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左氏博議

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Text ID
KR1e0041
Date
1167–1170
Dynasty
宋

Zuǒshì bó yì 左氏博議

Extensive Discussions of the Zuǒ-tradition

by 呂祖謙 (撰)

About the work

The Zuǒshì bó yì 左氏博議 in twenty-five juan — also titled Dōnglái Bó yì 東萊博議 — is a collection of 168 evaluative essays on selected Zuǒzhuàn episodes by Lǚ Zǔqiān 呂祖謙 (1137–1181). Originally composed in 1167–1168 during the mourning period for his mother at Míngzhāoshān 明招山 in Wùzhōu, where Lǚ taught a circle of disciples; the legendary “newly married within a month” tradition (the legend that Lǚ wrote it in his honeymoon) is corrected by the SKQS tíyào via the nián pǔ. The work is the most widely read of all Lǚ’s compositions, becoming the standard primer for Zuǒzhuàn-based examination essay practice in late-imperial China. The Sìkù base reproduces the Sòng-period Máshā 麻沙 print with attached Zhāng Chéngzhāo biāo zhù 張成招標注 — the biāo zhù being a Sòng-disciple’s commentary that became dispersed into the body of the work.

Tiyao

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

By Lǚ Zǔqiān of Sòng. Tradition holds that, newly married, he completed this work within a month. Now examining his own preface: “Withdrawn at Wǔchuān 武川 in Dōngyáng 東陽, after half a year, my fellow-villagers gradually came through the brambles to study with me. In the leisure between conversations, the talk turned to examination-essay forms; I therefore took the Zuǒshì’s record of order-and-disorder and gain-and-loss and added discussion below it. Day by day, month by month, it gradually formed into chapters.” Examining the chronological biography (nián pǔ): his first marriage to the daughter of Hán Yuánjí 韓元吉 was in Shàoxīng 27 (1157) at Xìnzhōu 信州, not at Dōngyáng. Later in the fifth month of Qiándào 3 (1167), he was in mourning for his mother, residing at Míngzhāoshān 明招山; learners came to study with him; in Qiándào 4 (1168) the Zuǒshì bó yì was completed. In Qiándào 5 (1169) the second month his mother’s mourning ended, and in the fifth month he remarried, taking Hán’s younger sister. So the work was completed during the mourning period — there is no question of “newly married.” The popular tradition is mistaken.

The work has 168 essays. The Tōng kǎo records it as 20 juan, differing from the present text. The present text appends Zuǒzhuàn passages beneath each title and includes mid-text annotations to allusions and citations, hence is divided into 25 juan. The annotations are by an unknown hand. From the title-banner format, the work is Máshā 麻沙 woodblock. The Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì records Lǚ’s pupil Zhāng Chéngzhāo 張成招’s Biāo zhù Zuǒshì bó yì gāng mù 標注左氏博議綱目 in 1 juan; possibly the Máshā edition’s biāo zhù are Zhāng’s, dispersed into the chapters.

Yáng Shìqí 楊士奇 mentions a separate 15-juan exemplar titled Jīng xuǎn 精選 (Carefully Selected). Huáng Yúzhī 黃虞稷 mentions a Zhèng-dé-era (1506–1521) 20-juan print. Both are now unseen. The booksellers’ market typically offers a 12-juan version; not only are the chapter-counts incomplete but many words and phrases have been arbitrarily deleted. The world has long lost the complete book. The present text bears two name-seals of Dǒng Qíchāng 董其昌 and Zhū Yízūn’s 朱彝尊 collection-seal, treasured as an old volume.

Abstract

The Sìkù tíyào makes the principal points: that this is the Zuǒshì bó yì — Lǚ Zǔqiān’s most popular work, with 168 evaluative essays on Zuǒzhuàn episodes; that the popular legend of its composition during a one-month honeymoon is unfounded — chronological biography places it during the mourning period for Lǚ’s mother at Míngzhāoshān (1167–1168); that the work was originally without commentary but the Máshā Sòng-print edition includes biāo zhù annotations probably by Lǚ’s pupil Zhāng Chéngzhāo, dispersed into the chapter bodies; that the present 25-juan division reflects the inclusion of the appended Zuǒzhuàn passages and biāo zhù (the original was 20 juan); that the present exemplar with Dǒng Qíchāng and Zhū Yízūn collection-seals is a particularly valuable transmission.

The work’s enduring popularity — outliving by far the Lǚ-school’s other Zuǒzhuàn compositions — derives from its function as an examination-essay primer. The pairing of Zuǒzhuàn episodes with structured argumentative essays became a standard pedagogical model for jīngyì 經義 composition; subsequent late-imperial primer-collections (e.g. the Míng Gǔ wén guān zhǐ 古文觀止) draw on its pattern.

Translations and research

  • Lǐ Wěitài 李偉泰, Sòng-rén Chūnqiū xué dōu lùn 宋人春秋學論衡 (Tāiběi: Wénjīn 1995).
  • Hoyt Cleveland Tillman, Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy (UHP 1992).
  • Numerous late-imperial reprints and abridgements survive; modern editions include Sūn Yīngkuí 孫應奎 ed., Dōng-lái Bó yì (Bēijīng: Zhōnghuá shūjú 2002).

Other points of interest

The misconception that Lǚ wrote the Bó yì in a one-month honeymoon was already proverbial in the Sòng — the Sìkù tíyào’s correction reflects the careful nián pǔ work of the high-Qīng evidential school. The work’s role in late-imperial pedagogy means it is one of the small handful of Sòng-period classical works whose actual transmission and reception greatly exceeds its philological-historical importance.

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