Chūnqiū kǎo 春秋考
Examinations on the Spring and Autumn Annals
by 葉夢得 (撰)
About the work
The Chūnqiū kǎo 春秋考 in sixteen juan is the second of Yè Mèngdé’s 葉夢得 Chūnqiū tetrad, devoted to kǎo 考 — the correction and verification of historical events recorded in the Chūnqiū. Originally thirty juan (per the Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì); the Tōngzhìtáng jīngjiě edition of the Sìkù was reconstructed from Yǒnglè dàdiǎn fragments, with the editors recovering eight or nine tenths of the original. Methodologically the work argues for the Chūnqiū’s zhāoyáo 朝要 (court-norm) as the implicit legal-and-ritual code through which the jīng must be read — distinguishing it sharply from speculative reading. The Sìkù base is the editor-reconstructed copy.
Tiyao
The Sìkù tíyào (text from the Kyoto Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào):
By Yè Mèngdé of Sòng. The work was cut at Nánjiànzhōu in the Kāixǐ era of Níngzōng 寧宗 together with the Chūnqiū zhuàn and Chūnqiū yàn. Yuán Chéng Duānxué’s 程端學 Chūnqiū sānzhuàn biàn yí often cites it, so an exemplar still circulated then. From the Míng onwards no book-collector registered it; hence Zhū Yízūn’s Jīng yì kǎo notes “lost.”
The Yǒnglè dàdiǎn preserves substantial portions, allowing recovery of eight or nine tenths of the original. We have arranged and reconstituted the work. The principal thesis is to clarify the basis on which Yè attacks the three commentaries: he genuinely roots his judgement in the Zhōu legal-and-ritual code, not in subjective speculation. Hence his statements all proceed by ordering the Zhōu canonical practices, seeking what conforms to the Chūnqiū’s law. The prose is broad-ranging and discursive, but the language has its source — every position is canonical-grounded.
Chén Zhènsūn’s Shū lù jiětí says: “His verifications and examinations are precise and detailed, none more so.” This is no exaggeration. The original work has a Tǒng lùn 統論 (overview-essay) prefixed, then twelve dukes treated entry-by-entry, but does not record the jīng-text. We follow the original arrangement; the juan-counts are roughly fitted to the surviving page-counts, so we make 3 juan of Tǒng lùn and 13 juan from Yǐngōng onwards — totalling 16 juan, not strictly preserving the Sòng shǐ’s 30-juan figure.
According to Yè’s own preface: “From the Yàn, push to know my correctings are not arbitrary; then you may read my Kǎo. From the Kǎo, push to know my selections are not deceitful; then you may read my Zhuàn.” But the Shū lù jiětí already places Zhuàn first, Kǎo second, Yàn third — zhuàn being the main work and kǎo and yàn its illuminating sub-commentaries. We follow Chén’s order, placing the Kǎo after the Zhuàn.
Abstract
The Sìkù tíyào makes the principal points: that this is Yè Mèngdé’s verification monograph, the methodological hinge of his tetrad; that the work is recovered from Yǒnglè dàdiǎn fragments and is incomplete; that Yè’s distinctive procedure is to root his judgement in the canonical Zhōu legal-and-ritual code rather than speculative argument — making his work a methodological alternative to the rigorist (Sūn Fù) and direct-reading (DànZhào) traditions; that Chén Zhènsūn’s bibliographic ordering — Zhuàn primary, Kǎo and Yàn sub-commentary — differs from Yè’s own preface ordering and the tíyào follows Chén.
Translations and research
See KR1e0032.
Other points of interest
Yè’s Kǎo is one of the early Southern-Sòng works that grounds Chūnqiū hermeneutics in the larger ritual-classical corpus rather than in the Chūnqiū’s own internal regulatory items. This methodological move parallels Zhāng Dàhēng’s Chūnqiū wǔ lǐ lì zōng KR1e0030 but differs in scope: Zhāng redistributes the jīng under the canonical five-rite categories; Yè uses the entire Zhōu legal-and-ritual code as a comprehensive evidentiary frame.
Links
- Wikipedia (Ye Mengde): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_Mengde
- Zinbun Sìkù tíyào: http://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/db-machine/ShikoTeiyo/0053701.html