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春秋經傳集解

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Text ID
KR1e0002
Date
222–284
Dynasty
晉

Chūnqiū jīng zhuàn jí jiě 春秋經傳集解

Collected Explanations of the Classic and Tradition of the Spring and Autumn Annals

by 杜預 (撰) · 陸德明 (音義) · 闕名 (坿錄撰)

About the work

The Chūnqiū jīng zhuàn jí jiě 春秋經傳集解 in thirty juan is the foundational commentary on the Chūnqiū Zuǒzhuàn (parent text KR1e0001) and the work that fixed the now-canonical layout in which each Chūnqiū annal is placed at the head of the corresponding Zuǒzhuàn narrative for that year, with Dù Yù’s 杜預 (222–284) interpolated commentary woven into the body of the text. The SBCK 四部叢刊 edition reproduces a Sòng-printed exemplar and carries Dù Yù’s jí jiě together with the phonetic and exegetical glosses (yīnyì 音義) extracted from Lù Démíng’s 陸德明 (ca. 550–630) Jīngdiǎn shìwén 經典釋文, plus an unattributed fù lù 附錄 (appendix) that supplies the Chūnqiū sān zhuàn zhùjiě chuánshù rén 春秋三傳注解傳述人 — a register of all named transmitters of the three commentary traditions. This is the zhù layer alone, without the Táng zhèngyì 正義 of Kǒng Yǐngdá; for the full zhùshū 注疏 see KR1e0003 and KR1e0004.

Tiyao

No tíyào in the SBCK source. The SBCK frontmatter carries only the table of contents and editorial notes by Zhāng Yuánjì 張元濟; the SKQS tíyào discusses the work under KR1e0004 Chūnqiū Zuǒzhuàn zhùshū.

Abstract

Dù Yù wrote the Jí jiě in semi-retirement after the Jìn 晉 conquest of Wú 吳 (280), in which he had played a decisive military role as Generalissimo Conqueror-of-the-South 鎮南大將軍. His own preface declares his intention to “fuse the classic and the tradition into a single work” (fēn jīng zhī nián, yǔ zhuàn zhī nián xiāng fù bǐ 分經之年，與傳之年相附比) — that is, to collate the Chūnqiū entries year-by-year with the Zuǒzhuàn exposition, an editorial intervention that has structured every subsequent edition of the text. The commentary itself draws on the lost works of Jiǎ Kuí 賈逵, Fú Qián 服虔, and other Eastern-Hàn Zuǒzhuàn masters, but Dù supplies a programmatic interpretation organised around his own theory of “fifty fán (general principles)” (wǔ shí fán 五十凡) — recurrent narrative formulae which he held to encode Confucius’ editorial judgement.

The Hàn shū yìwén zhì 漢書·藝文志 records earlier commentaries on the Zuǒzhuàn (those of Liú Xīn 劉歆, Zhèng Zhòng 鄭眾, etc.) but none of these survives intact; from the Táng onward, Dù’s Jí jiě became the only surviving Hàn–Wèi–Jìn-era commentary. As the SKQS tíyào observes (under KR1e0004), “Dù Yù’s annotation often forces the classic to fit the zhuàn” (Dù zhù duō qiáng jīng yǐ jiù zhuàn 杜注多強經以就傳), but it remains the indispensable foundational layer. The Táng zhèngyì of Kǒng Yǐngdá (KR1e0003) was built upon it and codified its readings as the official imperial line.

The Lù Démíng Jīngdiǎn shìwén layer adds pronunciation glosses (yīn 音), philological notes on variant readings, and excerpts from earlier commentators whose works were already lost in his time. The Lù material here is one juan of the larger Shìwén, dispersed in the SBCK presentation as embedded interlinear note material.

Translations and research

The Dù Yù commentary is fundamental to all critical work on the Zuǒzhuàn and is incorporated into Yáng Bójùn 楊伯峻, Chūnqiū Zuǒzhuàn zhù (Zhōnghuá 1990). Xú Cháohuá 徐朝華, Dù Yù Zuǒzhuàn jí jiě yánjiū 杜預《春秋左傳集解》研究 (Tiānjīn shèhuì kēxué chūbǎnshè 1996) is the standard modern Chinese-language monograph. See also Wai-yee Li, The Readability of the Past in Early Chinese Historiography (Harvard 2007), chapters dealing with Dù Yù’s hermeneutics.

Other points of interest

Dù Yù was a polymathic commentator who also produced the lost Chūnqiū shì lì 春秋釋例 (KR1e0012) — a separately circulating handbook of his fifty fán and the Chūnqiū place-names — preserved only in fragmentary form in the SKQS reconstruction. He had himself buried with a copy of the Zuǒzhuàn and his Jí jiě, an act that became proverbial as Zuǒ chuán bì 左傳癖 (“Zuǒzhuàn-mania”).

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