Chūnqiū běn lì 春秋本例
The Root Regulatory Items of the Spring and Autumn Annals
by 崔子方 (撰)
About the work
The Chūnqiū běn lì 春秋本例 in twenty juan is the central methodological work of Cuī Zǐfāng’s 崔子方 Chūnqiū trilogy (KR1e0028 Jīng jiě, this work, and the Lì yào 例要) — a systematic exposition of his theory that the Chūnqiū operates by rìyuè lì 日月例 (day-month regulatory items). The work is divided into sixteen mén 門 (gates), each subdivided into a zhe lì 著例 (manifest items) and biàn lì 變例 (variant items) section. This is the only one of Cuī’s three works to have survived in printed form (in the Tōngzhìtáng jīngjiě), the other two having required Yǒnglè dàdiǎn recovery. The Sìkù base is the Tōngzhìtáng print.
Tiyao
The Sìkù tíyào (text from the Kyoto Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào):
By Cuī Zǐfāng of Sòng. The work’s main thesis: the sage’s book takes year as the body, raises seasons as the names, and writes day and month as items — and the day-month items are themselves the root. Hence the title Běn lì (Root Regulatory Items). It comprises sixteen mén (gates), all classified by day-month-season; subdivided into zhe lì and biàn lì. State-by-state, division-by-division, the arrangement is internally orderly.
Examining the Gōngyáng and Gǔliáng commentaries: they treat day and month as items. They certainly have the defects of forced fitting and fragmentation. But the jīng says “Gōngzǐ Yìshī cù 公子益師卒” [Yǐn 1]; the Zuǒ zhuàn says “the duke did not attend the small enshrouding, hence the day was not recorded” — so day-month items existed before the Gōngyáng and Gǔliáng. The age being not far from the sage, this practice must have been received. But the praise-and-blame redaction — its meaning is broad and deep, and the day-month is only one item among many. Hence the two commentaries’ explanations occasionally hit the mark; but to extend it as the entire interpretive principle leaves the work disjointed and impossible to make work throughout. When the principle absolutely fails, biàn lì (variant items) are introduced to twist the explanations into shape. This is not the fault of day-month-as-item, but of taking everything to be a day-month item.
Just as the Yìjīng’s hù tǐ 互體 (overlapping bodies) is one principle of xiàng 象 (image-reading); but to seek xiàng through hù tǐ in every hexagram becomes excessive forced fitting. Dàn Zhù 啖助 and Zhào Kuāng 趙匡 swept all such items aside — perhaps reacting against the excess, like Wáng Bì 王弼 setting aside xiàng in Yì-reading.
Cuī’s book — Chén Zhènsūn’s Shū lù jiětí says: “His learning distinguishes the gains and losses of the three commentaries, but takes day-month exclusively as the item — precisely committing their failing without realising it.” This judgement is sound. Yet relying on the old commentary, though tending to entrenched defence, is still better than wild speeches and high-flown theories that indulge subjective conjecture and disorder the sacred classic. Among Chūnqiū explanators, this constitutes one school from antiquity onwards, and we cannot summarily abolish it.
Abstract
The Sìkù tíyào makes the principal points: that this is the methodological centre of Cuī Zǐfāng’s trilogy, comprising sixteen mén divided into zhe lì and biàn lì; that the day-month item theory rests on a genuine pre-Hàn warrant (the Zuǒzhuàn on Gōngzǐ Yìshī shows the practice antedates the Gōngyáng and Gǔliáng) but is excessive when made the universal interpretive principle; that the analogy with the Yì’s hù tǐ method — a valid but not universal device — captures the precise nature of Cuī’s interpretive over-reach; that despite this defect, Cuī’s anchored regulatory work is preferable to ungrounded speculation, and merits preservation as one school within Chūnqiū scholarship.
The Běn lì is the most fully developed Northern-Sòng theory of the rìyuè lì and the methodological foundation on which Cuī’s commentary in KR1e0028 rests; for understanding Sòng-period day-month-item theory, it is the indispensable text.
Translations and research
See KR1e0028.
Other points of interest
The Sìkù tíyào’s analogical use of Yì-hexagram interpretive method to characterise Chūnqiū hermeneutics — hù tǐ as a parallel to rìyuè lì — is a striking instance of the editorial cross-classical comparative method that runs through the tíyào as a whole. It captures the fundamentally methodological character of the dispute between Cuī and the DànZhào school as differing techniques for managing a single class of difficulty.
Links
- Zinbun Sìkù tíyào: http://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/db-machine/ShikoTeiyo/0053401.html