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春秋權衡

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Text ID
KR1e0021
Date
1056–1068
Dynasty
宋

Chūnqiū quán héng 春秋權衡

The Steelyard of the Spring and Autumn Annals

by 劉敞 (撰)

About the work

The Chūnqiū quán héng 春秋權衡 in seventeen juan is the foundational work of Liú Chǎng’s 劉敞 (1019–1068) Chūnqiū programme. It is the first of the three works in his trilogy: Quán héng (the critical adjudication of the three commentaries), Liúshì Chūnqiū zhuàn (KR1e0022, the running commentary), and Yì lín (KR1e0023, the supplementary essays). His brother Liú Bān 劉攽 (1023–1089) records in the xíng zhuàng (deeds-narrative) and Ōuyáng Xiū 歐陽修 in the tomb-inscription that Liú composed five Chūnqiū works in total — the zhuàn in 15 juan, the Quán héng in 17, the Shuō lì 說例 (KR1e0024) in 2, the Wén quán 文權 in 2, and the Yì lín in 5 — though the Yì lín now exists in only 2 juan. The Sìkù base is the WYG print.

Tiyao

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

By Liú Chǎng of Sòng. Chǎng, zì Yuánfù 原父, was a man of Línjiāng 臨江 Xīnyú 新喻. Passed jìnshì in the Qìnglì era; rose to Jíxiányuàn xuéshì 集賢院學士. Career detailed in the Sòng shǐ biography. According to his brother Liú Bān’s xíng zhuàng and Ōuyáng Xiū’s tomb-inscription: he composed Chūnqiū zhuàn in 15 juan, Quán héng in 17, Shuō lì in 2, Wén quán in 2, and Yì lín in 5. Wáng Yīnglín’s Yùhǎi records the same. Chén Zhènsūn’s Shū lù jiětí says: “Yuánfù first composed the Quán héng to weigh the three commentaries’ gains and losses; only afterwards did he gather doctrines and conclude with his own judgement, making the zhuàn. What the zhuàn did not exhaust appears in the Yì lín.” So the zhuàn preceded the Yì lín, and the present work preceded the zhuàn. Liú’s Chūnqiū learning has its root here.

The author’s own preface says: “When the Quán héng first appeared, no-one in the world could read it”; and “Without an accomplished and broadly-read scholar, one cannot view it.” His self-estimate is high. Yè Mèngdé KR1e0032, composing his own Chūnqiū zhuàn, mostly criticises other scholars’ commentaries — most of all Sūn Fù’s KR1e0018 Zūn wáng fā wéi, which he says is “not deeply versed in ritual learning, hence its words contradict themselves and are most harmful to the jīng; though concentrating on ritual to criticise contemporary errors, it cannot exhaust the ritual system, and is shallow.” Only on Liú does Yè acknowledge “his line of authority is correct” — Liú being deeply versed in ritual, hence his accepting and rejecting of theses returns to the jīng-rooted meaning, unlike Sūn’s purely speculative judgements. This too is one verification that “explanation must be tested against the text.”

Abstract

The Sìkù tíyào makes the principal points: that this is the first and most theoretically pointed of Liú Chǎng’s three principal Chūnqiū works — composed before the running commentary KR1e0022 and the supplementary essays KR1e0023; that Liú’s hermeneutical position breaks decisively with Sūn Fù’s pure speculation by anchoring its judgements in the canonical ritual code, an approach Yè Mèngdé would later identify as the genuinely productive Sòng xīnyì line; that Liú’s own self-assessment is exceptionally high.

The Quán héng’s methodology — weighing each zhuàn on a jīng-by-jīng basis to identify which is correct on which point, rather than picking a single commentary as primary — is the structurally important departure from both the HànTáng zhùshū tradition (which followed one commentary as primary) and the DànZhàoLù school (which set all three aside). It is, in effect, the methodological foundation of all subsequent eclectic Chūnqiū commentary.

Translations and research

  • Lǐ Wěitài 李偉泰, Sòng-rén Chūnqiū xué dōu lùn 宋人春秋學論衡 (Tāiběi: Wénjīn 1995).
  • Yáng Wéi-shēng 楊維生, Liú Chǎng Chūnqiū xué yánjiū 劉敞春秋學研究 (Bēijīng: Zhōngguó shèhuì kēxué chūbǎnshè 2007) — full-length monograph on Liú’s Chūnqiū programme.
  • Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §28.7.3 places Liú in the Northern-Sòng Confucian revival.

Other points of interest

Yè Mèngdé’s KR1e0032 explicit acknowledgment of Liú as the only Sòng predecessor in his own Chūnqiū zhuàn makes Liú a hinge figure: it is through Yè’s reception of him that Liú’s eclectic-ritual reading was transmitted into the Southern-Sòng commentary tradition.

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