Dōnglái Lǚ tàishǐ Chūnqiū Zuǒzhuàn lèi biān 東萊呂太史春秋左傳類編
Master Lǚ Dōnglái’s Categorised Reorganisation of the Spring and Autumn Annals’ Zuǒ-tradition
About the work
The Dōnglái Lǚ tàishǐ Chūnqiū Zuǒzhuàn lèi biān 東萊呂太史春秋左傳類編 in six juan is the Zuǒzhuàn topical reorganisation of Lǚ Zǔqiān 呂祖謙 (1137–1181). It is the work whose existence the SKQS tíyào on KR1e0039 notes (Lǚ “had three works on the Zuǒzhuàn: the Lèi biān dividing the text into nineteen categories, the Bó yì KR1e0041 raising matters and establishing meanings, and the present work [the Zhuàn shuō]”) and which the tíyào says is “long without transmitted exemplar, scattered in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn with little to draw from.” The present SBCK edition recovers the work in its 19-category form, here reorganised as 6 juan with categorical headings: gāng lǐng 綱領 (overview), Zhōu, Qí, Jìn, Chǔ, WúYuè, yídí 夷狄, fùyōng 附庸, zhūhóu zhìdù 諸侯制度, fēngsú 風俗, lǐ 禮, shìzú 氏族, guānzhì 官制, cáiyòng 財用, xíng 刑, bīngzhì 兵制, dìlǐ 地理, chūnqiū qián shì 春秋前事, lùn yì 論議. The Republican-era critical apparatus (jiào kān jì 校勘記) is by Hú Wénkǎi 胡文楷.
Tiyao
No SKQS tíyào in the SBCK source. The work was not registered in the SKQS, having been recovered only via the SBCK editorial work in the early twentieth century. The SKQS tíyào on KR1e0039 Zuǒshì zhuàn shuō notes the existence of the Lèi biān in nineteen categories but says it was unrecoverable from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn fragments alone.
Abstract
The Lèi biān takes the entire Zuǒzhuàn text and redistributes it under nineteen topical categories — by state (Zhōu, Qí, Jìn, Chǔ, Wú, Yuè, plus the barbarians and the small dependencies) and by institutional theme (rites, lineage, official system, taxation, military, geography, customs, etc.). It is the most ambitious Sòng-period topical reorganisation of the Zuǒzhuàn and one of the principal forerunners of the late-imperial Chūnqiū dàshì biǎo 春秋大事表 form (Gù Dònggāo, mid-Qīng).
The work was used by Lǚ Zǔqiān as a teaching tool for his disciples at the Míngzhāoshān 明招山 academy and at the Lìzé shūyuàn 麗澤書院; the topical organisation made it possible to examine all Zuǒ-passages relating to a single institutional or political question simultaneously. The Lèi biān’s methodological commitment — to read the Zuǒzhuàn as a comprehensive evidentiary witness to early Chinese institutions — is the basis on which Lǚ’s other Zuǒzhuàn works (KR1e0039, KR1e0040, KR1e0041) are constructed.
The Republican-era SBCK edition recovers the work via collation of late-Sòng print fragments that the SKQS editors did not have access to. Hú Wénkǎi 胡文楷’s jiào kān jì documents the principal textual variants.
Translations and research
See KR1e0039.
Other points of interest
The Republican-era SBCK recovery of the Lèi biān is one of the principal classical-text recoveries of the early-twentieth-century philological renaissance — comparable in importance to the recovery of the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn fragments, but specific to texts the Qīng editors had not accessed. Hú Wénkǎi 胡文楷 (1894–1976) was a prolific Republican-era textual scholar; his jiào kān jì for this volume is one of his classical-philology contributions.
Links
- Wikipedia (Lü Zuqian): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lü_Zuqian
- Sìbù cóngkān: https://archive.org/details/06049143.cn