 杜預 (222–284) Chūnqiū jīng zhuàn jí jiě 春秋經傳集解 (KR1e0002). This is the format on which all subsequent printings, including this canonical-only base, depend. For the layered scholarly editions, see KR1e0002 (Dù Yù zhù + Lù Démíng yīn yì, SBCK), KR1e0003 (Kǒng Yǐngdá zhèngyì, SBCK), and KR1e0004 (full zhùshū in SKQS).

Translations and research

  • Stephen Durrant, Wai-yee Li, and David Schaberg, tr. Zuo Tradition / Zuozhuan: Commentary on the “Spring and Autumn Annals.” 3 vols. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016 — the standard complete English translation, with substantial introduction and indices, replacing Legge.
  • James Legge, tr. The Chinese Classics, vol. 5: The Ch’un ts’ew with the Tso chuen. London: Trübner, 1872; repr. HKUP 1960 — still cited as a classic reference; uses pre-proleptic year reckoning so dates require correction.
  • Séraphin Couvreur, tr. Tch’ouen ts’iou et Tso tschouan. 3 vols. Ho-kien fu, 1914; repr. Cathasia 1951 — only complete French translation.
  • Burton Watson, tr. The Tso chuan: Selections from China’s Oldest Narrative History. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989 — selective but with an excellent introductory essay.
  • Yáng Bójùn 楊伯峻 (1909–1992), Chūnqiū Zuǒzhuàn zhù 春秋左傳注. 4 vols. Rev. ed. Běijīng: Zhōnghuá shūjú, 1990 — the standard modern Chinese-language critical annotation.
  • Yáng Bójùn and Xú Tí 徐提, Chūnqiū Zuǒzhuàn cídiǎn 春秋左傳詞典. Běijīng: Zhōnghuá shūjú, 1985 — companion dictionary.
  • Yuri Pines, Foundations of Confucian Thought: Intellectual Life in the Chunqiu Period, 722–453 B.C.E. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002 — sustained study of the period using the Zuǒzhuàn as principal evidence.
  • David Schaberg, A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001 — the leading literary-historical study.
  • Newell Ann Van Auken, The Commentarial Transformation of the Spring and Autumn. Albany: SUNY Press, 2016, and Spring and Autumn Historiography: Form and Hierarchy in Ancient Chinese Annals. New York: Columbia University Press, 2023 — argues against the bāobiǎn hermeneutic and for a ritual / scribal reading.
  • Yuri Pines et al. (ed.), Zuozhuan and Early Chinese Historiography. Leiden: Brill, 2023 — collection covering recent textual and intellectual-historical work.
  • Joachim Gentz, Das Gongyang zhuan: Auslegung und Kanonisierung der Frühlings und Herbstannalen (Chunqiu). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2001 — for the rival commentary tradition.

Other points of interest

The Zuǒzhuàn is the most fertile single source of chéngyǔ 成語 (four-character idioms) in modern Chinese — more than any other classic, including the Lúnyǔ. It also became the canonical model of literary prose for every wave of gǔwén 古文 reform from Hán Yù 韓愈 onward, and was praised by Liú Xié 劉勰 in the Wénxīn diāolóng 文心雕龍 as one of the supreme exemplars of historiographical style.

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