Hóngshì Chūnqiū shuō 洪氏春秋說
Master Hóng’s Discussions of the Spring and Autumn Annals
by 洪咨虁 (撰)
About the work
The Hóngshì Chūnqiū shuō in thirty juan is the Chūnqiū commentary of Hóng Zīkuí 洪咨夔 (1176–1236), zì Shùnyú 舜俞, of Yúqián 於潛, composed during the seven years he was rusticated after being impeached for offending Shǐ Míyuǎn 史彌遠 and warning the throne against Lǐ Quán 李全. The work was lost as an independent transmission well before the high Qīng; the SKQS editors reconstituted it from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典 in thirty juan. (The Sìkù catalog of the work writes the author’s personal name as 洪咨虁, a graphic variant of 夔; the same character appears throughout the WYG headings.) Hóng’s reading is largely Zuǒ-ist and disputes Hú Ānguó’s KR1e0036 heaviest moralising. The Qiánlóng emperor’s own preface to the work — extraordinarily for a Sòng commentary — censures Hóng’s verdict on Yǐngōng (隱公作偽) as derivative of Lú Tóng’s 盧仝 Chūnqiū zhāiwēi 春秋摘微 and dismisses the originality claim. The reconstructed text ends with a substantial lacuna (Xīgōng 14 autumn through 33; Xiānggōng 16 summer through 31) which the editors could not recover from any source.
Tiyao
The Sìkù tíyào (translated):
We your servants respectfully report. The Hóngshì Chūnqiū shuō in thirty juan is the work of Hóng Zīkuí 洪咨䕫 of Sòng (using the graph 䕫, a variant of 夔). Zīkuí, zì Shùnyú 舜俞, was a man of Yúqián. He served at length, rising to Duānmíng diàn xuéshì; his record is in his Sòng shǐ biography. Zīkuí’s own preface says he composed the Chūnqiū shuō after being dismissed from the Kǎogōng post and confined to home in deep self-examination. According to the biography, early in Lǐzōng’s reign Zīkuí was kǎogōng yuánwàiláng 考功員外郎. Having offended Shǐ Míyuǎn 史彌遠, and having warned that Lǐ Quán 李全 must inevitably trouble the realm, he was impeached by Lǐ Zhīxiào 李知孝 and Liáng Chéngdà 梁成大, demoted in rank, and confined to private life for seven years. The book was composed in this period.
The biography only records that Zīkuí (here written 咨夔 — note the source’s inconsistent graph) wrote Liǎng Hàn zhàolìng lǎnchāo 兩漢詔令擥抄 and the Chūnqiū shuō, without giving the juan-counts. Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo 經義考 cites Wú Rènchén’s 吳任臣 statement that the work is in only three juan; but the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn’s reproduction of Wú Qián’s 吳潛 xíngzhuàng 行狀 of Zīkuí gives the work as thirty juan. Examining the present text, its bulk is far too great for three juan; Wú Qián was Zīkuí’s official colleague and friend and would have personally seen his author’s-copy. Wú Rènchén’s figure must rest on later hearsay.
The book is lucid and well-aired in style, and its evidential reconstruction of historical situation and detection of motive raise many points earlier scholars had not made. As for instance: in gōngzǐ Yǒu rú Chén 公子友如陳, taking it as the inception of the Jìshì 季氏 monopolisation of Lǔ; in the Jìn marquis arresting Cáo Bó Fùchú 曹伯負芻 without re-installing a Cáo lord, taking it as positioning for Cáo’s later restoration; in the Chāngjiān 昌間 great hunt, taking it as the Jìshì displaying their armed force to terrorise the populace into compliance — all these capture micro-intentions of the Chūnqiū’s selective recording. He does have crooked moments: taking Qìngfù 慶父’s flight as Jì Yǒu 季友 deliberately letting him go; taking Liúzǐ 劉子 and Dānzǐ 單子 escorting Wáng Měng 王猛 into the royal city as not knowing they had a sovereign — these go awry. But suppress the dross and keep the metal: what stands the test of time cannot be obscured.
The other works (Liǎng Hàn zhàolìng etc.) have long been lost; this Chūnqiū shuō too has no surviving transmission. Only the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn still preserves much of its text. We have respectfully gathered, edited, corrected the corruptions, and divided the work back into thirty juan, restoring the original arrangement.
As to the Chūnqiū jīng itself, the three commentaries differ in places. Zīkuí’s original jīng-text is no longer recoverable; from his discussion we infer he generally followed the Zuǒ tradition while occasionally borrowing from Gōng and Gǔ. We have added our editorial notes accordingly. From Xīgōng 14 autumn to 33, and from Xiānggōng 16 summer to 31, the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn original text is lost and no other classical commentary preserves citations from which to fill the gap. We have therefore left these passages as lacunae.
Reverentially examined and submitted, Qiánlóng 46 (1781), ninth month. Chief compilers: Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. Chief proofreader: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
Hóng’s preface dates the work conceptually to his “wŭ-lóu shēnxǐng” 杜門深省 phase after his impeachment, traditionally placed in the years 1226–1233 (the seven-year demotion that the Sòng shǐ biography assigns to the reign of Lǐzōng). The work was lost in transmission and survives only in the SKQS editors’ reconstruction from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn; the lacunae in Xīgōng and Xiānggōng (the most damaged sections of the encyclopaedia at this point) are now permanent.
The tíyào identifies as Hóng’s signal contribution the situational reconstruction of Chūnqiū events: on Jì Yǒu, on Cáo Bó Fùchú, on the Chāngjiān hunt, all of which the editors find acute. They also flag specific overreaches (the Qìngfù episode, the Wáng Měng / Liúzǐ entry into the royal city). The unusual feature of the work is that the Qiánlóng emperor himself wrote a preface to it (preserved at the head of the work, separate from the tíyào), polemically attacking Hóng’s reading of Yǐngōng’s accession as a derivative borrowing from Lú Tóng’s Chūnqiū zhāiwēi 春秋摘微 — a striking imperial intervention into a Chūnqiū commentary, motivated by Qiánlóng’s general distrust of works that find Confucius criticising the Chūnqiū’s own canonical figures.
In its extant form the work is heavily Zuǒ-leaning, mostly hostile to Hú Ānguó’s KR1e0036 forensic moralism, and deploys the situational-reading method that the SKQS editors associated with the better Sòng Chūnqiū tradition. Hóng’s general philosophical thesis — visible in his self-preface — frames the Chūnqiū as the operation of tiānmìng 天命 across 242 years of decline, with the bāo/biǎn not the moral function of editing but a by-product of tiānrén 天人 reckoning.
Translations and research
- Sūn Wěimíng 孫衛明, Sòng dài Chūnqiū xué yánjiū 宋代春秋學研究 (Bēijīng: Zhōngguó shèhuì kēxué chūbǎnshè 2009).
- Lǐ Wěitài 李偉泰, Sòng-rén Chūnqiū xué dōu lùn 宋人春秋學論衡 (Tāiběi: Wénjīn 1995).
- Hóng’s Píng-zhāi jí 平齋集 (preserved in WYG, KR4d) is the principal source for his biography and the only place where his Chūnqiū shuō preface survives independently of the SKQS reconstruction.
Other points of interest
The Qiánlóng emperor’s prefatory note (Yùzhì shū Hóng Zīkuí Chūnqiū shuō lùn Yǐngōng zuòwěi shì 御製書洪咨夔春秋說論隱公作偽事), preserved before the tíyào, is one of relatively few cases in which an emperor personally intervened to refute a Sòng Chūnqiū commentator. The intervention exhibits a Qiánlóng pattern: when a Sòng commentator finds the Confucian Chūnqiū implicitly criticising one of its protagonists for “fabrication”, the emperor steps in to defend the Chūnqiū’s own subject and the unity of the orthodox tradition.
Links
- Catalog meta:
data/catalogs/meta/KR1e.yaml - CBDB person 18049 (Hóng Zīkuí)
- Sòng shǐ 406 (biography)