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春秋公羊傳注疏

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Text ID
KR1e0006
Date
-200–870
Dynasty
周

Chūnqiū Gōngyáng zhuàn zhùshū 春秋公羊傳注疏

The Spring and Autumn Annals with the Gōngyáng Tradition: Commentary and Sub-commentary

by 公羊高 (撰) · 何休 (解詁) · 徐彥 (疏) · 陸德明 (音義); with Qīng kǎozhèng by 齊召南 and 陳浩

About the work

The Chūnqiū Gōngyáng zhuàn zhùshū 春秋公羊傳注疏 in twenty-eight juan is the canonical zhùshū form of the Gōngyáng commentary on the Chūnqiū, the second of the Sān zhuàn 三傳. It comprises: (1) the Chūnqiū canonical entries, here interleaved with (2) the Gōngyáng zhuàn 公羊傳 traditionally ascribed to Gōngyáng Gāo 公羊高 (a disciple of Zǐxià 子夏 卜商); (3) the Eastern-Hàn Jiě gǔ 解詁 (annotations) of Hé Xiū 何休 (129–182); (4) the Táng zhèngyì 正義 of Xú Yàn 徐彥; (5) the yīn yì layer from Lù Démíng’s 陸德明 Jīngdiǎn shìwén; plus (6) the Qīng kǎozhèng 考證 collation notes added under imperial commission by Qí Zhàonán 齊召南 and Chén Hào 陳浩 for the Sìkù compilation. The Wényuāngé Sìkù quánshū 文淵閣四庫全書 base reproduced in Kanripo carries this full layered presentation.

Tiyao

The Sìkù tíyào (text from the Kyoto Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào):

The Hàn-period Gōngyáng Shòu 公羊壽 transmitted; Hé Xiū produced the jiě gǔ; the Táng-period Xú Yàn provided the shū. The Hàn shū yìwén zhì records “Gōngyáng zhuàn in eleven juan,” with Bān Gù’s own note: “Master Gōngyáng was a man of Qí.” (Note: where the Hàn shū yìwén zhì annotations are not labelled with Yán Shīgǔ’s name, they are Bān Gù’s own.) Yán Shīgǔ’s annotation says: “His name was Gāo.” (Note: this rests on the Chūnqiū shuō tící 春秋說題詞, as cited in Xú Yàn’s shū.) Xú Yàn’s shū cites Dài Hóng’s 戴宏 preface: “Zǐxià transmitted to Gōngyáng Gāo; Gāo to his son Píng 平; Píng to his son Dì 地; Dì to his son Gǎn 敢; Gǎn to his son Shòu 壽; in the time of Hàn Jǐngdì 漢景帝, Shòu, together with the Qí man Húmǔ Zǐdū 胡母子都, set it down on bamboo and silk.” Hé Xiū’s annotation gives the same account (his version is at the entry for Yǐn 2, “Jìzǐ Bó and Lord of Jǔ swore at Mì”).

But examining the zhuàn, we find sayings of “Master Shěn” (zǐ Shěnzǐ yuē 子沈子曰), “Master Sīmǎ”, “Master Nǚ”, “Master Běigōng,” together with “Master Gāo says” (Gāozǐ yuē 高子曰) and “Master Lǔ says” (Lǔzǐ yuē 魯子曰): all are masters in the line of transmission, not all from Gōngyángzǐ. The two lines at Dìng 1 — “lay the coffin between the two pillars” — the Gǔliáng zhuàn cites simply as “Master Shěn says,” not as “Gōngyáng”: showing that even the unattributed material in the Gōngyáng is not entirely from Gōngyángzǐ. Moreover the work itself contains the phrase “Master Gōngyángzǐ says” (zǐ Gōngyángzǐ yuē 子公羊子曰) — the clearest possible evidence that the work is not from Gāo himself. We may therefore conclude that the zhuàn was indeed composed by Shòu, with Húmǔ Zǐdū’s assistance; the old practice of placing Gāo’s name at the head of the work is uninformed.

Luó Bì 羅璧’s Shí yí 識遺 observes that “outside the Gōngyáng and Gǔliáng zhuàn-authors, no one bears these surnames.” Wàn Jiànchūn 萬見春 thinks the names are pun-rebuses based on Jiāng 姜 — that Gōngyáng and Gǔliáng (i.e. Gāo and Chì 赤) are pseudonyms for actual Jiāng-clan figures. Indeed Zōu may be Zhūlóu 邾婁, Pī may be Bódī 勃鞮, Mù may be Mímóu 彌牟, Zhí may be Shézhí 舌職, etc.: such phonetic transcription of the same name is well-known in classical sources. But the disciples recording their masters and grandsons recording their grandfathers cannot have so confused the basic written form as to substitute homophonic puns. Luó’s argument is wide of the mark. As for Chéng Duānxué 程端學’s Chūnqiū běn yì 春秋本義, which goes so far as to identify Gāo as an early-Hàn figure, that is the speculation of a jiǎngxué 講學-schooler and not worth refuting.

The Hàn shū yìwén zhì records the three commentaries and the Chūnqiū jīng in separate juan. Joining the Zuǒ zhuàn to the jīng began with Dù Yù; we do not know who first joined the Gōngyáng to the jīng. Hé Xiū’s jiě gǔ annotates only the zhuàn, not the jīng — the opposite of Dù Yù’s practice — showing that at the end of the Hàn the two still circulated separately. The fragments of Cài Yōng’s 蔡邕 stone classics that survive give the Gōngyáng zhuàn without the jīng, providing further confirmation. The current arrangement, with the zhuàn attached to the jīng, may have begun when Xú Yàn was composing his shū. Xú Yàn’s shū is recorded as thirty juan in the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo 文獻通考, but the present text is twenty-eight juan; possibly the original Xú edition placed the jīng in two extra juan at the head and these were later dispersed into the zhuàn, accounting for the discrepancy. Xú Yàn’s shū is not registered in the Táng zhì; the Chóngwén zǒngmù 崇文總目 first records it, with the author unidentified, “or said to be Xú Yàn.” Dǒng Yōu 董逌’s Guǎngchuān cángshū zhì 廣川藏書志 also says “tradition has it that it is by Xú Yàn, but the period is unclear; conjecturally after the Zhēnyuán 貞元 and Chánqìng 長慶 reigns” (i.e., after c. 820). Examining the shū: the entry on the battle of Bì 邲 still cites the complete Sūn Yán Ěryǎ zhù 孫炎爾雅注, showing that it predates the Sòng. The entry on the burial of King Huán 桓王 wholly takes over Yáng Shìxūn’s 楊士勳 Gǔliáng shū, showing that it postdates the Zhēnguān 貞觀 era (627–649). The text contains many self-set questions and answers, in a stylistic register similar to Qiū Guāngtíng’s 邱光庭 Jiānmíng shū 兼明書 — a late-Táng prose register. Dǒng Yōu’s reasoning is therefore sound, and we follow him in fixing it as a Táng work.

Abstract

The Sìkù tíyào makes the principal points: that the surviving Gōngyáng zhuàn — although traditionally ascribed to Gōngyáng Gāo, a disciple of Zǐxià — was actually written down on bamboo and silk only in the early Western Hàn under Hàn Jǐngdì by the fifth-generation descendant Gōngyáng Shòu and his collaborator Húmǔ Zǐdū; that several internal references demonstrate this (most notably the third-person citation “Master Gōngyángzǐ says”); that the integration of jīng and zhuàn in a single layered text was a later editorial intervention, probably by Xú Yàn; and that the Xú Yàn shū itself is a late-Táng (post-Zhēnyuán, c. 820+) work, not the Northern-and-Southern compilation that the Gōngyáng tradition once supposed.

The Gōngyáng school was the dominant Chūnqiū tradition under the Western Hàn — Dǒng Zhòngshū’s 董仲舒 (179?–104? BCE) entire political philosophy of “Heaven and Man linked” is built on a Gōngyáng reading — and it was the only Chūnqiū commentary recognised as a Bóshì 博士 chair under Wǔdì 武帝. The Gōngyáng’s exegetical method — reading the bare Chūnqiū entries as cipher for “praise and blame” (bāobiǎn 褒貶) and “great unity” (dà yī tǒng 大一統) — gave it its political valence, and that valence drove a major Qīng revival of Gōngyáng studies (Liú Féngdì 劉逢綈, Lǐ Sānzhī 李三知, Liú Zhōnghuǒ 劉中和, Liào Píng 廖平, Kāng Yǒuwéi 康有為), with explicitly reformist political consequences.

Hé Xiū’s Jiě gǔ — completed in seventeen years of seclusion in the Eastern Hàn — became the canonical Gōngyáng commentary, surviving where most other early Gōngyáng materials (Yán Pénggǔ 嚴彭祖, Yán Yánnián 顏延年, Húmǔ Shēng 胡母生 himself) did not. The Xú Yàn shū, late-Táng in date, is the corresponding zhèngyì-form sub-commentary, which Sòng editors paired with Hé Xiū to produce the present zhùshū.

The Qīng kǎozhèng additions of Qí Zhàonán 齊召南 and Chén Hào 陳浩 (Qiánlóng-era) supply textual collation notes throughout, comparing the WYG base against the Sòng exemplars and the Ruǎn Yuán 阮元 Shísān jīng jiào kān jì 校勘記.

Translations and research

  • Joachim Gentz, Das Gongyang zhuan: Auslegung und Kanonisierung der Frühlings und Herbstannalen (Chunqiu) (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2001) — the standard Western-language monograph; tracks the school from the Warring States through to the Western Hàn canonisation.
  • Harry Miller, tr., The Gongyang Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals: A Full Translation (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) — first complete English translation; severely criticised in the JAOS 138.2 (2018) review by Newell Ann Van Auken, but the only available full version.
  • Göran Malmqvist, “Studies on the Gongyang and Guuliang Commentaries,” Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 43 (1971): 67–222; 47 (1975): 19–69; 49 (1977): 33–215 — fundamental three-part philological study.
  • Sarah Queen, From Chronicle to Canon: The Hermeneutics of the Spring and Autumn according to Tung Chung-shu (Cambridge UP, 1996) — situates the Gōngyáng hermeneutic within Hàn political theory.
  • Liú Shāngcí 劉尚慈, Chūnqiū Gōngyáng zhuàn yì zhù 春秋公羊傳譯注 (Zhōnghuá shūjú 2010) — modern critical edition with translation into modern Chinese.

Other points of interest

The Gōngyáng zhuàn’s opening (Yǐn 1) — “Why does it speak of ‘the king’s first month’? Because the great unity is being inaugurated” (hé yán hū wáng zhèngyuè? dà yī tǒng yě 何言乎王正月? 大一統也) — became the most-cited single sentence in the imperial-era discourse on legitimate succession (zhèngtǒng 正統).

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