Chūnqiū wǔ lǐ lì zōng 春秋五禮例宗
The Five Rites as the Master Regulatory Framework of the Spring and Autumn Annals
by 張大亨 (撰)
About the work
The Chūnqiū wǔ lǐ lì zōng 春秋五禮例宗 in seven juan (cún 存 — “extant,” indicating partial survival of a once larger work) is a Northern-Sòng systematic redistribution of the Chūnqiū and Zuǒzhuàn events under the categories of the Wǔ lǐ 五禮 — the canonical five rites: jí 吉 (auspicious sacrificial), xiōng 凶 (mourning), jūn 軍 (military), bīn 賓 (guest), and jiā 嘉 (felicitous). Composed by Zhāng Dàhēng 張大亨 (zì Jiāfù 嘉父; jìnshì 1085 / Yuánfēng 8). The jūn (military) rite section in three juan is now lost (already missing by the mid-Míng); only the four other rites survive. The Sìkù base reproduces the WYG copy. Companion volume to KR1e0031 Chūnqiū tōng xùn.
Tiyao
The Sìkù tíyào (text from the Kyoto Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào):
By Zhāng Dàhēng of Sòng. Dàhēng, zì Jiāfù 嘉父, was a man of Húzhōu 湖州. Took the jìnshì in the yǐchǒu 乙丑 yǐkē (second-rank degree) of Yuánfēng 元豐 (1085). Hé Yuǎn’s 何薳 Chūnzhǔ jì wén 春渚紀聞 and Wáng Míngqīng’s 王明清 Yùzhào xīn zhì 玉照新志 both record that he held the post of Sīxūn yuánwàiláng 司勳員外郎; that Wángguó shìdú shìjiǎng 王國侍讀侍講 official titles conflicted with court usage and that he memorialised for correction. Chén Zhènsūn’s Shū lù jiětí registers the present work and Chūnqiū tōng xùn KR1e0031, specifying him as “Zhí mìgé 直祕閣 of Wúxīng 吳興 Zhāng Dàhēng” — recording the post he held at retirement.
The Zuǒzhuàn fā fán 左傳發凡 of Dù Yù holds that the [fifty fán] are all “the regulatory codes of the Duke of Zhōu”; Hán Qǐ’s 韓起 examination of the Yìxiàng Chūnqiū in Lǔ also says “the Zhōu rites are at Lǔ.” Sūn Fù KR1e0018 composed the Zūn wáng fā wéi, and Yè Mèngdé KR1e0032 criticised him for not being deeply versed in ritual learning, hence his words contradict themselves. Ritual and the Chūnqiū are mutually warp and weft.
The present work observes that Dù Yù’s Shì lì KR1e0012 cannot be reconciled with the jīng in many places, and is moreover not exhaustive; that Lù Chún’s Zuǎn lì KR1e0013 (compiled from DànZhào) is also disjointed and missing the truth. Hence the work takes the Chūnqiū events and divides them under the five rites — auspicious, mourning, military, guest, felicitous — recording each kind separately, with a zǒng lùn 總論 for each, the principles internally consistent, free of the various commentators’ rigid item-fitting. Chén Zhènsūn calls it “thoroughly examined and comprehensive” — not excessive praise. Yuán Wú Chéng’s 吳澄 Chūnqiū zuǎn yán 春秋纂言 also divides under the five rites, often coinciding with this work; Wú Chéng was not in the habit of plagiarising, so probably had not seen the transmitted exemplar.
Zhū Yízūn’s Jīng yì kǎo records the work in 10 juan, marking it extant. But the various manuscript copies all lack the three juan of jūn (military) rite — already missing in Zhū Yízūn’s day. The Yǒnglè dàdiǎn, compiled in the early Míng, cites this work only on jí, xiōng, bīn, and jiā — the jūn rite has not a single character. So these three juan have long been lost; Zhū Yízūn merely failed to verify.
Abstract
The Sìkù tíyào makes the principal points: that the work redistributes the Chūnqiū under the canonical five rites — a methodological break with both the Dù Yù fán-based system and the DànZhào item-system; that it explicitly addresses Yè Mèngdé’s diagnosis of Sūn Fù’s failure (insufficient ritual grounding) by making the ritual code itself the organising principle; that the jūn (military) rite section in three juan was lost long before the Míng, with only the jí, xiōng, bīn, and jiā sections surviving; that Yuán Wú Chéng’s analogous Chūnqiū zuǎn yán arrangement was independently arrived at, not borrowed from this work.
The Wǔ lǐ lì zōng is one of the most methodologically distinctive Sòng Chūnqiū works in its choice to organise around the five-rite categories of the Zhōulǐ / Yílǐ / Lǐjì tradition rather than around the Chūnqiū’s own internal regulatory items. It is also one of the principal Sòng-period bridges between Chūnqiū studies and Sānlǐ 三禮 studies.
Translations and research
- Lǐ Wěitài 李偉泰, Sòng-rén Chūnqiū xué dōu lùn 宋人春秋學論衡 (Tāiběi: Wénjīn 1995).
- Zhāng Gāopíng 張高評, Chūnqiū shū fǎ yǔ Zuǒzhuàn xué shǐ 《春秋》書法與《左傳》學史 (Wǔhàn: Wǔhàn dàxué chūbǎnshè 2016).
Other points of interest
The Sìkù tíyào’s catalog cleanup — restoring Zhū Yízūn’s marking of “extant” by clarifying that the jūn rite section had been lost since at least the early Míng — is a representative instance of the editorial precision that distinguishes the Sìkù compilation from earlier classical bibliographic work.
Links
- Zinbun Sìkù tíyào: http://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/db-machine/ShikoTeiyo/0053501.html